The popular Indigenous collective was named Traditional Indigenous Artist or Group of the Year in recognition of their latest album <\/p>\n
A high-profile Indigenous drum group with ties to Batchewana First Nation has received top honours on the national stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Sunday night, Bear Creek was named Traditional Indigenous Artist or Group of the Year at the 2026 Juno Awards \u2014 during its first-ever appearance at the Canadian music awards show.<\/p>\n
The entire experience felt surreal for Joe Syrette, who said\u00a0many of Bear Creek\u2019s members come from small communities in both Canada and the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a night,\u201d\u00a0Syrette said, speaking\u00a0with SooToday from\u00a0Mount Pleasant, Mich. on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a memorable moment \u2014 you know, it’s something that we’re never going to forget, for sure.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut also it’s just being showcased or being honoured that way at a national level is just something different.\u201d<\/p>\n
The drum group won the award for its latest album entitled On The Move,\u00a0recorded during the 2025 Apache Gold Intertribal Powwow on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona.<\/p>\n
He said the group didn\u2019t have an acceptance speech prepared before they were announced as award winners \u2014 but that didn\u2019t stop Bear Creek from having its moment on the big stage.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Syrette, who grew up on Rankin Reserve in Batchewana territory, dedicated the Juno Award to \u201call of the Indigenous kids,\u201d while telling them \u201cthis is what can happen\u201d if they \u201cbelieve in our ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of what was said kind of came from our own feeling, and just putting a lot of thought into our group and all the things that we’ve been through,\u201d Syrette said.<\/p>\n
Bear Creek can trace its origins back to 1998, when a group of seven singers and drummers from various Anishinabek communities \u2014 including Batchewana, Serpent River and Bay Mills Indian Community in Michigan \u2014 began performing together at powwows.<\/p>\n
The group has seen a number of personnel changes throughout the years, eventually bringing in a diverse group of people with ties to Indigenous communities across North America.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s so many different nations that we come from,\u201d Syrette said. \u201cBut we all come together as a group, and every year \u2014 every summer \u2014 we hit the road.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bear Creek has been receiving an outpouring of support from family and friends after the group took to the podium in Hamilton to accept its first-ever Juno Award.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy one cousin shared with me: he says, \u2018this is proof of Anishinaabe success.\u2019 I felt really honoured when he shared that with me,\u201d Syrette said.<\/p>\n
The drum group plans to\u00a0eventually release\u00a0a recording of its appearance at Gathering at the Rapids Powwow in Sault Ste. Marie earlier this year.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The popular Indigenous collective was named Traditional Indigenous Artist or Group of the Year in recognition of their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,220502,341],"class_list":["post-574021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-first-nationsbatchewana-first-nationwinnerindigenousbear-creekanishinaabedrum-groupjuno-awardjuno-awards-2026","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}