ifitbeyourwill Podcast #179 • Evan Redsky

Evan Redsky grew up on Mississaugi First Nation, on the north shore of Lake Huron, between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury — a small community of maybe 500 people, and a history much larger than that. Four generations of his family attended the Cecilia Jeffrey Residential School. His great-grandfather James was the last elder to hold their community's birch bark scrolls before they were dispossessed by the Glenbow Museum. Redsky carries that lineage into everything: the punk fury of Indian Giver, and the quieter, harder work of his solo music — Canadiana-rooted folk that sits closer to Neil Young than Nashville, and closer to truth than either. His 2024 album The Language of Fishermen and the recent single "Red Dress," drawn from losses he witnessed working at a Toronto First Nations youth centre, are artifacts in the fullest sense — stories left behind for the next generation to find.