[ windspeaker confidential ] - Art Napoleon

Windspeaker: What one quality do you most value in a friend?
Art Napoleon: My best friends are trustworthy, dependable, loyal, funny and free of judgment. True friends are hard to stumble on.

W: What is it that really makes you mad?
A.N.: Corporate/consumer madness and the basic garden variety stupidity surrounding most corporations and consumers.

W: When are you at your happiest?
A.N.: Camping with loved ones in the real wilderness.

W: What one word best describes you when you are at your worst?
A.N.: Insane

W: What one person do you most admire and why?
A.N.: Oliver Shouting from the Blood reserve. I like his integrity, his sincerity, his faith, his giving heart and his sense of humor.

W: What is the most difficult thing you've ever had to do?
A.N.: Deal with the deaths of close friends and family members.

W: What is your greatest accomplishment?
A.N.: I think my kids are but I didn't have much to do with making them so maybe just staying alive long enough to become a sober and conscious person.

W: What one goal remains out of reach?
A.N.: To play in the NHL or fight in the UFC cha!

W: If you couldn't do what you're doing today, what would you be doing?
A.N.: I would be living part-time in a wilderness cabin. Maybe I'd get back to ceremonies and traditions and back to writing. Spend more time learning things I want to learn.

W: What is the best piece of advice you've ever received?
A.N.: There have been some doozies like 'get on with your life you wimp' or 'get out of bed you lazy bugger' but the best one this decade is "life is short and fragile so find balance between changing the world and accepting it just as it is".

W: Did you take it?
A.N.: I'll be working at this one a while. Sometimes I'm still a wimp and a lazy bugger.

W: How do you hope to be remembered?
A.N.: As an intertribal man of mystery who lived fully, left a trail of broken hearts, left a fortune for his kids and died painlessly.

Cree singer/songwriter Art Napoleon has just released a new CD called Mocikan: Songs for learning Cree language, which features sing-along songs for practicing the sounds of Cree, but anyone can enjoy the music.
His album Miyoskamin has been nominated for several Canadian Music Awards; he's definitely found an audience for his rootsy music infused with northern humour mixed with folksy wisdom. Raised to become a bushman in the northern woodlands, he may have been a trapper had the music bug not bit him. He can tell a story as well as he can sing a song and his material is both deeply spiritual and irreverent, whether he's singing about mail order brides or "dancing for the buffalo and praying for this land." Napoleon has been featured on radio and television programs including Basic Black, Dead Dog Cafe, and APTN's Cree for Kids; he is currently host of CHUM TV's The New Canoe; an Indigenous Arts, Culture and Travel show.