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CMU student's vision becomes a collaborative songwriting retreat
Students, mentors, and facilitators gathered at Sandy-Saulteaux Spiritual Centre for the inaugural Music Maamwizing songwriting retreat. Over four days, participants collaborated on original songs while exploring Indigenous musical traditions, cultural respect, and creative partnership.
At the end of April, 14 CMU students participated in a transformative collaborative songwriting retreat with renowned Indigenous musicians and CMU faculty members. The event was conceptualized by alumna Bryna Link, who convocated with CMU's Class of 2026 just days before, and brought to life by Link and CMU Assistant Professor of Music Dr. Anneli Loepp Thiessen.
They gathered with students, musicians, elders, and faculty at Sandy-Saulteaux Spiritual Centre, a retreat space in Beausejour, Manitoba that runs Indigenous theological education and ministry training, with whom CMU maintains a strong relationship. For four days they wrote songs, shared their life stories, worshipped, ate together, connected with the land, and learned through collaboration.
It all started a year earlier in a course Loepp Thiessen taught on cultural appropriation in music, which explored case studies such as non-Indigenous groups singing songs written by Indigenous people in worship. "Bryna was in my class and raised some really important questions about how we collaborate well together, who owns songs, how we can avoid the legacy of colonial harms of extracting music and not paying royalties or rights or honouring the people who created the songs," Loepp Thiessen said.
Link, who graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies, is a member of Peguis First Nation and sits on CMU's Indigenous Initiatives Advisory Committee. She is very passionate about decolonization and reconciliation at CMU. She felt resistant to bringing Indigenous spiritual practices and Christian worship into the same space, given the harms that the church has inflicted upon generations of Indigenous communities in Canada, and she desired collaborations that were thoroughly ethical about knowledge sharing and copyright. "I see a lot of Indigenous initiatives being very welcomed at CMU, but there was still that feeling that lingered with me that the church is winning," she said.
Link and Loepp Thiessen brainstormed how to turn these observations into action, and for the course's final project, Link wrote a proposal to bring together Indigenous and settler students for a collaborative songwriting workshop that would create songs for community singing, including worship.
Link's paper envisioned a collaborative process that prioritized consent, was attentive to power dynamics, and centred those who experienced residential schools and resulting generational trauma. She focused on "making sure all our rights were equal and everything was done with appreciation, not appropriation," she said.
The two applied for and received a Vital Worship Grant of $35,000 from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Michigan, with funds provided by Lilly Endowment Inc., which made the project a reality. Its official name was decided: the Music Maamwizing Songwriting Retreat. Maamwizing is an Anishinaabemowin word for collaboration that translates roughly to "working together in circle."
They collaborated with several other CMU faculty to actualize the retreat: Rev. Tanis McLeod Kolisnyk, Sessional Instructor and member of the Manitoba Métis Federation; Rev. Vincent Solomon, Elder in Residence and member of Norway House Cree Nation; Darryl Neustaedter Barg, Adjunct Professor of Communications; and Neil Weisensel, Associate Professor of Music.
This team invited three prominent Indigenous artists to mentor the students: Cheryl Bear, a songwriter and professor from Nadleh Whut'en First Nation; Andrew Balfour, a Cree composer and conductor; and Ray Coco Stevenson, a traditional singer and drummer from Peguis First Nation. These mentors shared their stories and music with the students and helped them with their songwriting one-on-one and in groups.
The result was a collection of three solo songs and five group songs, each one a union of its contributor's strengths, and recordings of them to take home. "Both processes brought a very special feeling, as I'd never written any of my own music before," said Adrian Bunn, an Ojibwe student entering his third year of psychology at CMU.
"A personal highlight of the entire trip was the connection building that took place. On the last night, the whole group sat by a bonfire after sharing the songs we'd written," he said. "Me and some other peers stayed up longer than the others. We ended up just hanging out by the fire into the late hours of the night and shared a lot about ourselves. These incredible human beings, who I would've never thought I'd share a moment like this with, were all very sincere, attentive, and kind. Finding that level of respect and support was a bit strange for me because I barely knew these people... this simple moment of humanity is what I'll take forward with me most."
The group was also gifted teachings of the land and medicines and participated in a sweat lodge ceremony. These were some of Link's most cherished moments of the week. "It was a lot of people's first sweat lodge, a lot of people's first time being around and embraced in Indigenous culture," she said. "We heard from the mentors their pain of residential school, the intergenerational trauma, the symptoms of colonialism." Ray Coco Stevenson also taught the group a traditional song meant only for ceremony, and they ended up singing it in the sweat lodge. "I think that was just a beautiful buildup of teaching someone the song and then actually being able to share it together," Link said.
The project's next steps are bringing the students into a professional studio for another round of recording and working with Elders to create a document of translations and protocols for sharing the songs.
"I feel really grateful to Bryna for having had the courage and vision to bring this to life. It's been such an honour for me to work with her and learn from her, as well as all the mentors and the students who were here," Loepp Thiessen said.
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