Jaida Grey Eagle (Oglala Lakota) is a St. Paul-based photojournalist, writer, producer, beadwork artist, and lifelong music fan. Some of her favorite music is part of The Current's Indigenous Peoples Day Playlist. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, The Intercept, Minnesota Public Radio, and Sahan Journal. She is co-curating an upcoming exhibition on Indigenous photography at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. (Official website, Instagram)

Music represents wildly different parts of my life. There's ceremony music, but also when I was a teenager, I used to drive to Denver with my friends to go see punk shows. It's kind of all over the place. For photo-editing sessions, I move between super upbeat pop music and classical, but this playlist is more autobiographical.

These songs are both a representation of my Indigenous community but also my own relationship with music. Here are a few stories behind these picks:

Rage Against the Machine - “People of the Sun”

When I was a little kid, I saw the music video for this song. It talks about my tribe, my people, and some of our story about our history. It was the first time I've ever seen us represented on national TV in a real way. In a way that resonates. I thought it was really interesting that it was a Rage Against the Machine song that finally showed that to me as a child. The stories being told at home were also being told on TV, in a music video.

Joseph Running Crane - “Imitaa”

I was a First Peoples Fund fellow in 2018, and Joseph was a fellow in 2019. We all got to meet in 2019 in Phoenix, Arizona. They brought us all together to learn with each other and attend workshops. As part of introductions, we had to speak about ourselves in front of the group for three minutes, and I hated every second of talking about myself. Joseph brought his guitar with him, and instead of talking about what he does as an artist for three minutes, he sang this song. It really broke the tension in the room. It was so beautiful. It was something really calming that was needed in that moment of being really shy and not being familiar with the surroundings. I feel really privileged to have been in the room while he was singing for a small group of people. I listen to this song all the time.

Tanya Tagaq - "Tongue"

She's a throat singer, a writer, and an artist. I got to see her when I was a student down in Santa Fe, and it was the most intense show I've ever seen in my entire life.

Tufawon - “Cinnamon”

I really love this song. It reminds me of hip-hop I was listening to in the early 2010s. I particularly love this song because he collaborated with the Dakota artist Marlena Myles, who animated the music video. Both of them are just so beautiful and inspiring. The song is colorful and I love that Marlena really brought that out in the music video, too.

“The Four Directions Song”

For a long time, whenever I would hear Native drums or Native singing, I always felt like I wanted to cry. I didn't really understand why. I asked my mom about it, and she said, “That's your blood memory. That's you remembering the time when we couldn't sing these ceremony songs.” It was before I was born, but it wasn't that long ago. So, whenever I do hear those songs, it just feels really good. It feels like a big accomplishment for all of us all of the time.

Also, there is like one song that I really wish was on Spotify, but they haven't even like dropped their album yet. There's a band from my tribe, they're called the Wake Singers. And they have this new song out and it's called "Plastic Figurines." They just went on Instagram Live, and they sang it. And it's such a good song. I keep coming back to it.