Artist Spotlight :: Frank Waln ::




Frank Waln
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Affiliation: Sicangu Lakota Sioux

At 25-years-old, hip hop artist Frank Waln has made quite a name for himself as the youngest person ever to win a Native American Music Award, just one of the many accolades Frank has earned. Waln hails from the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, a 1,400 square mile plot of land located about 100 miles southeast of the Badlands National Park. The Rosebud reservation is home to roughly 20,000 Sicangu (meaning “Burnt Thing”) Lakota people and was established in 1889 as part of the Great Sioux Settlement. Waln, like so many others, was raised in a single-parent household by his mother after she found Frank’s dad cheating on her.
As the story goes, one day while Frank and his mother were on a long walk, Frank spotted a reflective object in a ditch. The object turned out to be a CD, Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP. Waln had only ever been exposed to country songs and traditional Native music so when the terribly scratched CD worked and Waln heard rap for the first time, he was awe-struck. “Oh my god, it blew my mind,” Waln remembers, “He was telling my story. He was poor, having trouble with his parents… He was using music to get out the frustration and anger inside him.”
Although hip hop became an outlet of catharsis for Waln, he still prioritized academics because “everyone around me was saying be a doctor or a lawyer, so you can come back and help the community.” Waln graduated valedictorian but still was denied at Ivy League schools, some which he ironically has now been asked to perform at. But Waln did receive a Gates Millennium Scholarship which allowed him to get off the reservation for school. First Waln attended Creighton University in Omaha but realized he could make a difference with his music and transferred to Columbia College in Chicago.
In the time between Creighton and Columbia Waln recalls a memorable encounter: “I was in the gas station [on the reservation] and ran into an elder from back home. He asked what I was doing and I said: ‘Yeah, I left Creighton. I don’t want to be a doctor anymore. I want to do music.’ And he said, way back then: ‘Sometimes, music is the best medicine.’”
Frank knows firsthand the salvation music can offer, having had suicidal thoughts growing up and especially when moving away from his support system on the reservation. “I hit rock bottom my sophomore year at Creighton and I thought, ‘Why am I even here?’ Two things saved me: Pouring myself into music and turning back to ceremony.” Waln testifies that had he not been invested in thousand-year-old Lakota traditions, such as the Sundance tradition, he’d certainly have committed suicide. The same goes for music: “I was introverted and depressed,” Waln admits, “and music gave me a way to work through all of that.”On the Rosebud Reservation, depression is practically the norm, as the reservation has an unemployment rate of about 83% and one of the highest rates of suicide in the world.
In 2010, Frank formed the hip hop group Nake Nula Waun with Andre Easter, Thomas Schmidt and Kodi DeNoyer. The group name is a traditional Lakota phrase “I am always ready, at all times, for anything” that embodies a broader ‘warrior’ philosophy of evolution and progress. Waln produced and released their subsequent album, Scars and Bars, without any record company or middle man. It was important for Waln to keep his creative control, to tell the Native story accurately for the first time.
Regarding his music, Waln cannot be pigeonholed as only an ‘Indian-rapper’ but rather Waln is a rapper that is telling his personal story. Waln’s personal fstruggles may be indicative or representative of his broader community, but his words are always his own. “I like to tell stories,” Waln explains, “I’m telling my story; I’m telling my life.”
A major theme that has haunted Waln is the feeling of being invisible, a feeling that was amplified when he left the reservation for school. When Waln polled classmates on the number of federally recognized tribes, their answer was 5 to 20 (actual number is 566). “There are people who aren’t even aware that we exist in real life,” Waln says, “They go to museums and see exhibits about Native Americans and think we’re a people of the past. But we’re a people with a past, not of a past.” This has lead to what Waln calls “symbolic annihilation,” a misrepresentation of modern Native Americans. In “Hear Me Cry” Waln details this phenomenon: “I was born red, stained with the blood of genocide/ Now all mascots the only way that I'm identified/ Blackhawk, Red Skin, the image of our dead men/ Dressed in the headdress, my people it's depressing.”




            Not only does the general public shun the notion of modern Native peoples, but so too does the government try to politically undermine Native communities. Waln’s vehement opposition to the Keystone Pipeline initiative stems from the United States government’s oppression. “For me, and I think for a lot of Indigenous folks, resisting this natural energy extraction on our treaty lands is just to get [the U.S. and Canada] to honor the original treaties,” Waln explains. “How can American call itself the great country in the world if it’s guilty of genocide and it doesn’t even honor the documents that built the country?”
In his song “Oil 4 Blood,” Waln envisions the cultural tables turned: “Give youth an outlet, disadvantaged prodigies/ Feed these Republicans all our commodities/ Put them on the rez from the day they’re born/ They won’t survive ‘cause their cancer is airborne/ Put them in our schools, put them in our shoes/ Take away their money and give them our blues/ Make everything red.” These actions may seem extreme, but they are parallel to the mistreatment the government and dominant-culture Americans have bestowed upon Native peoples. Waln seeks to take back his freedom and his autonomy, asserting “To my home and my ancestors I am loyal/ Build that pipeline and I’m burning down your oil.”


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