Jeremy Dutcher

An Indigenous artist of many disciplines, Jeremy Dutcher works as a singer, composer, ethnomusicologist, and activist, fusing the songs and stories of his own community with jazz, pop, and neo-classical elements. His first full-length release, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, captured the Polaris Music Prize in 2018, while his second album, Motewolonuwok, arrived in 2024.

Dutcher identifies as two-spirit, a contemporary expression of gender fluidity embraced by Indigenous North American communities. A Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) member of the Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, he did not acquire Wolastoqey during childhood, a language now spoken by fewer than 500 people. After relocating to Toronto to build a music career, the classically trained tenor devoted himself to recovering the language and traditions of his heritage. The outcome was Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, recorded entirely in Wolastoqey and pairing ancestral material with the Western classical training he received as an operatic tenor at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. The album earned him both a Juno Award and the 2018 Polaris Music Prize. For the follow-up, Dutcher returned to the same early-twentieth-century wax-cylinder recordings housed at the Canadian Museum of History that had shaped his debut, this time incorporating English-language songs as well. Motewolonuwok was issued in 2024.