Canadian dream excluded him, so hip-hop hopeful created one
If Cody Purcell needed some obvious symbolism about his ability to overcome any obstacle in his life, he got it earlier this year.
The 24-year-old Ottawa hip-hop artist was touring in the Yukon when he got a chance to go mountain climbing.
Summiting that mountain, he says, drove home the message that: “Hey, this life is limitless in achieving what I wanted to achieve.”
Purcell, who performs under the name Cody Coyote, knows many of his fellow young indigenous Canadians see the world very differently and have fewer reasons for optimism.
Growing up, Purcell says, the “Canadian dream” didn’t seem to include him.
He talks of being beat up by skinheads once in Orléans. He battled drugs and alcohol in his early teens. He says his involvement in gang life was a way to gain a sense of identity and belonging that he didn’t have anywhere else.
When he was 20, he tried to kill himself after a night of drinking.
“I remember (my brother) dropping me off at home and then I woke up the next morning and I had a big rash on my neck,” he says. “This was my turning point.”
The attempt, Purcell says, pushed him onto a path to get sober, connect with his cultural identity and pursue his dreams.
Purcell has been making music since he was a teenager. Meanwhile, he’s worked dead-end jobs, in warehouses and construction, to help him and his family make ends meet.
Today, he’s considered a breakout star in Canada’s hip-hop scene. At the same time, he’s living in a four-bedroom apartment with his parents and two younger brothers in Ottawa’s southeast end.
“I’m working for that studio time, day in and day out, just to help my dream,” he says. “I know I’m going somewhere good.”
The unemployment rate for indigenous peoples in Canada age 25 to 64 is 13 per cent — nearly twice that of non-indigenous Canadians, Statistics Canada’s 2011 national household survey shows. Although this gap has narrowed slightly since 2006, the disparity remains stark.
Only 39 per cent of indigenous adults age 20 to 24 have completed high school, compared with 87 per cent of non-indigenous people in Canada, according to the Chiefs Assembly on Education. And, only 48.4 per cent of indigenous peoples in Canada between the age of 25 and 64 have completed some kind of post-secondary diploma, certificate or degree — 16.3 percentage points lower than their non-indigenous counterparts, the Statistics Canada 2011 national household survey shows.
An indigenous youth is more likely to end up in jail than to graduate high school, the Assembly of First Nations said in its 2011 fact sheet on First Nations quality of life.
“Generations of oppression is still affecting out community,” says Purcell. “Residential schools, intergenerational trauma — it’s frustrating to see.
“I think that it’s definitely more difficult to achieve that Canadian dream, just based on everything that’s happened historically (with indigenous peoples),” he says. Purcell wants to defeat the odds. He was recently accepted into a family and community counselling program at the Native Education College in Vancouver. His family is making arrangements for him go out there in late August, but he has a little trepidation because he’s still waiting for federal funding available to indigenous peoples in Canada.
“Now we’re at a point where things are OK,” he says. “But there are days when the cupboards will be pretty empty, and you wake up and you open up the fridge and there’s not too much there, and it just hits you, like, ‘Shoot.’”
In 10 years, Purcell says, he plans to have made an impact with his music and to be at a point financially where his family can have a house again and his parents can retire.
“They’ve taken care of me my whole life,” he says, “and I just want to give back.”
I’m working for that studio time, day in and day out, just to help my dream. I know I’m going somewhere good.