Indigenous Peoples' Day with Jeremy Dutcher at YBGFestival

Join us in celebration of San Francisco Indigenous Peoples Day with a magnificent profusion of Native American art, music and vendors. The event highlights the vastly diverse and talented community of Indigenous artists in the Bay Area, California and the Americas. Presented on Yelamu, Ramaytush Ohlone Territory, in partnership with the International Indian Treaty Council, the program at Yerba Buena Gardens follows the Annual Indigenous Peoples Day Sunrise Gathering on Alcatraz - please check the IITC website for updates. Schedule to be announced.

A groundbreaking Indigenous musician whose art flows directly out of his cultural activism, tenor Jeremy Dutcher is a conservatory-trained Canadian composer, musicologist and performer who has turned European classical music into a vehicle for language preservation. A member of Neqotkuk First Nation in Eastern Canada now based in Montréal, Québec, Dutcher catapulted to renown with his debut album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, which won the 2018 Polaris Music Prize and the Juno Award for Indigenous Music Album of the Year at the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys in 2019. The project unearthed century-old archival recordings of his ancestors, which he turned into collaborative compositions on piano. Sung entirely in Wolastoqey, his endangered mother tongue, the album led to collaborations with artists such as Yo-Yo Ma and Feist. His follow-up release, 2023’s Motewolonuwok, was also awarded the Polaris Music Prize, making Dutcher the first ever two-time winner. Unapologetically playful in its incorporation of classical and jazz influences, full of reverence for the traditional songs of his home, and thrumming with the urgency of modern-day resistance, Dutcher’s music has given him a platform to discuss his perspectives on queerness, Indigeneity, language revitalization and fashion.

Funded in part by:

National Endowment for the Arts

The Svane Family Foundation