This song was written by a group of women representing about a dozen different language groups sometime between 1995 and 1997 as part of the Aboriginal Women’s Voices Project in Banff, Alberta. It has no words; rather it is made up of vocables, singing sounds resembling the sounds of various aboriginal languages. The women named it the traveling song because that is the feeling they felt when singing it. I learned the song during the singing and drum circle at the Native Education College in Vancouver, BC, led by Russell Wallace.
This video was filmed on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples including the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
I drum to heal the land. I honour the First Nations of this land and recognize myself as their guest.