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Folk/Singer-Songwriter

Sierra Spirit Interview: Paving a Way for the Next Generation of Native Kids

Sierra Spirit draws on life experiences growing up Native in Oklahoma and is helping to pave a way for the next generation of Native Kids.

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Sierra Spirit on Jan 24, 2025, photo by Kaitlin Prince
Sierra Spirit on Jan 24, 2025, photo by Kaitlin Prince

Sierra Spirit Kihega, better known as Sierra Spirit, is a Native American singer and songwriter from Oklahoma. Having just released her first EP this past October, coin toss, Sierra is now on tour opening for British musician David Gray.

We had the opportunity to speak with Sierra in Boston before the tour’s opening night to discuss her EP, touring with Gray, and more.

Thank you so much for taking the time to sit down and chat with us for a bit. For those reading who aren’t familiar with your name, what are three words you would use to describe yourself and your music?

Sierra Spirit: “I’d say folky, Americana, and very story-driven.”

I love that! So your EP Cointoss came out this past October, I’m curious to know how you decided on that for the name.

“I had a friend in college actually, who anytime they would find a face-down penny, they would flip it and leave it for the next person. I thought that was really such a minute but funny change of fate. Like kind of just leaving that for the next person and leaving that little kind of memento. And just a matter of my first released music ever was in February of last year. And so it’s just such a crazy toss-up of things that got me here. It felt very calculated, but also very up to chance and so it just felt like it was fitting.”

All of your songs on Cointoss are beautiful but one in particular that really resonated with me is “I’ll be waiting (pug)” that’s about your grandmother. How would you say she influenced your life?

“So a huge part of indigenous culture is storytelling, and she was just such an incredible storyteller, and you would really just hang on every word. It could be nothing at all, it could be like this crazy kind of grandeur story, and she just had this way of drawing people in, and that is always something that I had wanted to do. I had always kind of been a writer, and storytelling is such a cultural thing, and finding my way through that with music felt like a really cool way to follow in her footsteps in my own way. She loved music and a huge part of what we would do together was drive and listen to music.”

That’s so special, thank you for sharing. And you have a new song coming out called “American Pie.” I saw on a recent TikTok that you described the song as “America is My Frienemy.” Can you elaborate more on that and give us a preview of what the song is going to be about?

“It’s just like such a strange and interesting time that we are in right now, and every day there’s just something new. But yet everybody still just kind of wants their own, like, little piece of the American dream, as messed up as it still is. Every day, it’s so back and forth, and it’s such a kind of love and hate thing, like you appreciate the quality of life that you’re allowed, but watching this kind of dystopian stuff happen every day is like a strange offset.”

Yeah, that’s very accurate to how a lot of us are feeling right now. So when does the song come out?

“That will come out the day of our New York show, which is January 28th!”

Speaking of tour, this is the first night of your tour opening for David Gray. How are you feeling right now, and what are your hopes and goals for this tour with him?

“I’m so excited! It’s cool, I’ve never been in any of the venues that we are playing on this tour, so walking in today, it was definitely super cool. When I was growing up, there wasn’t much depiction of native people when it came to pop culture and music, and being able to show people just like a present and honest visual of what a current Native American person is, is a really cool experience.”

Yeah, I think that’s really important. I feel like so many people think of Native Americans as the past and not the present, people forget that Native people are still here and existing.

“Yeah, like the only depictions that you would see growing up were old westerns, and that was really kind of the extent of it.”

Ok, final question. Now that you’ve moved from Oklahoma to Connecticut, and you released your first EP and are now on tour if you could go back and give advice to your younger self, what would you want to tell her?

“It would be that I spent so much time just waiting and hoping for that opening and that space to be made and I should have started then making that space for myself. Because I think through writing music and kind of going through it and earning my spot, I’ve realized that that’s something that is really important for the next generation of Native kids. Like that is something that I wanted to see so badly. I would just tell myself to push harder.”

Hi, I’m Kaitlin! I’m an editorial and commercial photographer based out of Boston, MA. I love creating and photographing all different types of subjects. Music wise I listen to pretty much anything and my favorite thing is finding a new band or musician to obsess over.

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