Rebels with a Cause

Portugal. The Man talks more than music-making as we take a look at the band’s work in the world of Indigenous activism.

written by MALENA SAADEH

I once had this dream I was hanging out with Portugal. The Man. It was glorious: I was 5’11”, just like Uma Thurman, and right after our little rendezvous the band introduced me to Marc Bolan. Much to my dismay, when I woke from this sweet slumber, I looked nothing like Ms. Thurman and Marc Bolan was still so dearly departed — but I was actually about to meet Portugal. The Man, these musical muses of mine, from the screen on my ratty old PC. The one fragment of my reverie that stuck around to see the morning is the fact that Portugal. The Man has been using its platform to acknowledge Indigenous land and share Native stories.

The founding members of the band, front man John Gourley and bassist Zach Carothers, set off from their hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, in 2006, craving a taste of what lay beyond America’s icebox. Though their road to fame would begin in Portland, their upbringing in the Final Frontier ties them to Indigenous activism. It spurred them to found The Portugal The Man Foundation in 2019, which uses the band’s standing to advocate for Indigenous rights in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

Seeking to turn up the volume for underrepresented voices, the band started the tradition of opening its shows with a “land acknowledgment.” At the beginning of each set, the band members pass the mic to an Indigenous person from the area, putting music second to the voices of First Nation’s people.

Gourley takes me back in time to Anchorage, where a grand opening for a Hard Rock Cafe, of all places, served

as the occasion that would prompt a vital shift in Portugal’s career path. A land acknowledgment is something many concert-goers have never experienced before, which is something that Gourley understands.

“The first acknowledgments we did brought up a lot of questions, a lot of guilt, and a lot of history,” Gorley tells me, his eyes beaming through the screen with the intensity of that first night. “I remember seeing giggling and uneasy energy. Just watching it morph the next time we’d come through, people would be telling others to be quiet, telling them to listen. And then even more so the next time through.”

I discussed this feeling with a partner of the PTM Foundation, Laura John, who speaks not only as the city of Portland’s Tribal Relations Director, but also as descendant of the Blackfeet and Seneca nations.

“When a land acknowledgment is done, it gets people thinking about all the other ties to that land and pushes them to think beyond,” says John.

Protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death, particularly those in Portland, opened the door to many new conversations regarding Native rights, she says.

“What has occurred over the last year has really elevated focus on BIPOC, and it has been changing people’s awareness,” says John, referring to both the city she works in and today’s social climate in general. “Space is being created for Native people when before that wasn’t even a part of the conversation.”

As John lays down that heavy truth, I sit with an uneasiness that I can imagine must have hung over the crowd that night in Anchorage — an uneasiness that comes with un-learning a narrative imposed on us in elementary school classrooms and recognizing the areas of our own inexperience. Sensing the apprehension on my face in light of this new-found knowledge, Carothers works to transform what I feel about the past into something to be used in the present. The cycle of injustice is not irreversible.

“I don’t think any of us agree with how we got here, but we are here now, so we just have to be good neighbors, good friends and good allies,” he says.

Before my Zoom chat with Portugal, I changed my outfit twice and threw on my most uncomfortable pair of heels — even though I’d be a total mystery from the neck down anyways. How often can you say you get to interview a legendary band in a circumstance where pants are completely optional and they’d be none the wiser if you spewed out questions halfway in the buck? I suppose every situation has its perks. With a collection of nods, a roll off of waves, and one click of the mouse, my hour with Portugal had come to an end.

All of that aside, what I exit with is a point that cannot be dulled by circumstance. Learning how important allyship is to a band as big a name as Portugal. The Man brought something much larger than music to the table. Checking ourselves as settlers and creating space for Indigenous voices are such small steps, but if widely taken, they can change the whole narrative around Native issues for the better.