Jeremy Dutcher

2025 NAC Award

Composer, performer, language carrier, ethnomusicologist and activist

Jeremy Dutcher is a Two-Spirit composer, ethnomusicologist, and classically trained tenor, and a Wolastoqiyik member of the Tobique First Nation in northwest New Brunswick. His music transcends boundaries: it is deliberately playful in its incorporation of classical elements, respectful of the traditional songs of his community, and infused with the urgency of modern-day resistance. Through his music, he seeks to preserve Wolastoqiyik culture and inspire Indigenous youth to appreciate the importance of language and heritage.
 
Mr. Dutcher was born in 1990 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. He studied music and anthropology at university, and after training as an operatic tenor, he expanded his professional repertoire to include the traditional singing style and songs of his Wolastoqiyik community.
 
His debut album (2018), Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa (“the songs of the people of the beautiful river”), sung entirely in Wolastoqey, was inspired by an archival research project at the Canadian Museum of History. Mr. Dutcher transcribed early 20th-century recordings of traditional Wolastoqiyik songs and transformed them into “collaborative” compositions. The album won the 2018 Polaris Music Prize and the 2019 Juno Award for Indigenous Music Album of the Year.
 
He released his second album, Motewolonuwok (“people of great spiritual power”), in 2023. It again features some traditional Wolastoqiyik songs, but also includes English-language material. The album won the 2024 Polaris Music Prize, making Mr. Dutcher the first artist to win the prize twice.
 
“When you’re sitting down to make music, it is about, what are the strands that you have and how are you going to weave them together?” he says. “And I realized that I’m the intersection; I’m the weaving point of these two worlds.”
 
Mr. Dutcher has toured internationally and has worked with such iconic artists as Beverly Glenn Copeland, Leslie Feist, and Yo-Yo Ma. He is regularly sought out for his perspectives on queerness, Indigeneity, and language revitalization.
 
In 2022, he and his family launched Kekhimin, the first ever Wolastoqey language immersion school, in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
 
Reaching across disciplines, he composed the score for the Atlantic Ballet production of Pizuwin (2023) and is currently scoring a Mi’kmaq horror film.
 
Jeremy Dutcher holds an honorary doctorate from Nipissing University.