MusicOntario Member Spotlight: Amanda Rheaume "The Truth We Hold"
Amanda Rheaume: Music Rooted in Métis History and Community
Amanda Rheaume isn’t just a singer-songwriter—she’s a storyteller, community organizer, and bearer of intergenerational memory. With deep Métis roots and a lifelong commitment to amplifying Indigenous voices, her music is a powerful vessel for stories that span generations.
The recipient of the 2024 Spirit of Folk Award, the 2023 Canadian Folk Music Award for Indigenous Songwriter of the Year, and the 2023 Capital Music Awards’ Album of the Year, Rheaume has released six full-length albums to date. Beyond her acclaimed recording and touring career, she plays a vital role in building Indigenous music infrastructure. As her impact continues to grow, Rheaume remains grounded in her purpose: to carry Métis stories forward through the medicine of music.
More on Amanda Rheaume
Currently based in Toronto and originally from Ottawa, Amanda Rheaume has long been a vital presence in the Indigenous music community. Her journey spans over a decade of making music and building infrastructure to support Indigenous artists. As a co-founder of Ishkōdé Records, the International Indigenous Music Summit, and a founding board member of the Indigenous Music Office, Rheaume works to uplift others while staying true to her roots.
At the start of every show, whether on stage in Chile, Nashville or Brisbane, Australia, Rheaume introduces herself as a Citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario whose Red River roots run deep, interwoven with Anishinaabe relatives from Lac Seul and mixed settler relations. Unfamiliar as some of these places may be to her audience, her introduction is both a greeting and a foundation, situating Rheaume and her songs in multifold lineages of family and community.
Rheaume’s music is a meeting place of past and present, where songs of resistance and resilience echo across generations. With a style shaped by heartland rock and enlivened by traditional Métis fiddle, her sound is as unwavering as her purpose. She has become a chronicler of both ancestral and contemporary Métis stories, approaching each narrative with empathy and deep respect.
Her work isn’t confined to personal reflection—it’s communal, stitched together from stories told by elders, relatives, and fellow community members. Rheaume’s songs carry the weight and wonder of a people whose history has often been silenced but never erased.
The Truth We Hold: a songbook of Métis stories
Amanda Rheaume’s upcoming album The Truth We Hold, released on April 11, 2025 via Ishkōdé Records, is a landmark project—a living songbook of Métis stories. Each track is a lovingly crafted window into people, places, and histories that shaped the Métis experience. From pivotal legal battles to overlooked injustices, the album transmits a sense of collective memory that stretches across time and geography.
With the seasoned and savvy production of Colin Linden, Rheaume’s new album is a satisfying blend of classic rootsy twang with folkier traditional elements, primarily the lively Métis fiddle of Alyssa Delbaere-Sawchuk and accordion, that suffuse the collection with a magical energy and ground the sound in Métis musical history. Like a wooden floor scuffed with the heelmarks of kitchen parties long before, the instrumentation brings a welcoming homeyness and comfort to the stories, harrowing and joyful alike. A safe place for troubled memories, painful truths and resilience alike, Rheaume’s songs are a hearth for the past, pained and precious.
The Truth We Hold is first and foremost a living archive, preserving story and the true details of events in song. The people, places and stories of this new album criss-cross the country, building a new type of map where many rivers meet. Under Rheaume’s careful, delicate gathering of stories, a guidebook to The Truth We Hold reveals the breadth and depth of this collection’s sources, inspiration and scope.
Catch Amanda Rheaume at Massey Hall – May 21
Following her recent performance at the TD Music Hall’s Four Chords and The Truth - Fire Relief Benefit Concert, Amanda Rheaume returns to the stage for a solo show on Wednesday, May 21. This concert is a rare chance to experience The Truth We Hold live, where Rheaume’s stories and songs will resonate in one of Toronto’s most iconic venues. Get your tickets now!