How Indigenous-owned record labels are changing the music industry in Canada

Shoshona Kish — the Ojibwe-Anishnaabe artist who forms one half of the Indigenous musical duo Digging Roots — remembers the moment that lit a fire in her.

While on tour with her bandmate and husband Raven Kanatakta, the musicians finished a set at the Glastonbury Festival in England with a traditional round dance. 

Their son — who'd been travelling around the world with them as they toured — was in awe, having watched several thousand people participate in the custom.

"After the show he was so excited and he said, 'You know, I can see this happening with 40,000 people someday,'" Kish said.

That unwavering belief in Indigenous music and artists led Kish and her business partner and fellow musician Amanda Rheaume to found Ishkōdé Records, one of several Indigenous-owned record labels that have emerged across Canada in the last few years.

"That's what I have my eyes set on as a metaphor that [we're] going to continue to grow this," she added. "We're going to continue to find each other from all of our communities and support all of these gorgeous stories that are being told."

The music industry in Canada is more hospitable than ever to Indigenous artists, partly due to an emergence in recent years of Indigenous-owned infrastructure committed to managing and marketing people from the community, according to artists, label owners and industry leaders. 

From Ishkōdé Records and Red Music Rising in Toronto, to Land Back Records in Vancouver — plus Hitmakerz, a label specializing in Inuit musicians with offices in Iqaluit, Toronto and Ottawa — Indigenous musicians are building their own foundation within Canada's music industry after years of feeling excluded from or limited by the system's unspoken glass ceiling.

Launched in June 2021, Ishkōdé Records was born out of necessity: when Rheaume and Kish were up-and-coming musicians, they said the lack of supports for Indigenous artists compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts was stark.

"The journey of being an artist and moving in different music spaces, it was just so painfully obvious that there was such a big gap [between] the Indigenous artists and ... non-Indigenous artists," said Rheaume, a Métis singer-songwriter.

"The goals are really to bridge that gap, to shatter glass ceilings and open up opportunities for Indigenous artists that have been systematically and routinely left out or shut out of spaces and conversations and career opportunities."

Ishkōdé Records partnered with Universal Music Canada in 2021 for a distribution deal meant to amplify Indigenous voices.

Kish, for her part, felt that the competitive nature of the music industry made it exceedingly difficult for Indigenous artists who were subject to quotas or tokenism when applying for opportunities.

"For Indigenous folks, there was often just the one spot at the festival or there was the one opportunity," she said. Once somebody got it, it meant that everyone else was back at square one — and it's generally still the case that non-Indigenous people are deciding which Indigenous voices are heard in mainstream music, she added.