Crown Lands Release Final Indigenous Song Trilogy, Announce Tour

By Karen Bliss

Canadian prog-rock duo Crown Lands, which just won the 2021 Juno Award for Breakthrough Group of the Year, has just released the final song in a trilogy about Indigenous rights. White Buffalo is produced by David Bottrill (Peter Gabriel, Tool, Muse, Godsmack, King Crimson), the music video directed by Alimzhan Sabir

The band, whose name means territory belonging to the monarch, or, more accurately, stolen from First Peoples, previously released “Mountain” about colonization and “End of the Road” about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (a staggering 1181 between 1980 and 2012, according to the National Inquiry’s report, released in 2019).

’White Buffalo is the third instalment in our trilogy of songs about Indigenous rights,” reads a collective statement in the press release from Cody Bowles (vocals and drums) and Kevin Comeau (guitar, bass, and keys). Mountain is what happened.  End of the Road is what is happening. White Buffalo is manifesting what will happen: overcoming oppression and rising up to reclaim one’s land.

“The White Buffalo is a symbol of manifestation,” they explain. “When Colonizers came to North America, they tried to wipe out the Buffalo to starve Indigenous people to death. The buffalo are still here. We are too, and together we’ll overcome.”

Bowles is half Mi'kmaq, an Indigenous tribe from Nova Scotia, and Comeau is Jewish. The two met in Oshawa, Ontario, and formed the band in 2014. – Continue reading this Karen Bliss feature on the Samaritanmag website.