Mali Obomsawin
From her home in Lubec, Maine, Mali Obomsawin leans forward and says, “I feel like probably a lot of artists have this answer that they feel like they're still discovering their voice, that they haven't necessarily landed on it yet. And that's definitely how I feel.”
This is a surprising statement from the woman who wrote the lyrics:
“We carry ghosts within us, in a silence, in a sickness
Greed is a cruel companion, it’s the violence we are handed
So much to be returned, stolen not earned, so much to be unlearned.”
(from “Do You Really Want the World to End, by Lula Wiles)
Mali Obomsawin is the kind of multi-disciplinarian we at Outer Voice love to talk with. A graduate of Berklee College of Music and Dartmouth, Obomsawin is a musician, citizen of the Abenaki First Nation at Odanak, writer and contributor to the Boston Globe and Smithsonian Folklife, and president and founder of the Bomazeen Land Trust.
Although she’s a lifelong musician, Obomsawin finds herself exploring somewhat new territory as a songwriter and co-writer in the trio Lula Wiles. The band, made up of Obomsawin on bass, Eleanor Buckland on guitar and fiddle, and Isa Burke on guitar and fiddle — all of them on vocals — plays a a gorgeous yet gritty brand of Americana-tinged folk.
“I have a pretty broad musical identity in terms of my influences,” she says. “I grew up playing traditional Québécois folk music at fiddle camps in Maine, and loved it a lot. I was obsessed with that kind of music and the kind of music that was coming out of New England at the time. In that sort of trad New England scene. But I also started playing improvised music at a pretty young age … started going to this jazz camp that is run by a lot of avant garde musicians out of Brooklyn.
“One of my big early influences musically was listening to Ornette Coleman and these ‘out’ dudes and women. So from there, I started playing folk music and singing songs with Ellie and Isa of Lula Wiles at fiddle camp actually growing up, and then we all ended up at Berklee. I came to songwriting last.”
“I think the kinds of songs that I write are largely based in my experience as a human and as an Indigenous person,” she says. “One of my favorite songwriters is Randy Newman. And he famously says that he can't really write love songs unless he's like playing a character. And a lot of his content is very specifically commentary on what's going on in America or the world.”
Though she may consider herself a newcomer to songwriting, Obomsawin has covered a lot of ground quickly. Smithsonian Folkways released the newest Lula Wiles album, Shame and Sedition, on May 21 of this year, and it finds the group’s already progressive voice honed razor sharp.
The title may suggest the record is a direct reaction to the madness of the 2020 election season and the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, but Obomsawin is quick to point out that the record was written well before that.
“We wrote it actually pretty early on in the pandemic,” she explains. “The narratives and themes that we're exploring on the album, a lot of those are stuff that we've been going through as a band for years with our awarenesses broadening and with interpersonal … trying to, I guess, reach common understandings of how to explain the world right now.
“You know, I think white America has a lot of trouble seeing the side of folks who are not in white America. And there have been a lot of conversations in the band for years about about that stuff. Pretty much since I got catalyzed to start really talking about Indigenous issues and white ignorance during the Standing Rock protests in 2016–17. So since then, we've been having a lot of conversations as a band and working through some shit.”
The folk and Americana scenes, while growing increasingly diverse and more intentionally inclusive, are overwhelmingly white spaces. The folk music industry in particular is historically much built on the backs of BIPOC musicians who receive attention and acclaim solely for being influences and museum exhibits.
Folk festivals are very white affairs. “I’m definitely quite used to not having other Indigenous folks at festivals,” Obomsawin says. “I've had some cognitive dissonance at Folk Alliance, because there's a pretty awesome corner of Folk Alliance that's Indigenous music oriented. And so there's a lot of Indigenous artists that show up at Folk Alliance International, and they have their own scene … But, I've had some hard experiences, seeing the strength and unity and community of Indigenous Folk Alliance, and as Lula Wiles not being able to go anywhere near it, necessarily, and touch it and be part of it as a band, because I'm the only one and our band is very much a part of the white folk system of America and Americana. And so I wouldn't necessarily want to bring my bandmates into those spaces … that’s a hard thing to really explain, but it's a real experience. It’s been difficult to see and be so hyper-aware of that segregation.”
BIPOC artists in the folk and Americana scenes often find themselves tokenized and expected to represent all BIPOC people to audiences and to journalists who don’t bother to do their research.
“I'm interested in talking about the issues, you know, but I'm interested in talking about them with people who have done a little bit of their homework,” Obomsawin says. “I'm not interested in having the really basic conversation about shit that people have the resources to read about beforehand.”
“There's a lot of stuff that I'm doing as an activist that is not really related to what's happening in the music world,” she adds. “The Land Back movement is really, really taking off across Turtle Island. And I think it's really exciting. And the central understanding behind the Land Back movement is that Indigenous peoples are the best equipped to take care of their homelands and ensure the health of ecosystems, especially when we're facing climate change. This is actually confirmed by a lot of scientific articles and publications of late. And so Indigenous sovereignty and giving land back to Indigenous peoples is the best way to fight climate change and prepare for it … We just saw the return of an island to the Passamaquoddy tribe in my territory. It’s really exciting.
“I think people aren’t really ready to talk about the United States as a settler colony. With the BLM uprisings and all the attention that's getting — and it was so needed — a lot of the liberal response is like, ‘yes, we need to be more inclusive, and we need to need to celebrate communities of color’s contributions to American culture and society.’ It's hard to take the next next step and be like, ‘America exists because Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty are trampled, and because of Indigenous genocide that is ongoing.’ You know, that's not fun to talk about.
“That's a big underlying theme of Shame and Sedition. The title itself is not at all actually in reference to January 6 … it is about sedition as a positive sedition as a healing act where the settler colony that you are either a part of or that is sitting on top of you, where you can stand up against those colonial actions and an act of empowerment and healing.”
Obomsawin’s work with the Bomazeen Land Trust is rooted in the Land Back movement, particularly for the Wabanaki homelands, which were divided by the US/Canadian border.
“The Land Trust is a proposed solution to climate resiliency preparation in the Wabanaki homelands,” Obomsawin explains. “My nation is displaced across the Canadian border. So my ancestors come from what is called Maine, traditionally, and we were displaced in the mid 1700s, to Canada. And so a big part of Bomazeen Land Trust is also trying to re-ground ourselves as a community in our ancestral homeland, and as a way to combat the really damaging effects of the border.
“We're trying to get land to rematriate for Wabanaki people in an inter-tribal way, outside of tribal government, because we want to do a grassroots effort. The United States and the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Canada Federal Indian Law has made it really difficult and complicated for tribes to get land returned to them, which is hardly surprising … But as a nonprofit, you go under the radar a little bit easier and get things done a bit quicker.”
Rematriation is a key concept with the land trust. “It's the concept of women's leadership in all things that relate to life sustaining Earth based wisdom,” she says. “Rematriation is the process by which Indigenous folks can reclaim land, and rematriate it through our traditional lifeways. We're reclaiming this land not in necessarily in ‘deed’ … but in rematriation through practicing our cultures on the land, and being able to resume our caretaking roles on the land and our relationship with it.”
With their new record out and the potential of touring arising once again, all of Lula Wiles are ready to get back to the business of playing. Shame and Sedition has a harder edge musically as well as lyrically, and they find themselves permeating the traditional folk bubble and moving deeper into the rock and Americana worlds while carrying a heavy message.
“I'm nervous that people will think that the record is just sort of preachy, like, ‘come on sheeple and wake up,’” Obomsawin says. “We do want the people to wake up. But we're really hoping that people are able to really sit with the lyrics and try to find the nuance … Shame and Sedition can be taken at face value of ‘we're just talking about, politics and Trump,’ which is absolutely not true. The media has a way of really oversimplifying things.
“I think people expect easy answers and straightforward, quippy definitions of things … The album is about questioning and looking deeper and finding those areas of nuance and those areas of ignorance and really confronting them … we're inviting people into that uncomfortable, confrontational space with themselves and with the people around them and their communities.
“Something that we're trying to present to the world is that all of these issues are completely interdependent and interrelated. And it starts with colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism — that trifecta that are of the same of the same origin. And from there, we get to police brutality, not a very far step away from colonialism and imperialism and capitalism, right? And from there, we get to poverty and … climate change, right? These are all symptoms of the same machine that turns the world on its head and sliced it in pieces and declared that white countries got everything from everywhere else. And that's still what we're facing today.
“I question whether America is ready to see those things,” she concludes. “I hope that,
for our sake, for the sake of everyone and future generations, that this the lifetime where people wake up. I hope that our album won't be relevant in the same way in 50 years.”
