• Comment: Please add some section, it is not meet the requirements of WP:COMPOSER or WP:GNG. ROY is WAR Talk! 01:55, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Melody McKiver is a classically trained Anishinaabe violist, composer, ethnomusicologist, performer, and activist^[1][2], who previously lived in Ottawa, Ontario and currently lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

A member of Obishikokaang Lac Seul First Nation, McKiver studied ethnomusicology at Memorial University and music and Indigenous Studies from York University. McKiver has stated the importance of "nature, traditional teachings and family connections in Soiux Lookout."^[3]

They are the 2020 recipient of the Canada Council's Robert Flaming Prize, which is awarded annually to an exceptionally talented young Canadian composer, and a recurring invited participant in the Banff Centre for the Arts’ Indigenous Classical Music Gathering.^[4]

Their first commercial album, Reckoning EP, was nominated for Best Instrumental Album at the 2018 Indigenous Music Awards. Covering three separate experiences with Indian Residential Schools and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Reckoning EP itself began as a composition for a theatre piece about residential schools and is dedicated to the memory of Melody McKiver’s late grandmother Waa’oo Kathleen Bunting-iban, a survivor of Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ontario. CBC Canada noted that the Reckoning EP is "changing the way we think about the viola."^[5]

Melody has scored several films and was invited to the Berlinale Talents Sound Studio as a music and composition mentor for the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival. Additional commissions have included Cluster Festival, Marina Thibeault, Duo AIRS, Brandon University, Megumi Masaki, Carnegie Mellon University, and TORQ Percussion with the Elora Singers. Upcoming projects include a setting of Métis author Katherena Vermette’s poem "river woman" for the Elora Singers and TORQ Percussion Quartet, and a full-length album in 2023.

In 2021, McKiver composed the soundtrack for the award-winning documentary Returning Home, the first feature from Canadian Geographic Films and Secwépemc director Sean Stiller, interweaves Canada's history of residential schools with the plight of Pacific wild salmon. The film was awarded Best Canadian Documentary from the Calgary International Film Festival, Edmonton International Film Festival, and the Vancouver International Film Festival.^[6] It was the first full-length feature film ever produced by Canadian Geographic magazine.^[7]

In 2024, McKiver composed the soundtrack for the award-winning documentary Singing Back the Buffalo by award-winning Cree filmmaker Tasha Hubbard, which is about the return of the buffalo to the North American plains.^[8]

In addition to Returning Home (2021) and Singing Back the Buffalo (2024), McKiver composed the soundtracks for Making the Mystics: An Artistic Ceremony Documentary (2023), How to Lose Everything (2023), Foam (2020), and the Big Lemming (2014)^[9]. They have also had musician credits on the award-winning Wildhood (2021).

A frequent performer across Turtle Island, McKiver has performed at the National Arts Centre, Luminato Festival, Vancouver’s Western Front, and the Toronto International Film Festival. They have shared stages with Polaris Prize winners Lido Pimienta, Tanya Tagaq, and Jeremy Dutcher, and performed with acclaimed filmmaker and musician Alanis Obomsawin.

McKiver identifies as two-spirit,^[10] a modern, pan-Indian, umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe aboriginal people fulfilling a traditional third-gender (or other gender-variant) ceremonial cultural role in their community.

• Reckoning EP (2018)