SEATTLE — Inside Seattle's Discovery Park, voices that were once silenced are now being heard around the world.
"The goal of this station is to indigenize the airwaves. And we are Daybreak Star Radio," said Sherry Steele, station manager for Daybreak Star Radio. "The station was created in the first place specifically to give a voice to Native American musical artists."
Steele added, "People are often surprised by the different varieties and styles of Native American music. They're surprised that for instance, Native Americans do metal. They're also surprised that natives do Jazz. There's a surprise that Natives do hip hop, which always surprises me because Hip Hop is storytelling and that's what Native Americans do."
One of the station's on-air personalities is DJ Big Rez.
"I've been a DJ for years, kind of a mobile DJ doing gigs and concerts and basically almost anything when it comes to DJing really," said Big Rez. "To have a chance to highlight indigenous people, you know that was one of the biggest things that I wanted to do or heard but I got I tried to do throughout my career being indigenous, pushing them into the radio stations and I worked out now just to have a whole radio station focused on it. It was it was a full like I just dove in cannonball into it."
The feedback Big Rez gets about the station and the artist it plays is overwhelmingly positive.
"After a show, I've had so many people like 'holy cow, who is that artist? Where's that from?' And you know, and it's cool to be able to be on such a big platform now and being highlighted, you know, getting interviews, things like that to showcase what we can really do," said Big Rez. "It's just music, but it's an art form. I've learned it's an energy. It's important to just highlight these people, you know, it's their art, it's their story."
And with Daybreak Star Radio providing the platform for Native American music, those stories will continue to be heard.
"It's emotional, you know? And it's crazy to be here to show everyone, you know, we can do it we can get it," said Big Rez. "I said I'm from Lummi nobody knows that, I do, I'm trying to show the world and this place gave it to me."
You can listen to Daybreak Star Radio on their App or their web page.
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