OMBIIGIZI reflect on the healing power of the Polaris Prize-nominated ‘Sewn Back Together’

When Daniel Monkman was young, his father would boast that he and his son had the same hands, down to the thumbs and pinkies, “like we’re the same person.”

As a songwriter, this memory helped Monkman relate to his father, a survivor of the Canadian residential school system. Though Monkman himself did not attend a residential school, he too faced racism and neglect as an Indigenous student at a rural school in Manitoba.

This shared experience forms the basis for “Ogiin” (an Ojibwe word for “mother”), a moving highlight from “Sewn Back Together”: the debut collaborative album from Monkman and fellow Anishnaabe musician Adam Sturgeon, who record under the name OMBIIGIZI.

“Taken like the flower/Ruins crumble over/And I miss my brother,” Monkman sings, adopting the perspective of his father as a child. “And my mother,” he repeats as the song swells into a crescendo of hazy guitars and thundering drums.

“Those kids were expected to grow up so quickly in the schools,” Monkman said in a phone interview this month. “But at the end of the day, they were just children who needed to be with their family in order to have a fighting chance at this life.”

“Just love,” Sturgeon added, his voice wavering slightly.

Of the 10 albums on the short list for this year’s Polaris Music Prize — a $50,000 award that recognizes the best full-length Canadian album based on artistic merit — none pack an emotional punch like “Sewn Back Together.”

Released in February and featuring production from Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew, “Sewn Back Together” is a sonic blend of post-rock, shoegaze and alternative — an earthy and slightly psychedelic sound that recalls other recent releases from Indigenous artists like Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and nêhiyawak.

But despite their occasionally heavy subject matter — racism, alienation, colonial violence and intergenerational trauma — these songs are uplifting, and warmly wrapped in hope and optimism. Indeed, as its title suggests, “Sewn Back Together” is not an account of suffering, but an expression of healing.

“A big part of (the project) was to create a positive feeling around our healing and pain, to look forward and take steps and strides in our sobriety, in our fight on the ice and off the ice, so to speak,” explained Sturgeon.

“And then sometimes you just want to make a rock song, to let it fly and forget for a minute.”

Monkman and Sturgeon are both Anishnaabe, but their personal experiences and family histories differ significantly.

Monkman was born and raised in Selkirk, Manitoba, a small prison town near Winnipeg that he has described as “one of the roughest places.” Like many others in his community, he turned to drugs and alcohol as a mechanism to cope with racism and poverty.

“(Selkirk) was just devastated by the opioid crisis,” he said. “Every other month I hear about a relative of mine overdosing or someone I know from my community who has passed on.”

Monkman records as a solo artist under the moniker Zoon and describes his music as “moccasin-gaze”: a sub-genre of music that combines the reverb-drenched guitars of shoegaze with traditional Indigenous music. Monkman details his personal journey from substance dependency to recovery on the extraordinary album “Bleached Wavves,” which made the Polaris short list in 2021.

In June, Zoon released “Big Pharma,” an EP that explores the role of pharmaceutical companies in the ongoing overdose crisis, and features contributions from Betasamosake Simpson, Cadence Weapon and others.

Sturgeon, on the other hand, hails from Erin, a small town in southern Ontario. Like his father, who had a brief career in the NHL, Sturgeon played competitive hockey, making it as far as the OHL before suffering a “terrible arm injury.”

In 2009, Sturgeon formed the band Status/Non-Status (formerly WHOOP-szo). In 2019, the group released the critically acclaimed (and Polaris longlisted) “Warrior Down,” a crunchy and politically charged folk rock album that drew inspiration from Sturgeon’s grandfather, a residential school survivor who had a career in the military.

Sturgeon does not hold Indian status and has described himself as “white passing.” Themes of alienation loom over much of his music.

“I wasn’t always sure what my place would be in my community,” said Sturgeon, whose upcoming album with Status/Non-Status — titled “Surely Travel” — arrives on Sept. 23.

“How do I look in the mirror and see someone that is Indigenous when so often we’ve had the image of the stoic Indian in our hearts? How do I do it when our blood quantum is taken down? My son is even less blood quantum than I am,” he said.

“But I think about my father’s experience as a military child and I think of my grandfather, who had to protect and deny his culture as an Indigenous person. That is the Indigenous experience of my family. That is what Indigeneity is to me.”

Monkman and Sturgeon have long admired each other’s music but never found time to collaborate until the pandemic, which created “a little bit of extra breathing room.”

“We’re always looking to expand our horizons,” Monkman said. “(Working together) gives us a chance to take a step back from our other projects, where we kind of maybe get caught up in our own heads.”

OMBIIGIZI — an Ojibwe word that means “he/she/they are noisy” — offered a space where Monkman and Sturgeon could use music and storytelling to find belonging in their shared, but particularly expressed Indigeneity.

On the breezy and nostalgic opener “Cherry Coke,” Monkman reflects on childhood memories of travelling between small towns and “the rez.”

“Birch bark canoe merges onto the freeway,” Sturgeon sings on “Residential Military,” a track that wrestles with the challenge of reconciling Anishnaabe traditions with Canada’s modern settler society.

“Daniel always says that it’s easier to lift heavy things together,” Sturgeon said. “I like to think of myself as a single spoke in the wheel of stories. His story is a little different than mine, but together we understand and share with one another … that’s what the future is.”

On “Spirit In Me,” the album’s cathartic centrepiece and thesis, OMBIIGIZI frame their healing journey as a radical act of Anishnaabe resurgence and of resistance to the ongoing effects of colonialism.

“As someone born in Indian Country under a colonial state, I feel like just being alive right now is an act of resistance,” Monkman said. “Music just helps us to deliver that message a little bit more clearly. Because when I didn’t have music, I feel like I didn’t have a voice.”

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