Native American Heritage Month Essential Artist: Black Belt Eagle Scout

  • November 11, 2024
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November is National Native American Heritage Month and all month long we pay tribute to the rich ancestry and cultural heritage of the Indigenous people of this land.

Every Monday we celebrate Indigenous excellence with music from an Essential Artist of the Day and today we feature Black Belt Eagle Scout. 

Katherine Paul, who performs under the name Black Belt Eagle Scout, was raised on Puget Sound in the small Swinomish Indian Tribal Community about an hour from the Canadian border in Northwest Washington. Steeped in musical and spiritual heritage from an early age, her family taught her Coast Salish music, drumming, and jingle dress dance, while other indigenous music often filled her house.

Paul traveled to pow wows across the region throughout her childhood with her family’s drum group, the Skagit Valley Singers. In third grade, she started learning piano and played flute in her school band. Then as a teenager, she fell for the Pacific Northwest’s regional music scene, going so far as to teach herself to play guitar from bootlegged Nirvana VHS tapes. 

A decade ago, Paul moved to Portland for college and entered its burgeoning indie music scene. She became involved with the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls, and she started out playing drums and singing for various local bands before discovering her own particular talents. After the release of her first self-titled EP in 2014, Paul released Black Belt Eagle Scout's debut LP, Mother of My Children, on Good Cheer Records in August 2017. Saddle Creek then widened her audience when it re-released the album in September 2018. At the Party with My Brown Friends followed in 2019, with 2023’s The Land, The Water, The Sky finding a balance of darkness and light inspired by returning to her childhood reservation during the 2020 pandemic outbreak.

Listen for our Essental Artist of the Day every Monday at 8am, 11am & 3pm.

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