A music video project by the duo Siijuu Jaadas Cool Ladies, con­sist­ing of Hai­da Elder, weaver, and lan­guage teacher Jiixa (age 84), along with set­tler Julia (age 25). Julia makes the music and film for Jiix­a’s lan­guage-shar­ing. The two share a deep bond and a sense of humour that com­mu­ni­cates the Hai­da lan­guage in cre­ative new ways. They are inspired by Hai­da laws and ways of being, by the pow­er of food and laugh­ter in bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er, and by the land and oth­er beings that they share home with on Hai­da Gwaii.

Pre­serv­ing Lan­guage Through Music and Film
Behind the Scenes: Siijuu Jaadas Cool Ladies — Hai­da Lan­guage Rap Duo
By Julia Wed­er, May 2022

Intro: Here is a brief guide on how I approach mak­ing music videos with Hai­da Elder and lan­guage teacher Jiixa (Gladys Van­dal), involv­ing the Xaay­da kil (Hai­da lan­guage, Skide­gate dialect).

Quick con­text on the peo­ple involved: Jiixa is like a nanaay (grand­moth­er) to me. Despite being an adopt­ed mem­ber of her clan, Skide­gate Gidins Naa ‘Uuwans Xaayda­Ga, it is not my place as a set­tler to claim a sense of own­er­ship of the lan­guage. This lan­guage project was intend­ed to sup­port Jiixa in her own lan­guage-shar­ing and cre­ative visions, as she is huge­ly moti­vat­ed to share the lan­guage now that she is diag­nosed with ALS and has lim­it­ed mobil­i­ty. As a res­i­dent of Hai­da Gwaii and some­one com­mit­ted to advanc­ing Hai­da sov­er­eign­ty and respect­ing Hai­da law on these lands, I see learn­ing the Hai­da lan­guage as an impor­tant part of this life­long com­mit­ment. I car­ry this grat­i­tude and priv­i­lege with me through­out these cre­ative projects with Jiixa. And gee, we have a lot of fun.

STEP 1: Reflect on your place, respon­si­bil­i­ties, and the nuances of your pro­posed project.

What is your posi­tion­al­i­ty with­in the com­mu­ni­ty or folks you are engaged with? What are the prop­er pro­to­cols to fol­low when engag­ing with the Hai­da lan­guage (or any Indige­nous lan­guage or cul­tur­al prac­tice)? What are you doing to ensure you are mov­ing beyond “good inten­tions” and prac­tic­ing real self-aware­ness? What is your knowl­edge on the top­ic, and what kind of author­i­ty do you have on it? What is the qual­i­ty of the rela­tion­ships you have built? Who has con­trol over what is shared, and how? Who ben­e­fits from (or is harmed by) the work?

STEP 2: Think of a theme or sub­ject for your music video.

We thought of handy phras­es that fam­i­lies on Hai­da Gwaii might use in every­day life — eg. around the house, in the kitchen, on a trip. We want­ed to mix these in with expres­sions of love and friend­ship, as well as prayers and wise phras­es from Hai­da Elders that have been pre­served. We chose themes like “Food and Friend­ship”, “Trav­el­ing to the City”, and “Remem­ber­ing Lost Children”.

STEP 3: Have fun and exper­i­ment with film

We didn’t take our­selves too seri­ous­ly at all when mak­ing these rap songs. At spon­ta­neous moments — say, after a meal while sit­ting on the couch — I’d take out my iPhone and ask if Jiixa want­ed to record snip­pets of video for our next rap song. “Sure!”, she’d smile. We didn’t wor­ry about mim­ing lyrics or any­thing in these snip­pets — we just grooved our heads or hips to an imag­i­nary beat, maybe wear­ing a pair of sun­glass­es or a hat that was lying around.

STEP 4: Work on the lyrics.

Jiixa wrote the lyrics for each of our songs, some­times get­ting inspi­ra­tion from Hai­da lan­guage books pro­duced by the group of Elders involved in the Skide­gate Hai­da Immer­sion Pro­gram. I would write down phras­es or words that she’d speak out, and repeat them back to her until she was hap­py with the flow and con­tent. Some­times Jiixa want­ed me to speak/sing the lyrics. Once we had the lyrics writ­ten, we’d audio-record our­selves on the Voice Record­ing app on our phones.

STEP 5: Work on the music.

In Garage­Band (free on Apple devices), I made sim­ple beats from the com­put­er-key­board with­in the soft­ware (you can choose from a whole range of instru­ment sounds). I’d make a sim­ple tune over top of a bassy beat, then I’d adjust the tem­po of the music until it rough­ly matched the tem­po of our speech / singing / lyrics.

STEP 6: Edit

This is a fair­ly time-con­sum­ing process but lots of fun. I used free soft­ware (iMovie) on my Mac­book to edit togeth­er the audio clips, video clips, and music. First I export­ed the song and lyrics from Garage­band, and import­ed it into iMovie. Then I import­ed all the video clips and matched them up with the lyrics and music. We added intro and clos­ing slides with our names and every­one who helped out with the project.

STEP 7: Add sub­ti­tles / captions

It’s good prac­tice to include cap­tions in any video, regard­less of lan­guage, so that it’s acces­si­ble to non-hear­ing folks. Since our videos are in Hai­da, and the goal was to help peo­ple become more famil­iar with the lan­guage and pick up new words and phras­es, we’d spell out Hai­da cap­tions in large font and Eng­lish under­neath, in small­er font.

STEP 8: Share with the community!

We share our videos on Face­book and Youtube, and invite our friends and com­mu­ni­ty to give it a watch. We hope that these videos help moti­vate oth­ers to tell sto­ries and use the Hai­da lan­guage in their own cre­ative ways.

Juli­a’s email is julia.weder@gmail.com. Feel free to get in touch!