You always hear about musicians paying their dues. You could say Willie Mitchell paid his a long time ago. Willie, the well-known Algonquin musician and song-writer who lives in Mistissini, remembers the time he was shot by the police for stealing two spotlights.
He had just started his first band at age 15. It was a Thursday night and his bandmates said the lights would look good on stage. They stole the lights and when the police drove by Willie was carrying them. The police stopped near his friends, Willie dropped the lights and ran towards the bush.
As he was running, a police officer got out of the car and shot at him twice. Willie jumped over the snowbank into knee-high snow and started plowing through. The police officer stopped at the snowbank and shot again. Willie was hit in the back of the head. The bullet exited the left cheek of his face. Willie fell and the cop came up to him. Willie remembers thinking that the cop was going to shoot him again.
He got up without police assistance and walked toward some houses. He used his finger to plug the hole in his cheek where the bullet had exited. He rang a doorbell and asked for an ambulance. He passed out twice only to wake up with a priest giving him last rites. He pushed the priest away and was med’evaced to Ottawa where he spent a month recovering.
Willie wrote the song “Big Policeman” while in the hospital. It’s on his latest album as it is the 30th anniversary of the shooting. The album, entitled Ceremonies, is Willie’s third. It was recorded in October 1998.
After the shooting, Willie sued the police force for $175,000, but had to settle for $2,500. He spent $500 on his first guitar and gave the rest of the money to his mother. Today he still has that guitar. “It’s in fine shape,” says Willie. This was the first time in Canada that an Indian had ever brought a civil suit against the police.
Well, now that you have an idea how Willie paid his dues, listen to the results on his latest album. Remakes of old favourites like “Birchbark Letter” and “Call of the Moose” will surprise and delight you. Call of the Moose is definitely upbeat – a song of Aboriginal survival and protest made stronger and rougher. You have to listen to the guitar in this one.
“Ceremonies,” the title track, refers to the Cree walking out ceremony in the beginning. It goes on to talk about life, the land and all the ceremonies that connect us to them – a plaintive cry to remember our past and to look to the future and the use they have in it.
Something a lot of Native people will connect to in a big way.
You have to wonder why he hasn’t been signed by a major label yet. This album is a strong offering for any artist. Definitely worth checking out.
If you can’t find Ceremonies in a store near, you just write: Willie Mitchell, General Delivery, Mistissini, Quebec, G0W 1C0.