Monday Convocation | Frank Waln

March 3, 2017

Frank Waln performed rap songs inspired by his Native American experience for the community on 2/20. (©Ashleigh Mower for Cate School)

“Be proud of who you are and where you came from,” admonished musician, rapper, and poet Frank Waln in a Convocation visit to Cate on February 20. Waln, who was born and raised on the Rosebud Lakota Reservation in South Dakota, explained to the audience, “I take my culture with me wherever I go.” so he can raise awareness about history of Native Americans, who covered the Americas long before it was settled by Westerners, a point he emphasized throughout his performance.

Waln told the story of a galvanizing moment for him: while studying in college, he rode in an elevator with a fellow student who observed his brown skin. The student asked him “What are you?” When Waln answered that he was a Native American, the student replied, “I didn’t know any of you guys were still alive – I thought you were extinct.”

At the time, Waln was a Gates Millennium Scholar on a medical school track, but this encounter, along with others, prodded him to reexamine his goals. He developed an interest in performing and production and used his skills to tell stories of the Native American experience. Waln was blunt – he called the atrocities and discrimination against his people “a genocide,” noting that he, his family, and other survivors need to educate people about their culture and their history.

Using the example of Tiger Lily, the daughter of a native chief in the Disney movie Peter Pan, Waln posited that most children learn about Native Americans through a cartoonish lens, and that he aims to challenge the stereotypes those images perpetuate. “They are getting their stories from non-native people,” he explained. “It took me a long time to figure that out.”

Waln performed his song, “7”– its lyrics bold and direct.

Let us ride on the lands where our ancestors died
Breathing life into our cultures they said were petrified
They tell a history that our peoples don’t recognize
The US government should be charged with genocide

Spitting rhymes in a time of blood quantum and suicide
We survived staying strong all those times we should’ve died
I confess, I’m depressed
Sometimes I can’t take the stress
Living is a test, distressed up in the wild west

My fam suffers
The land suffers
I hate the silence
I hate statistics
I hate the prisons
I hate the violence

I hate these politicians making the wrong decisions
I hate these men that inflict this violence upon our women
They hate to see us rise
We’re on their TVs man
Remind these settlers that they’re up on treaty land
I did this with my music
A CD in my hand
A microphone in the other now watch me take a stand

As Waln continues to take his stand on stages across the country, he urges change through song. “Listen with an open heart – music is the way,”