Please join us for a special night of Poetry  to protect the Peace River and raise funds for the Treaty 8 legal challenge!

In solidarity with the Justice for the Peace Caravan who will be arriving in Ottawa (Haudenosaunee territories), we’re hosting a powerful group of artists and poets who will be sharing their voices & stories.

The evening takes place at Cafe Deux Soleil on Commercial Drive. Doors open 6 pm (entry by donation) and show starts around 7:30 pm. Come have dinner and check out the silent auction! Donations to RAVEN Trust are tax deductible. If you can’t make it but want to show your support please donate online here:

https://fundraise.raventrust.com/events/campaign-join-circle-no-site-c/e49121

Artists and speakers include:

Rick Buckman Coe performs uplifting and conscious music for the people. His recent release Malama Ka ’Aina (pr: Ma-LA-ma kah-AY-nuh) – a Hawaiian phrase meaning to respect the land and live in harmony – is a gorgeous and downright infectious manifestation of the artist’s spiritual nature and passion for social justice. Buckman Coe and his band’s lively performances have established them as festival favourites along the Pacific Northwest and Internationally.

Jerilynn Webster, aka JB the First Lady, is a member of the Nuxalk & Onondaga Nations. She is a Vancouver-based female hip hop/spoken word artist, beat-boxer, cultural dancer and youth educator. “using [her] words to go upwards/not backwards.” These are lyrics that describe what JB tries to convey in her music. JB has performed at over 500 hip hop shows, anywhere from auditoriums to Annual General Meetings for community organizations. She is spreading the words of empowerment & the perspective of urban indigenous women in Canada. Hip Hop is her chosen avenue of expression. JB’s music is lyrically motivated with depth, meaning, and positivity like none other. She has released 4 albums to date, “Indigenous Love” (2008); “Get Ready, Get Steady” (2011) and “Indigenous Girl Lifestyle” (2014) and the 2015 IMA winning album “Indigenized by Entertribal” in collaboration with Chief Rock.

JB is the 2015 winner of the Indigenous Music Award for Best Album Cover. She is a 5-time nominated artist at the Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Awards, the only female to ever be nominated for Best Hip Hop Album (twice), and has been nominated previously for Best Pop Album & Best Album Cover.
JB wants young indigenous women to feel proud, inspired, and to see someone on stage that looks like them; representing indigenous women in mainstream media.

Valeen is a young poet and motivational speaker from the Nuu-chah-nulth and Kwakwaka’wakw nations. She has been writing and performing poetry since February 2015 with the purpose of healing as well as delivering a message of decolonial love and resistance. Valeen delivers poems about community, identity, struggle and revolutionary love with the hope of bringing her words to life every day. Valeen’s first chapbook ʔiihmisic was released in May 2016 and will soon be used in the curriculum at Emily Carr University.

Crystal Smith is Tsimshian, Haisla and was adopted into the Heilsuk Nation. She now lives upon the Unceded Coast Salish Territory. As a proud mother of two beautiful children, Crystal is taking it upon herself to fight for their future and writing poetry is one of her weapons. Crystal often writes about the lived oppression of Indigenous people and more importantly the will and skill to survive daily attempts of assimilation and colonialism.

Kim Villagante, also known as K!mmortal, is an artistic force to be reckoned with. As an artist of lines and rhymes, as well as an arts-based community organizer, Kim fuses her phenomenal artistic talents (as a visual-artist, singer-songwriter, rap-poet-lyricist, and actor) with her passion for queer and anti-racist activism. In 2013, Kim’s debut acting role in hip hop theatre production “Sal Capone: The Lamentable Tragedy Of” landed her a nomination in Montreal English Theatre Awards as “Outstanding Supporting Actress”. In 2014, she released her debut album, “Sincerity” and represented Vancouver as the only Filipina emcee in 2015’s Canadian Music Week. Her latest acting accomplishment was playing the lead in the one-woman play “Sister Mary’s A Dyke” written by Flerida Peña and directed by Jan Derbyshire which ran during Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival in 2015. Kim was awarded the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award in Community-Engaged arts in 2013, and is also the founder of “SHE”, an annual East-Vancouver event celebrating indigenous, black, and women of colour in WORD and MUSIC (shefestvan.com). Her recent self-directed music video, “Brushing by heaven’s shoulder”, was animated, rapped and filmed by Kimmortal and was selected to be screened at San Francisco’s Queer Women of Colour Film festival 2016.

Maisaloon is a wise and sassy 19-year old Muslim woman and displaced Palestinian who speaks her truth unapologetically, and does so with a vibrantly determined smile. As an immigrant-settler on Turtle Island, she is grateful to live, learn and grow on unceded Coast Salish Territories. She’s currently an SFU student majoring in First Nations Studies. Maisaloon is part of the SFU Women’s Centre collective, and sits on the Board of Directors for SFPIRG. She’s also involved with an interfaith network called Fossil Free Faith, where she raises her Muslim voice to mobilize faith communities for climate justice. Maisaloon’s ancestors of Palestinian farmers, land defenders, and refugees are at the core of her compassionate fights for liberation. Writing poetry is a secret haven for her, but she’s honoured to express her solidarity by sharing her poetry for the first time at this event.

Sol Diana is a spoken word artist and youth facilitator of mixed Filipino and Scottish heritage. he is the co-director for the KABABAYAN Academic Youth Mentorship Program and an anti-violence educator with for SafeTeen. he was born and raised an uninvited visitor to these unceded Coast Salish lands, and is continuously navigating the responsibilities that come with that.