If you don’t know Shawnee Kish, you’re missing out – and this is the perfect time to join the club and get yourself up to date. With the release of her self-titled EP, Shawnee has delivered six songs with feeling, power, pop, and her life’s experience including as a two-spirit Indigenous person.

Shawnee Kish has a lot to celebrate and a lot to work through in recent months. Her mother is on a long road to recovery after a stroke, and we are sending all of our healing thoughts to her. Shawnee also got married to her partner Jen Kish (you may know her from the Canadian Rugby Sevens Olympic team), and we’re sending all of our happiness and best wishes for the next steps in their life together.

She’s written, recorded, and released new music on a schedule that made her think maybe she should slow down because things were moving so quickly. Thankfully, she didn’t, and we now have the EP and the songs and videos and most importantly, her voice.

“What this EP is about is my struggle, but it’s also about overcoming that and finding love and riding that wave and what that’s like. There’s a lot in this EP and in the music to come.” – Shawnee Kish

A couple of weeks before the release of the EP, we caught up with Shawnee Kish over the Zoom to talk about all of it, plus her work in the community and more…

We started the call with congratulations and check-ins and asked how she was doing. With a big smile on her face, Shawnee said, “I’m good! There is so much happening. It’s like a tornado, is how I describe it.” She told us that she’s had shows to play and events to participate in, and on top of that, she released a new single each month leading up to the release of the full six-song EP. She said that she knows she’s lucky to have all of that when many artists don’t in this pandemic era, but it is certainly keeping her busy!

“I feel like I’m in the right place.” – Shawnee Kish

I asked her about that whirlwind release schedule, and if she’d had time to breathe or look at the reactions that were coming in from fans and appreciate them – and she quickly said no. It was in those moments of fast pace and the next step coming quickly that she wondered if she should slow down the schedule – but she didn’t. And that’s great because now we all have the EP to listen to, and she has her songs out to the world.

She said, “I have so much that I’ve created in the last year and a half, and this is just the beginning.”

We asked about choosing the songs that make up the EP, knowing that she had to choose which songs would make the release and which ones wouldn’t.

“It was really hard to choose, because these songs [that] I created this past year and a half, I’ve experienced so much in my personal life that I had so much to say. So it was so hard to pick from a collection of songs that I’ve created that say so much and mean so much to me. But I wanted the EP and the new chapter of my music career to showcase [me], I’m fun and a little bit crazy and the story behind one of the songs Diagnosed Dissociative and how I am just real and that comes with whatever it comes with. And that’s not always pretty, but it comes with whatever it comes with so I wanted these songs to showcase that realness. And so that’s how I picked them.”

As we were speaking during both Indigenous History Month and Pride Month, we took an opportunity to talk about some of the causes that Shawnee Kish supports and participates in. If you follow her on social media you know that she is an advocate for youth in the Indigenous and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, as well as for the queer and Indigenous communities at large.

Please note that at the time of our conversation, we were 10 days past the news of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation discovery of the remains of 215 children at the former residential school in Kamloops, BC. In the time since our conversation, more news has come, more remains have been found, and we know that there will be more. These words from Shawnee Kish come before the news of the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan or any others.

“I gotta tell you, the years I’ve faced… I’ve said this a few times, this is not new. This realization of struggle within the Indigenous communities and what we’ve faced as a community and our people and our culture. The ramifications of what have been done to Indigenous people alone in Canada is very very real and something that, even within my family, we’ve been forced to overcome. And so this isn’t new, this isn’t new news for us, we’re very much aware of what has yet even to be uncovered. And that will happen with time now that these conversations, outside of the community, are opening up. These have been conversations for our people to heal from the traumas forever, and in my own life, since I’ve been born.”

She continued, talking about her life more specifically, “So it’s always been my language, especially after really honestly struggling with things like depression and suicidal thoughts as a young person and not knowing my place in the world as a two-spirit person or an Indigenous person and not feeling valued or honoured in that sense, and who I am and what runs through my blood. I’ve had to overcome that. So taking back my culture and finding ways to be part of my culture and honour that part of me was a struggle in my teenage years, and going to pow wows and taking part in that and realizing and just honouring that part of me. So I’ve been through that. And then what coincides with that is my music and my art and my passion and my gift. We believe as Indigenous people that we’ve all been given a gift and it’s our reason, our purpose is to use that. And I believe that we use our gifts to heal and we use it to empower each other and show up for each other so I do that, and that’s what motivates me to talk.”

Shawnee added this to finish that part of our conversation, “I’m clumsy, but I used to be real clumsy because I wasn’t in my own skin. I wasn’t living in my own skin. And so I wore that, I was uncomfortable with so many things about myself and I came to this realization that this is all I got and I have to be who I am, so I’m gonna do that. And if it’s not for me it’s gonna be for the next kid who is struggling. And I know what that struggle is like and I don’t want them to go through that. So be you. And I show up for that reason and I use my platform and anything that I accomplish for that purpose and reason and that just leads me on a road that I never stray from and I feel confident and powerful in that.”

We are thankful to Shawnee for sharing these words and thoughts and even just a small part of her story. Nyaweh.

As we often do, we asked Shawnee which artists she would put on a playlist with her music from this EP. She said it would be a two-spirit Indigenous and Female Powerhouse playlist that would include Melissa Etheridge, Nina Simone, Etta James, Jeremey Dutcher, and more. I offered up Amy Winehouse’s name as well, because as I listened to Shawnee’s EP I got that sound and vibe and I loved it. Thankfully, she agreed, so we’ll add Amy to the playlist too.

At the end of our call, we asked Shawnee what she hopes people take away from her music and this collection of songs. She said that she hopes people feel it and she added, “Music is about feeling and it could be a good feeling it could be helping you get through a feeling.” She also specifically mentioned the song, Diagnosed Dissociative and the therapy session that led her to it and a realization about herself. She called that realization and the song part of the healing journey and said, “I hope that through my music people can feel a sense of comfort and joy and love and it can just give them a feeling in their heart. That’s what music’s all about. That’s my hope.”

Shawnee Kish made a record that is full of all of the things she hopes people take away from it. Her voice is powerful and emotional and lovely. Her lyrics are thoughtful and open and lay it all out in front of the listener. Her stories are her own but she has found a way to share them and allow other people to connect with them and hear their own stories and struggles and love and hope in them.

As an artist, Shawnee Kish is a voice that we are happy to celebrate and share with you. As a person and a role model, Shawnee is going above and beyond and deserves all the credit she gets and more for the work that she’s doing.

Across six songs, Shawnee Kish (the EP) is a fantastic listen from front to back, and we recommend that you hit play on the stream now to hear it for yourself.

And stay tuned, because like she said, “this is just the beginning.”

Shawnee Kish EP Tracklist

1. Light Me Up
2. Love or Lose It
3. Diagnosed Dissociative
4. I Left, but I Never Lied
5. Got It Bad
6. Burnin Love (ft. Jamie Fine)

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Joshua Murray

creator of content, daddy blogger, writer, coffee drinker, fan of the Batman. proud mo bro. prouder dad.