Prince Albert’s Andrea Menard Wins Top Honours
- Marjorie D.L. Roden | July 25, 2023
After having taken a substantial break from the music industry, Prince Albert’s multidisciplinary performer Andrea Menard re-entered the musical scene. With a quiet roar, Menard not only performed at the second bi-annual Summer Solstice Indigenous Music Awards held in Ottawa on June 6th, but she was also nominated for Metis Artist of the Year, eventually taking the hardware home with her at the end of the night.
“I hadn’t had an album out for almost 10 years, and I sort of felt like I was not part of the industry part of music anymore,” Menard admitted. “When they called to ask if I wanted to perform on the show. I thought ‘OK, I haven’t had that in a long time’ and I thought, ‘I’m really, really loving what the Indigenous community is bringing to the industry and basically changing it from within.’ We are expressing our experiences from every walk of life. I’m in a very different place than I was 20 years ago. I gave away this album, I knew I gave this for the Métis people.”
As any honest teacher of an Indigenous language would do, Menard approached seven different Métis language keepers from Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The group of seven not only helped her write the songs in Michif, but also taught her the proper pronunciations. The title of the project is Anskoonamakew lii Shansoon, which means Giveaway Songs in Michif. The album itself is available to download for free in “The Singer” section at AndreaMenard.com
“I’m in a very different place and this album was specifically made as a giveaway as a way to honor my own talents and honor the Michif language which I don’t know. I had to go and learn, and I had to sit with Elders and Language Keepers,” Menard said.
She worked with language keepers from both Saskatchewan and Manitoba
“When it came around to being nominated for awards, I thought, well, do I really want to?” Menard recalled. “In a way, I had come to terms with being in the (musical) spotlight again. I didn’t know if I wanted to be in that industry very much anymore, for many reasons.”
For the last several years, Menard has been concentrating on both her acting career and her wellness training business. Menard explained her priorities’ focus was “nothing bad, it’s just shifted. So when I got nominated and when they called my name, I was in a very different place. I could accept it for what I had created and it was a very different experience than when I was younger.”
Her advice to others unsure of their own career path is listen to what their heart is telling them.
“We need to build the muscle of listening to our inner wisdom, to our guides, to our ancestors, to the grandmothers, whoever they call them,” she said. “When we start following our own path to our own joy, then the world opens up.”