Culture A-List
Resilience Reimagined
Violinist Geneviève Salamone honors her heritage through her own work and the other Indigenous artists she brings through her studio.
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BY LILY DETAEYE
n the front room of her West Des Moines home, violinist and composer Geneviève Salamone writes, produces, records, mixes and masters original music. And while the space looks almost like an ordinary front room, it’s far from it. The space has been fitted by Salamone and her husband with soundproofing drywall. There are microphones and acoustic panels lining the walls. There are no stray instruments, but Salamone assures me she can do almost everything she needs to with her violin and an impressive MIDI keyboard. And although it’s small, it’s easy to tell that some seriously cool stuff happens here. This room, and some could argue Salamone herself, is Wendat Records. The studio’s name comes from Salamone’s Indigenous heritage, just one of the many things she works to reclaim with her compositions. “So the word Huron is actually derived from what Europeans called us. That’s not actually what we call ourselves. We call ourselves the Wendat,” Salamone says. “(Huron) actually translates to brute or ruffian. It’s actually really offensive.” Beyond the name of the studio, Salamone incorporates her Wendat roots into her own original music. After receiving an Iowa Arts Council Resilience Grant last year, Salamone has taken on a massive project to create art around her Indigenous roots in the forms of music videos, social media awareness content and original compositions. “It really speaks to me to use my platform to raise awareness on
important issues. Particularly the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women Movement,” Salamone says. “But also the Indian residential schools.” Headlines of unmarked graves encasing the bodies of Indigenous children at Canadian and U.S. Indian residential schools went viral in the fall of 2021, bringing to the mainstream what folks like Salamone had long been aware of. Obviously, mistreatment of Indigenous peoples at residential schools had been an issue long, long before. And got much closer to home than most Iowans would like to believe. “There was one only an hour away from here in Tama. An hour away,” Salamone says. “Essentially, kids were forced from their homes, and their heads were shaven, and their skin was bleached. They were forced to be white. My own family went to them in Canada. But what’s crazy is we’ve all known that there were massive death rates at these schools because of malnutrition. And just so many other issues, mostly because the church was getting paid for the amount of kids they had. So they had too many kids. It was basically just a prison for these kids. And lots of kids died. And they never reported the deaths. Their bodies were thrown into mass graves.” One of the centerpieces of her grant project is a composition entitled “Les Petits Mocs,” a tribute to the children who lost their lives at residential schools. “Les Petits Mocs means the little moccasins,” Salamone says. “(The
32 May 2022 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LVDSM2
A Night of Resilience with Geneviève Salamone, xBk Live, Saturday, May 21, 7 p.m., $20
Above: Photos from Jester Park, taken for the “Les Petits Mocs” video. Genevieve Salamone; moccasins representing Indigenous children who lost their lives in the Indian residential school program. Jenni Machir Below: Salamone wears a cape designed by Sky-Eagle Collection. Red is symbolic, said to be a color the spirits can see, and has become the color of the MMIW movement, so that the spirits can find their way home again. Jovisuals
piece) is supposed to follow baby moccasins because they were finding bodies of 3-year-olds in this grave. So that really puts it into perspective. Like, these kids walked in the snow barefoot sometimes to
escape these places, you know?” According to The Washington Post, the last Canadian Residential School closed in the 1990s. “Les Petits Mocs” will be featured at an event celebrating
