Oshawa rock duo Crown Lands release powerful Indigenous rights song White Buffalo
Published July 8, 2021 at 1:49 pm
Juno award-winning rock duo and indigenous rights champion Crown Lands released their latest song today, the third track in an ongoing story about the plight of First Nations people in Canada and their first release since winning Breakthrough Group of the Year last month at the Junos.
White Buffalo is a powerful song about “rising up” and taking back their lands from the colonizers and was penned by Cody Bowles, the drummer and vocalist for the band who also happens to be half Mi’kmaq.
“To all my relations, White Buffalo is the third installment in a saga of songs about Indigenous rights,” Bowles said. “When colonizers came to North America they tried to wipe out the Buffalo. The Buffalo are still here. We are too, and together we’ll overcome.”
Bowles and Kevin Comeau, who plays guitar and pretty much every other instrument, got together to form Crown Lands in their home base of Oshawa in 2016 over a shared love of Rush and other prog legends. They honed their craft touring with acts like One Bad Son and Jack White, releasing several EPs along the way.
One contained the song ‘Mountain,’ which is about the horrific legacy of Residential Schools and the first track in the band’s indigenous rights story.
Crown Lands released their self-titled and critically acclaimed debut LP last year, an album that propelled them into the limelight and earned them two Juno nominations, including one for Rock Album of the Year.
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The LP contained the song ‘End of the Road,’ a track about the Highway of Tears in B.C. and the people – mostly indigenous women – who have gone missing there.
“End Of The Road is an outcry for awareness and action surrounding the colonial horrors of the missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirits that still haunt Indigenous communities today,” Bowles explained in an interview with Classic Rock. “Violence against Indigenous people is something I have witnessed first-hand throughout my life”
“It’s up to all of us to make this world a better place for future generations, and this song is a small message of hope adding to the rising wave of Indigenous resistance throughout this land.”
Crown Lands regularly use their platform and music to advocate for indigenous rights – the band’s name references crown (government-owned) lands, which some also call “stolen” lands – and, in fact, used their time at the podium at the Junos to speak out about the issue.
With touring not available since the lockdown, the duo has kept busy in the recording studio. They released an acoustic EP, Wayward Flyers Volume 1, last year, and this year they got to work with legendary Rush producer Nick Raskulinecz in Nashville.
The result was Context: Fearless Part 1 and Right Way Back, a tribute to Rush drummer Neil Peart, who died of brain cancer just before the recording sessions.
Those two songs, along with today’s release of White Buffalo and The Oracle, have Bowles feeling upbeat about the future for Crown Lands.
“These are our best songs yet,” he said. “And they’re opening the door for the future. They propel us to a whole new era of music and hint at what’s to come.”
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