Buffalo Boys Program Brings First Nations Drumming Into Regina School Curriculum

Walk past Mother Teresa Middle School on a Regina weekday afternoon and the sound finds you before the building does: drums, steady and resonant, rolling out from somewhere inside. That sound belongs to the Buffalo Boys, a cultural music program that Evan Whitestar, MTMS Indigenous Advocate and lead singer and drummer of the group, built from scratch in 2016 with just five students and a conviction that something essential had been stripped from the generation he was teaching.

"Most of the times they get into the building here and they've never been around a drum. They haven't heard the Cree language. They haven't smudged. They haven't had this First Nations experience," Whitestar said. "To me that's heartbreaking because I grew up like that. I grew up doing this, and to bring it into the hallways of an education institute is quite something."

What started as an after-school program now draws more than 20 Grades 6 through 8 students through regular practices, with demand growing fast enough that the school's original drums are showing the strain: the strings on one broke recently. The program applied for a MusiCounts Band Aid grant on the recommendation of Rob Todd at Tribal Spirit, a Regina shop the program had purchased drums from previously. The MusiCounts Band Aid Program distributes between $400,000 and $600,000 each fall to under-resourced schools across Canada, with individual schools eligible for up to $20,000 in instruments, equipment, and resources. "I was able to give them a format as to how I used the drums as a musical teaching tool and it all just seemed to add up," Whitestar said of the application process.

Whitestar, who lives in Regina but is originally from Pasqua First Nation, frames the program's curricular integration as something rare. To his knowledge, MTMS is the only school in Canada to have put First Nations drumming formally into its curriculum. "The investment in the approach we took here, I think it can be a really good model for any other school system that serves First Nation students that wants to do it in a really authentic way," he said. The program is explicitly designed to honor the Truth and Reconciliation Report's Calls to Action, teaching not just drumming but singing, dancing, Cree language exposure, smudging, and ceremony alongside it.

The human evidence of what that approach produces sits in the students themselves. Tayjah Agecoutay, a Grade 8 dancer in the group, was shy enough in Grade 6 that talking to people felt like a barrier. She walked into a Buffalo Boys practice for the first time and the room changed something in her. "When I walked in, the vibe in there just felt so good. And then I remember just seeing people sing, smiling, and laughing," she said. "It taught me how to live life." Benjoe, who is from Muscowpetung Saulteaux Nation, traced his own entry to a powwow moment: "I saw a bunch of girls standing and singing by the drum and drumming, and that inspired me to join."

MTMS alumnus Kadence Whitestar, who co-founded the after-school program in 2016 alongside his father Evan, returned to help lead and model the program's values long after graduating. Younger students watch him and, according to his own observations, start adjusting their own priorities. "I see them prioritizing their schoolwork and wanting to embrace a healthy lifestyle. It shows me that what we are doing is working," Kadence said.

The Buffalo Boys' reach extends well beyond MTMS hallways. The group has performed at the Canadian Western Agribition, at halftime during a Saskatchewan Roughriders game, at community events, and at powwows across the Regina region. Regular visits to Pasqua First Nation bring the group in front of students from Grade 4 and up who gather from different reserves. Those visits include drumming, singing, and deliberate cultural storytelling. "When we visit, we sing and drum but we also tell them a lesson or story about our culture and why we do things the way we do," Whitestar said. The Pasqua connection deepened after Buffalo Boys performed at a Pasqua powwow and the community reached out, impressed by how the group engaged youth, and invited them to teach drumming there directly.

Whitestar's framing of what the drum represents cuts to the core of why he built this: "That drum is in every one of our ceremonies." Putting it in a school curriculum, he argues, is not supplemental enrichment. It is foundational.