According to a few commenters and a translator in another piece of coverage from another network, this singer wasn’t singing O Canada, but rather a very old Cree song that could be put to the melody of the national anthem.
In spite of the Catholic church and the Canadian government’s efforts to tear apart indigenous families with the goal of extinguishing the many indigenous languages and cultures nationwide, she sings. They failed. She will not be silenced, she rejects the shame these institutions tried to force on her and on thousands of other children, so many of whom did not survive the ordeal.
I highly recommend listening to the following two podcasts, both of which are investigations into the atrocities carried out in two different residential schools in two different provinces in Canada. Each podcast centers the stories of those who survived, in the survivors’ own voices. They both also highlight the effects of intergenerational trauma, as well as how the indigenous communities draw upon, protect, and revive their own cultures in order to continue to heal.
Stolen Season 2: Surviving St. Michael’s (investigated by Connie Walker and her team)
Kuper Island [also on Spotify] (hosted by Duncan McCue)
As a primer into how the Canadian government’s attempt at carrying out this cultural genocide culminated in the establishment of these long-running residential schools, I recommend this quick but incredibly informative read:
At the very least, we need to understand what happened, to bear witness both to the truth of the horrific abuse that occurred, along with the true beauty and complexity of the indigenous languages and cultures that have survived and now flourish despite colonial attempts to quash them.
The weight of shame and silence is not for survivors to bear.
The Cree singer gave voice to so many.
You don’t need to understand a word of Cree to understand the spirit of her message.