How did you come up with the name DJ Big Rez?
I was a kid in middle school playing basketball. There was a guy who played basketball. His name was Big Country and he was in the NBA, playing for the (Vancouver) Grizzlies. (My basketball coach) said, ‘Man, forget Big Country. We have Big Rez.’ The name stuck with me through all my sports and everything I did at Lummi.
You host a number of events, including the Lummi Stommish Festival, where you used to pull canoes. How does it feel to help run it now?
It’s crazy. The three main guys — me, my cousin Autumn Washington, and Lawrence Solomon — all pulled on the same team. We all traveled around the world together and now we organize it. We run it and help prepare everything. It’s both awesome and scary because we deal with so many people and so many problems. We take care of organizing everyone because we have almost 50 11-man canoes, and that’s a lot of teams. That’s just the people pulling, not to mention everyone who comes to the other activities — the stick games, the basketball tournaments, the softball tournaments.
How did you become a DJ?
I started out as a mobile DJ. One of my friends from school said in 2001, “Hey, we can make money off this, so get into the business.” We started doing weddings, dances and stuff like that, and it evolved into doing events for big artists like Lil’ Flip, Yukmouth, and Spice 1. We got into festivals, and then one of my friends, DJ Defkawn – he’s a DJ in Mount Vernon – asked me to come on the air with him and gave me a guest spot. Then Bellingham had a job opening at KZAX and they wanted a hip-hop show. I had a show for a couple of years and brought a group of DJs. Then Seattle reached out to me – Daybreak Star (Indian Cultural) Center, the Native American collective down there. They said, “Hey, we want to start a radio station. We know you’re a Native American DJ.” And I helped Daybreak Star (Radio) start three years ago.
How does it feel to support other Native American artists through your work at Daybreak?
It’s great. When we started, there was no pay. It was all community radio. But the whole aspect of shining a light on all of our Native artists (and) our Indigenous communities was the biggest thing for me. As a Native American, I know how hard it is to break into the industry and what it’s like to be in the industry. I wanted to teach other artists and other people coming up not to give up.
