MY STORY.

I'll keep this real and here’s where i really come from.

When I was a kid, I never saw myself anywhere. Not in music, not in fashion, not on any stage. Nobody who looked like me, talked like me or came from where I came from.

I grew up in the inner city of Saskatoon with no father, and the people I looked up to were fighting the same battles I was. Poverty. Addiction. Gang violence. It was hard, and for a long time I didn't see a way out.

So I wrote. Music was the one place I could say what I was feeling. In those notebooks I pictured myself on stages in cities I'd never been to, somewhere far from that block.

At 19 I made it to Vancouver. It was the red road that got me here: sobriety, my culture, ceremony. They gave me back to myself.

Since then, that kid's notebook has come true. I've shared this medicine from Vancouver to Los Angeles to Japan, and in the communities that matter most to me, like Witchekan Lake First Nation and Mistawisis where my family is from.

I've also known deep grief. I lost my brothers, Nate and Lucas, and there were days that loss nearly took me with it. Ceremony carried me through. Today I do this work in their honour. I carry them with me in a good way, and I want every young person I meet to know that healing is possible, because I'm living proof.

Healing gave me the strength to continue building.

My wife Casey and I started Decolonial Clothing with our last $500 and a silk screen on our kitchen table. Today it's a full-time team, a flagship store in Vancouver, and over 30,000 orders shipped around the world. Our pieces have been seen on Netflix and worn by people like Mark Ruffalo, Emma Watson, Shad and Nat Bolt.

That's why I do what I do. I know what it's like to look around and not see a future. I show up so they can see one.