Waa Nish Kaan (Wake Up) Thunder Bay! 

Wake the Giant Music Festival is just around the corner, and the organizing students at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High school want you to know all about it. DFC students have partnered with CBC Thunder Bay to share insights into the origin and planning of Wake the Giant in a new audio series called Waa Nish Kaan, an Oji-Cree term that translates to “Wake up.”

Wake the Giant is one of the most popular annual music events in Thunder Bay, but it is also so much more than a music festival, which is something the organizing students at DFC want everyone to realize, “Wake the Giant isn’t just a music festival, it’s also an event that is meant to raise awareness.” It’s meant to make Thunder Bay a more inclusive space, it serves as a way to bring awareness to the Indigenous students who must travel to Thunder Bay from their remote communities to complete their high school education.

This podcast is a series of interviews with individuals connected to the Wake the Giant Music Festival, including the co-headliner X Ambassadors. It shares stories about the Wake the Giant movement, and offers students at DFC a valuable opportunity to have their voices heard. While the series starts with all things Wake the Giant, it will “continue as a space for future stories about the student experiences in Thunder Bay,” shares DFC student and series contributor Derek Monias.

 “The project let us show our love for our school, the Wake the Giant Movement, our friends and families, as well as the Indigenous communities that we come from. Waa Nish Kaan gives us the opportunity to show our creativity and talents and the appreciation we have for art and culture,” Monias as well as the other seven students that made this podcast possible are hopeful everyone, from their families up north to all Thunder Bay residents, will listen. 

The first episode aired Wednesday, May 10th on CBC’s Superior Morning, and you can hear a new episode each Wednesday that follows. You can listen on CBC Radio One broadcasting at 88.3FM or find the first 5 episodes of the show on demand on CBC Listen. https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-1389-waa-nish-kaan-wake-up 

Wake the Giant is happening this year on September 17th, and is headlined by X Ambassadors, Deadmau5, and Ruby Walters. Tickets and more information is available online at https://wakethegiant.ca/