LP: Tell me about your activism

Kristen: It begins and ends with Love. Everything I am involved in my time and energy comes from a very loving place. I have come to see how the love and support a person feels makes their motivation and creation even more intense. When someone is supported, they soar higher with their personal goals and achievements they want to reach. Everything I do has love within the purpose. I do stand with movements that are direct impacts I have lived and experienced. MMIP (Missing and Murdered Indigenous People) is one close to my heart. My cousin was a victim of an act of violence that resulted in her losing her life at 19 years old. I stand with the victims’ families, including my very own blood line with these movements. I want the families of those who are missing and murdered to feel my love and support through my spoken words and through my music. My parents and Grandparents are all survivors of Indian Residential and Day School. I stand with all Every Child Matters movement across our country because my parents and theirs before them survived this. I am here because of that. With the understanding of what occurred to Indigenous People during their time at IRS and Day Schools, I do not come from an angry place. I have come to adapt the ability to know that we were angry for over 100 years. That did not bring the healing our Relatives need. I don’t believe we will have any reconciliation within ourselves until we bring love back. That is what was lost during these times, it was love. It was not taught, not shown, and not felt. For there to be any true healing done, we must teach ourselves how to love ourselves. It’s a good place to start a healing journey.

LP:   Can you share about your experience in connecting with your spirituality and culture?

Kristen: Go to your medicines and your bundles, they will save you. I also believe that religion and spirituality is a choice. We are all free to choose what we connect most with.

For me it was my own culture I drowned myself in. I was not raised with Indigenous traditions or ceremonies; it was my choice to reconnect myself to the ways of my ancestors. It has been such an igniting path for my healing journey.

I had been struggling with my traumas and the traumas passed down intergenerationally from my parents. The disconnection as a family and for each of us to not even be present and in each others’ lives is unreal. That any of think this is okay. Or how we can walk in our lives without the love and support form our siblings and our parents, these days it is too natural, and I found myself alone and I needed to try reconnecting or find a spiritual form of support to help me through my hard moments. I spoke with an elder once, and I was told that it is okay to cry. This emotion I refused to show. I felt that it was a weakness that I was not comfortable to express. So, I held it in. The elder shared with me that it is natural to feel this emotion, and its healthy to express it. The elder then shared with me when I feel that feeling in my throat where I can not swallow the moment you are about to cry, it is then when The Grandmother’s are all surrounding you. The elder told me it was all the generations of all my grandmothers all that came before me that would be there in their spirit form. This was the most valuable teaching I would ever receive in my life. I found my support within the spiritual form of my ancestral Grandmothers. I have always thought in the form of value that there is no way to measure love and support. So this was when I adopted the spiritual supports of having 10,000+ Grandmothers who spiritually walk with me. They are with me always, and in this new custom I created, I have never felt alone since.

I know that my culture is beautiful and rich with values and teachings, and I have buried myself there because I feel the most grounded balanced and at peace when I am following my cultural ways. My culture and spirituality are extremely important and very responsible for the healing and growth I have found. I connected with both so willingly and I can not imagine my life without the constant existence of both.

LP: What do you hope people get out of your music?

Kristen: I hope they feel loved and supported in their own healing they are either currently actively doing or yet to do. I want them to feel empowered and I hope my music brings them closer to the things that they need to thrive in life.

LP:  On the Manitoba Music profile it shares you refer to your make up as your war paint, I'm curious about your relationship with make-up, femininity, and strength?

Kristen: This is my truth with my stage make-up. I felt that I wanted to be bold with my branding of my music and arts. I also wanted my culture to be present with my performances and I wanted to inspire others to know our cultures our ways of life and our traditions are still alive; they live within all of us. So it was a form of visual arts in my interpretation that there are Warriors that walk among us. There are Warrior brothers and sisters who are out there impacting the world with our roots, and not in an angry aggressive way. Also, I feel my Indigenous Relatives have been silent for too long. Sometimes what we need to say can be spoken in different forms, and I wanted my stage make up to be that language that we have feared to speak of.

For me it also represents that I walk with my Ancestors, and I am reconnecting myself to our old ways and what was important to us, it was to love one another unconditionally. I feel that what I represent when I wear my stage make up is that of great strength, the Granddaughter of 10,000+ Grandmother’s Strength.

LP:   What is your why? Why do music? Why show up at the events your support?

Kristen: Our support can be given and shown in different forms. I truly feel being present and in attendance is the most direct form of support. I feel that to show up for others we have to show up for ourselves first.

I believe that music is medicine. There are parts of music that speak directly to your soul. That’s a gift I was blessed with, and it is meant to be shared. The messages of support within my music is that gift that needs to shared. It’s meant to be shared. I do music because it speaks from what is within your spirit, who you truly are. Music is what I have utilized to help me speak of things I have been healing from, it was medicine for me and always has been. I feel like sometimes I sing songs that are survival guides for others, and I want them to know that the moments can be hard, but they do pass.

LP:  Who do you admire?

Kristen: Buffy Sainte-Marie

LP: If I were to show up at your place, what would you want to feed vegetarian me?

Kristen: Vegetarian Soup is life!!

LP:  How do you unwind?

Kristen: I paint. Sometimes up to 6 paintings all at once.

Find more about Kristen McKay on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KristenMcKayInspirations and the Manitoba Music Profile: https://www.manitobamusic.com/kristenmckay