On Monday, Nov. 10, dozens of Villanova students and staff gathered in the Curley Exchange for a talk by guest Frank Waln, artist-in-residence and professor at Western Michigan University, about the speaker’s journey in preserving, defending and educating Indigenous American culture.
The event was hosted by VSB Unitas as part of Villanova’s celebration of Native American and Indigenous Heritage Month.
Waln is an award-winning, multi-genre music artist of Sicangu Lakota descent from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Waln received a Bachelor of Arts in Audio Arts & Acoustics from Columbia College Chicago. He has appeared on major TV networks, like MTV, ESPN and NPR, and has won numerous awards for his work, including Native American Music Awards at the Das Indianer International Film Festival.
During the talk, Waln disclosed his difficult but resourceful upbringing in one of the poorest counties in the country, which has an 80% unemployment rate. He described hustling in his part-time minimum-wage job to build his first home studio when he was 12. Even though Waln’s family was rooted in ranching in rodeo, he found himself incredibly inclined to music and its ability to preserve culture and heal his people’s deep historical trauma.
Even though Waln eventually pursued a career as a musical artist and audio engineer as his formal education was in Audio Arts and he started out his career releasing music through his independent label, Waln’s journey could have taken a very different direction.
Waln stated if he did not receive his academic scholarship and mentorship from his mother, a teacher and the professors he met at Columbia College Chicago, which he spends a significant amount of his time discussing, his life could have gone in a completely different direction.
“I was raised by a teacher, so whenever I received a scholarship, I was able to leave home,” Waln said. “If I didn’t get that scholarship, I was ready to join the Air Force.”
Waln shared his heartful appreciation for the mentors he met at his arts school, stating that they were a cornerstone of his eventual entrepreneurship endeavor where he started his first LLC when he was 21 after pivoting from his original pre-med track. A group of mentors even gave him a $1000 loan to kick start his first album and merch launch, which Waln was able to pay them back in a week.
Another major point Waln covered in his discussion was the unraveling and dissection of the stereotypes that Native Americans face when they attempt to build businesses and develop their localized economy. One of those misconceptions is that Native Americans do not pay taxes, which was refuted as Waln shared that his company had to pay “tribal taxes” beyond the state and federal taxes because each native tribe has its own tribal government overseeing the functioning and administration of local businesses.
At the end of the talk, Waln shared that he is currently employing his technical knowledge and native-culture-oriented experiences in the music and entertainment industry to educate students at Western Michigan, where he teaches courses in “Indigenous Music, Healing and Activism.”
“They asked me to be an artist in residency first, and then I started teaching through production programs, and then I developed the native history and music courses,” Waln said. “I had to get reviewed by my faculty and my students to make sure it was good, but everyone loves it and learns from it, so they allowed me to keep going”.
Waln’s talk was part of Villanova’s Office of Belonging and Inclusion and Native American Student Association’s series of events celebrating Native American and Indigenous Month, which will culminate in the Native American Heritage Symposium from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Villanova Room on Nov. 20.
