Miesha & The Spanks - "Dig Me Out"
As we would expect, the latest from Calgary's Miesha & The Spanks is a fiery, amped up version of modern garage rock. However, the song has a much deeper meaning than just being a kick ass rock song. On the YouTube description for "Dig Me Out," Miesha Louie explains:
"Last year the remains of 215 children were found at the site of the old T’kemlups Residential School. When the news came out it was everywhere fast. A lot of people in Canada didn’t know about Residential Schools because it wasn’t taught in our schools, or at least, not the truth. I remember sitting in class when they briefly came up in social studies, saying that they taught kids how to speak English, read, write, basically helped them adjust to modern society. Like most Indigenous kids I already knew the history of abuse that came with the assimilation these schools offered, designed to 'kill the Indian,' where it often succeeded. I saw it first hand reflected in the generational suffering of my family. My Grandmother survived T’kemlups Residential School, sent there after her two older sisters died at St. Eugenes, the one closer to our home. Unlike her sisters, she made it back home, shamed and pregnant. "T’kemlups was only the beginning, as more and more school sites began searching the grounds for more undocumented and unmarked graves. The numbers piled in from all across Canada, gaining more press and social media attention, until everywhere I looked, this is what I saw. Survivors and their relatives shared their stories, again, because they’ve been doing this for years while no one listened, and I read them all. I found myself in a very dark place, absorbed in my Grandmother’s story and so many like her, and it was very difficult to dig myself out. "I wrote this song to process everything I was feeling: the grief, the horror, the anger, and the helplessness."
You can watch the video for "Dig Me Out" below. The song is available as a single via Bandcamp, where all sales will be donated to the Indian Residential School Survivor Society. For more on Miesha & The Sparks, check out the band's website.
