My Spirit Animal Ate Your Spirit Animal, new material today from those American historians known as Dead Pioneers, the first sounds since that fighting first album, one of the very best albums of last year, I think we’ll just let their words do all the talking or challenging or the telling it how it is… The new album is to be called Post American

Gregg Deal says of the single:
 
“In a world chock full of both macro- and microaggressions, the overarching concept of cultural appropriation is frequently overlooked, lost in the systemic consumption and theft of culture, wares, and even religious or spiritual practices. Appropriation is frequently done in the so-called spirit of “honor” or “inspired by,” with no restitution for the Indigenous people these things are frequently taken from. 
 
The song’s title highlights and demeans the concept and use of “spirit animals” carelessly taken from Native communities. Their use is rooted in stereotype and racism. Jabbing at it in the title serves to draw you in—the song will eventually take you out.
 
“My Spirit Animal Ate Your Spirit Animal” is scathing, funny, and, above all, honest. It covers ground, from the assertion that taking anything from Native culture without permission is thievery, to observing that one of our great Indigenous actors, Lily Gladstone, was robbed of the Best Actress Award at the 2024 Oscars. The sentiments throughout the song are a big middle finger to the dismissiveness of Native issues like existence, representation, and the continued thriving—and surviving!—of our living and breathing culture.

There is a lot that informs the content of “Spirit Animal”. Cultural references, of course, but the social and political reference is in place. Additionally, there are some musical influences throughout, but lyrically? There is a nice little Idles reference in there. I’ve been obsessively listening to Idles for the last 5 years. Idles is one of those bands that gives me hope for the future of music. How could I not nod in their direction?
 
That you can somehow “be us”—while actively ignoring your privilege, the problematic aspects of your consumption of our culture, likeness, and overall existence—is an incorrect assumption. Strange that this needs to be said out loud, but pretending to be an Indigenous person of a colonized land isn’t okay. Colonialism coming full circle is marginalized communities that managed to survive a settler colonial American Genocide only to have their identities co-opted by the very forces (or their descendants) that nearly eliminated them.
 
This is the first single for our imminent LP PO$T AMERICAN—it was an easy choice. Our writing and recording sessions tend to go quick, in general. “My Spirit Animal Ate Your Spirit Animal” is no different. It came together in a day. It’s always nice when that happens. But some songs, in addition to emerging with alacrity, foster a spirit of electric anticipation as well. This is one of those songs. You can sometimes tell when you’ve got a banger on your hands—something catchy, rocking, and thoughtful. You might not think the topic of cultural appropriation screams first single material, but we think it does. It’s a commentary on representation, equality, injustice, murder, consumption, class war, historical malfeasance, identity assertion, and colonial oppression.
 
That’s a perfect place for our new record to start.”
 
Gregg Deal is an artist and activist and a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. Much of his work includes exhaustive critiques of American colonialism, society, politics, popular culture and history. With this work – including paintings, murals and performance art – Deal critically examines issues within Indian country such as decolonisation, stereotype and appropriation. He has exhibited his work at cultural centres nationally and internationally, including the Smithsonian Institution and the Venice Biennale. After living in the Washington DC area for 17 years, Deal moved his family to Colorado, coinciding with his time as Native Arts Artist-In-Residence at the Denver Art Museum.

Bandcamp / Website

Spirit animal
You sound obscene
Spirit cannibal
Remain unseen
A stolen home on stolen land
A foundation built on sand
He hates me
I like that
Take up your keyboard combat
I shout
You shout back
Big hands give you a big ole smack

Fighting a man with nothing to lose
Fighting a man who misconstrues

History known
History unknown
Robbing us
Like Lily Gladstone
Christian heathens
Christian demons
Take take take
Take some more
We are at war
Consumption city
We die in committees
Apologise before you say please
Pride cuts you at the knees

Fighting a man with nothing to lose
Fighting a man who misconstrues

You know who you are
Culture vultures
You fake ass Indians
Trying to benefit off our cultural wares
Ceremonies
Burning sage
Benevolent cultural appropriation
Honour by stealing?
New Age Settler Colonial thievery
Get your own culture

Spirit Animal
You’re not that slick
Spirit cannibal
A settler prick
A stolen home on stolen land
A foundation built on sand

Burning sage because you think we do
Thinking you just had a breakthrough
Your gain shouldn’t be my loss
Your gain shouldn’t be my cost

Fighting a man with nothing to lose
Fighting a man who misconstrues

Previously on these pages –

Rooted in the Punk aesthetic, Dead Pioneers are not afraid to tackle hard political and social issues, they’re fuelled with dark irony, a justified rage, spoken word and a good dose of classic US hardcore punk…

ORGAN: Our best 43 albums of a very musically busy 2023. Who did we rate?

ORGAN: The New Years Eve Organ radio show on Resonance FM, the playlist, the links and the details and if you missed it then listen back to the show here…