The first feature from award-winning, Alberta-based Cree filmmaker Alexandra Lazarowich, Turtle Island Rap, tells the story of A$h Da Hunter, Wiidaaseh, and Travis Thompson — three Indigenous artists navigating different stages of their music careers. Filmed over the course of nearly five years, the documentary captures the artists performing on stage and in the studio, but it shines brightest when it casts light on the unglamorous margins of their lives: working day jobs, dealing with family obligations and facing industry rejection. The result is an intimate portrait, one that interrogates the unique challenges that Indigenous musicians in Canada face. It also explores a messier, more compelling question: What does it actually mean to “make it”?
Lazarowich’s patient, fly-on-the-wall approach is a welcome departure from the talking-head interviews and frantic pacing of most contemporary music documentaries. Rather than hand-feeding information about her subjects, she simply sits with them, creating space for quiet moments that reveal more about who these artists are than any stage performance could.
We watch Wiidaaseh, an Anishinaabek rapper and producer based in Toronto, hunt with his family. We watch A$h, a Yavapai-Apache lyricist in Phoenix, Arizona, navigate a complex relationship with her father following his release from jail. And we watch Travis, a charismatic Navajo rapper from Burien, Washington, visit his grandmother and play a free show for her Navajo Nation in Fort Defiance, Arizona. It’s there, surrounded by young Indigenous fans who already see him as a star, that the film begins to complicate what “making it” means: though Travis is still chasing greater success, to the kids who can see themselves in him, he has already achieved something that streaming numbers and chart positions can’t measure.
While Travis’s career seems to have the most momentum, the film never shies away from the harder, daily grind faced by its other subjects. A$h, the doc’s emotional standout, has perhaps the most stacked against her — a need to balance her artistic ambition with family obligations, her father’s instability, and the added barriers of being a plus-size woman in a male-dominated industry. Her story grounds the documentary in a raw reality where “making it” isn’t necessarily about stardom, but about being able to put food on the table with her art.
Wiidaaseh occupies perhaps the most familiar space for many working creatives: accomplished enough to know he belongs, yet still grinding for the next open door. Neither story offers the kind of breakthrough moment that music documentaries are usually built around. Instead, progress happens gradually — small victories are followed almost immediately by the need to chase another one.
Unfortunately, for a documentary with “rap” in its title, Turtle Island Rap makes surprisingly little effort to show what makes its subjects interesting as rappers, or sets them apart musically. All three are skilled artists, but little of the featured work feels particularly original within contemporary hip-hop. Lazarowich could have spent more time exploring what shapes their sound — their influences and production choices, or what distinguishes them from the thousands of other artists chasing the same dream. As a critic, I found myself repeatedly asking a question the film seems increasingly uninterested in answering: Are these artists actually good enough to make it?
Though frustrating, keeping that question ambiguous may ultimately be Lazarowich’s strongest choice. Turtle Island Rap isn’t particularly interested in convincing us that its subjects will become stars. Instead, it illustrates the persistence that’s required to keep creating when success is never guaranteed. By the time the credits rolled, whether any of these artists were destined for a commercial breakthrough no longer felt like the only question that mattered. I was rooting for all three of them anyway.
