The documentary “Fist Out Here: Indigenous Hip Hop in Canada” put me on to some new artists from a sub genre I was sadly unaware of. From the tragedies of oppression and racism people rise beautiful expressions of art taking the form of Hip Hop music. “Hip hop is music of the struggle” is a statement said accurately by the host of the documentary Rich Kidd. When you line up the experiences of African Americans and the indigenous groups in Canada its apparent how both marginalized groups have more in common than not. At the end of they day these groups of people are just trying to survive and unfortunately they are being killed off and abducted disproportionately. The abduction  and murdering of indigenous girls and women is a pressing and disturbing problem in Canada. It automatically makes me think of the abduction of women, especially black women taking part in America.

A look into the history of indigenous people in Canada brought up the use of residential schools in the Canadian society up until the 1990’s. After learning what a residential school was it horrified me how long it took for the last school to be shut down. Residential schools are the embodiment of the colonialism that took place in Canada. Where children were abused for practicing their own culture. It is important to think about the long term effects and how traumatizing it must be for all those young children to have a part of their identity forcibly stripped away from them and having someone try to insert a replacement like it needed to be fixed. Tragedies like have an immense impact on the generations to come. Not only from a culture stand point but emotional trauma is definitely gonna be a byproduct of residential schools. Leading to conflict within the communities because of so much deeply untreated emotional wounds. All that being said, Hip Hop gives people in these situations a voice and acts a therapeutic relief for some.