Students celebrate Gord Downie's legacy with tribute concert

MORLEY - The sounds of the Tragically Hip echoed through Nakoda Elementary School on May 31 as students from the school sang songs and paid tribute to the band's front man, Gord Downie, who was a passionate advocate for Indigenous rights and reconciliation.

The afternoon concert included some of the Hip's most notable songs such as "Long Time Running," "New Orleans is Sinking" and "Grace, Too."

Between songs the audience was regaled with an audio and visual slide show about Wicapi Omani, Downie's Lakota spirit name, which translates to the "man who walks among the stars."

"It's a story about a boy named Wicapi Omani, Gord's spirit name, and how he travels through his life with this burden, with this destiny the Creator had given him," said Drew VanAllen, the students' music teacher who wore a black shirt with the phrase In Gord We Trust during the concert.

"His purpose was to spread acceptance and unity throughout the world and he struggles with how to accomplish that job, but at the end he meets a young boy who we refer to as Chanie Wenjack, who gives him the inspiration to fulfill his destiny."

The tragic tale of Chanie Wenjack was the inspiration behind Downie's final solo album Secret Path, release on Oct. 18, 2017, a day after he died from terminal brain cancer. He also published an accompanying graphic novel and animated film.

The three-part project tells the story of Wenjack, a 12-year-old First Nations boy who died in 1966 after trying to escape from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in northern Ontario.

His story highlighted the abuse and treatment of Indigenous children in the residential school system and led to a formal inquest into his death. A year after Wenjack died, Maclean's magazine published a front page story about his death which brought the matter to national attention and was the catalyst behind Downie's solo album.

"The Tragically Hip didn't write songs about typical stuff. Their songs talked about First Nations people, Canadian issues and told stories about different places across Canada," said Ocean Dixon, a Grade 4 student prior to the concert.

"For some reason, their songs seemed to connect Canadians together, making us one big family."

It was Downie's ability to unite people from coast-to-coast-to-coast that spurred VanAllen to introduce his students to the Tragically Hip's music following the musician's death last fall.

"When we got back from our Christmas break I wanted to teach them a Tragically Hip song so I showed them how to play 'Spring Time in Vienna' and from there it just snowballed into this massive idea and we decided to go for it," said VanAllen, who read a short letter written by Patrick Downie, Gord's brother, prior to the concert.

"I think they really liked the fact that he spoke for them, which not a lot of artists are doing these days, so the fact he was advocating for them specifically made it easy for them to connect to."

To put the audio/visual story together he worked with several different cultural directors as well as Donald Speidel, who gave Downie his spirit name.

Locally, he also received help from Tina Fox, a Stoney elder and school counsellor, as well as Albertine GoodStoney, an educational assistant at the school who helped with translation.

"It was a group effort," said VanAllen, adding the concert was about more than just celebrating Downie's legacy.

"He wanted a bridge built connecting First Nations people together with the rest of the country and so this was our attempt to do so."