Cree 2-Spirit trans artist Quanah Style performs at 2 Rivers Remix Music Feast LIVE
The drag queen, recording artist, dancer, and filmmaker is one-of-a-kind
Quanah Style.
2 Rivers Remix Society presents 2 Rivers Remix Music Feast LIVE at Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Pow Wow Arbor in Kamloops July July 7 to 9 and live-streamed on feast.2rmx.ca.
HAILING FROM THE Moberly Lake Reservation in Northern B.C., Quanah Style is a multifaceted ascending star. A Cree 2-Spirit transgender drag queen, recording artist, dancer, and filmmaker who has been performing and creating since her transition in her teens, Style is an unstoppable force who has taken the Canadian arts scene by storm.
Although her ability to stand proudly in her identity is what makes her so powerful, Style was accompanied by a sense of alienation in her childhood growing up in humble roots.
“I grew up in a very small remote northern reserve. I always felt out of place in my own skin and ostracized from my peers,” Style says in an interview with Stir. “I transitioned when I was 15 and had my gender confirmation surgery when I turned 18. We moved to Victoria when I first transitioned and I started clubbing when I was underage. So I started living a double life by clubbing at night, and then I would go to high school in the daytime.
“I never felt like I fit in at high school,” she continues. “I was a lot more shy and introverted in school settings. I had a lot of social anxieties and insecurities that I was combating, and I found a lot of my confidence through clubbing. I found somewhere that I could relate to other people by being a part of gay culture at nightclubs.”
Style’s introduction to the nightclub scene led to her pursuit of drag and music. Since then, she’s booked dozens of festivals, been featured on television series such as CBC’s Canada’s a Drag and Crave’s 1 Queen 5 Queers. She documented her facial reconstruction surgery in a web series called Quanah: Trans Op. Style released her self-titled debut album in 2020, which charted Billboard’s Top 10 dance albums. More recently, she wrapped her sophomore album, her first independent release, working with notable producers like Darren (Young D) Metz from Snotty nose Rez kids and featuring the likes of Logan Staats and Peaches.
“It’s going in a completely different direction than my first album,” Style says. “My first album was my love letter to ’90s bubble-gum pop with the dash of Lil’ Kim. On this new album, I'm moving more lyrically into rap. I have a lot of features: some of my idols are on it. So it will be the biggest thing I've ever done.”
Among her upcoming tour stops is one at 2 Rivers Remix Indigenous Music LIVE in T'kemlups and live-streamed via feast.2rmx.ca. She’s part of a lineup of more than 40 leading Indigenous artists and acts—including Snotty Nose Rez Kids, Jason Camp and The Posers, and Curtis Clearsky and the Constellationz—in the celebration of contemporary Indigenous music and culture. (See here for more details.)
Style grew up closely connected to her Cree culture, attending powwows and being surrounded by music, the latter being a major influence from her father, chef and artist Art Napoleon.
It’s clear that she is a powerhouse and a one-of-a-kind talent. (See her profile in the Stir x City of Vancouver collaboration, Sound of the City, here.) However, Style almost turned away from performing altogether with the onset of COVID-19.
“When the pandemic hit, I kind of freaked out,” she says. “Everything I had lined up for work for the year had to do with people and the public. A lot of things that I was working towards got taken off the table.
“I went back up North to my rez and had to re-evaluate what I was going to do. I’ve always had an obsession with pop culture and movies, being a kid up North. One of the highlights of my week was going to rent movies,” Style says. “And like I said, I didn't have any friends. I hated going to school, it was like torture to me. And my escape was TV and film: it gave me hope. It gave me a glimpse into an outside world that at that point I could only dream of being part of.”
Style channelled her reclaimed love of film into attending the Infocus film program and mentoring at Wapikoni, a program for Indigenous youth.
“I graduated with the Tarantino award, and that opened up a lot of opportunities for a different path for my career, '' she says. “I had options to pursue my own projects that I would be producing, writing, and directing.”
“But the summer I graduated swung around, and all of a sudden, just when I thought Miss Quanah Style was about to retire being a show girl, all of these bookings came up and I had to choose if I was going to pursue my film career or go back to doing what I was doing, which is live performing,” she continues. “So I chose to perform, and I was only home for a handful of times throughout the whole summer.”
With all her pursuits and talents, Style has become a public figure in Canada and beyond. She appeared in writer-director Jules Arita Koostachin’s 2022 film Broken Angel, which premiered at the ImagineNATIVE festival in Toronto. She hosted the Come Toward the Fire festival at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts Vancouver last fall and will appear in the event’s second iteration this year. Style is now in production on a few new TV projects slated for later this year and is shooting the first film she wrote, which she describes as “the trans story every trans girl deserves”, set in the 1980s and ’90s.
“I’m the only Indigenous trans woman in Canada that is really doing what I do: TV, film, music… I don't know anybody else like me,” she says. “I did a show with Snotty Nose Rez Kids in Kamloops recently, and never in my life did I think I’d have that response from the crowd. It was insane.
“It felt like a full circle moment being there,” she says. “And in that moment, I realized the capacity of what I was doing. I felt like it was bigger than me, knowing that I'm the first trans woman to have those platforms, to be in that space, to win over those crowds. I’m very proud of that.”
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