Editorial: Eskasoni songbird flies high

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Editorial: Eskasoni songbird flies high – TheChronicleHerald.ca

by ahnationtalk on July 10, 2019409 Views

When Eskasoni high schooler Emma Stevens’ hauntingly beautiful Mi’kmaw-language cover of the Beatles’ Blackbird was uploaded to YouTube April 25, little did anyone know the heights to which her cover of that iconic song would fly.

The Grade 10 student and a few fellow classmates at Allison Bernard Memorial High School had recorded the song — written and first performed by Paul McCartney on 1968’s The Beatles (White Album) — to focus attention on 2019 as the UN-designated International Year of Indigenous Languages.

A little more than two months later, the expertly produced video has attracted attention around the globe, garnering almost a million views to date.

As a result of the attention, Stevens, just 16, was invited to perform at a UN conference on habitat in Nairobi, Kenya, in late May. While there, she spoke movingly about the scourge of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada.