We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful James Pakootas. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with James below.

Alright, James thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

Risks? Take ’em.

Take ’em early and take ’em often.

That’s it. That’s the answer.

Haha, no, but really… I’m not saying throw your career and livelihood in jeopardy in pursuit of risk. (Although some risks I’ve taken have forever altered the landscape of my life and changed the course of my career over time.)

What I AM saying is calculate the move, calculate the effort, assess the risk, craft the blueprint, draw the play, map it out, run the route, sharpen your vision based on results, and then run it back….

…Y’all…

Whatever kind of analogy you need to create a plan and carry out your steps is the only medicine you need to start finding your truth, but the most important calculation in this entire equation is calculating your own worth.

Medicine comes from movement.

Straight up.

I’m no longer focused in the pursuit of knowledge because wisdom can ONLY be gained through action…and if wisdom can only be gained through action, that means the pursuit of knowledge is JUST THE FIRST STEP.

So let’s take the mystique away from phrases like “the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom.”

You’re already doing it. Every day.

I have lived through one of the most extreme human experiences that one could possibly imagine. I’ve overcame the abandonment of my father throughout my entire childhood & during a time I was being sexually abused by two of my older cousins. From the help of my family, friends, my tribal community, and especially my mom, I have been able to heal from those childhood traumas but not before I learned some hard lessons trying to drown the heart ache from these traumas.

My answer after high school was alcohol, which turned into drugs, which turned into selling drugs, which turned into federal prison… and you think that’d be enough…but it wasn’t…after prison, I got into a nearly fatal drunk-driving accident 2 miles from my house in 2015. I hit a guard rail going 90+ mph and paralyzed my right arm in the process, my dominant right arm.

3 months after the accident I wanted to commit suicide.

I didn’t know how to live in this new body. I didn’t know how to face my own truth… but I woke up the next morning and made a promise to myself.

I promised that I wouldn’t let the thought of taking my own life take root in my mind ever again, and then I put that promise into action. I started calculating my own worth.

As you can see, I’ve got a great deal of lived experience taking risks without ANY KIND of calculation, and in some cases, even worse. I was calculating the risks and still moving forward with the conscious effort of destroying everything I was trying to build.

Self sabotage and imposter syndrome are just symptoms of low self worth.

If calculating our own worth is part of this equation then I need to start building my own to start SEEING THE VALUE in my results, because without it, my results didn’t matter to me.

I remember enrolling in college and taking sociology. My instructor was also my school advisor, so she knew my whole back story and was trying to guide me in my own pursuit of knowledge. We came across a chapter about “deviance in social norms” and she asked me to tell my life story to the class and that experience changed my life.

Not soon after, I became a motivational speaker and started mapping out my new career. By applying what I knew and taking action, I realized I wanted to do more than speeches and breakout sessions so I started pursuing art. Mind you, this entire time I’m maintaining a 9 to 5 because I wasn’t ready to risk my paycheck, but the engagements started coming and I was faced with a choice.

Do I start saying no to these engagements that conflict with my work schedule? They’re starting to increase and I’ve reached a tipping point where I’ve got to make a decision.

So I risked it all, doubled down on myself, and started making moves in the pursuit of my own happiness. Here’s what I found.

My happiness resides outside of social norms.

The systems in place don’t exactly work with my spirit so I need to start developing my own system for living.

My existence seeks importance because I’m beginning to realize my own value and I’m no longer willing to negotiate my worth for pennies on the dollar in the pursuit of another’s dream.

The day after I quit my 9 to 5 though…

I was filled with dread. I had options but the paths I travel aren’t paved and calculating risk is an every day occurrence. There have been many, many times since that day that I’ve wanted to pack it up and quit.

I’ve been insanely close to plugging back into the simulation, drinking the corporate juice, and click clacking my way back into the mundane, but I’m not willing to risk my own happiness.

I am too important for anything less than fulfillment.

I’ve weathered the lows, learned from past failures, risks & mistakes, applied new knowledge & wisdom, and continue to mold, shape, and craft my life.

Since betting on myself 6 years ago… and please keep in mind, 3 of these years we were trying to bounce back from a global pandemic…but throughout this process of rebuilding myself, I’ve learned who I am, what my purpose is in life, and how I want to navigate my career to meet the value of my own existence. But first, I had to build my worth in order to see my truth.

I’m investing, curating, and designing my life to meet my own sense of happiness and how I want up operate in the world.

I started a drug & alcohol awareness conference in the heart of my reservation to battle addiction with my people, I’ve done keynotes all over, I won a national music award, national film awards, performed at The Kennedy Center, at The Smithsonian, toured the nation, performed internationally, created festivals, and helped develop other producers and artists along the way.

Today, my focus is The Arts ecosystem.

I’m an Ecosystem Builder. A Designer. A Curator. A Creator.

The systems in place aren’t working for us so it’s time to build new ones. There’s a lot of inherent risk throughout this entire process, but from the life I’ve lived, I’m the perfect guy for the job…erm… scratch that…

I’m a perfect guy for this new system of living.

So yeah… take risks.

Take ’em early.
Take ’em often.

That’s it.
That’s the answer.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

t̓iʔ x̌əšt kn ckicx kʷaʔ lámlamt yaʕ̓tú kʷp cyap

išc̓q̓ʷəncút štm̓tam̓l škʷušxnš

Hi There, my name is Grizzly Bear Paw and my English name is James Pakootas. I come from The Peoples of The Colville Confederated Tribes.

I tell stories – stories that empower, stories that fascinate, and stories that speak truth to our existence. The core of my content speaks to resilience, a deep understanding of trauma, and connection…the never-ending pathway back to ourselves.

As well as popular music, my earliest artistic foundations come from the winter dances of my tribe, the gospel hymns of my mother’s family, and as a jazz percussionist. Pulling from my roots and the cultural roots of hip hop, I create melodic verses and beats that incorporate various styles from jazz, to rhythm & blues, to contemporary pow-wow singing, to classical soul.

When I create music and film, my focus is collaboration and team building – an extension of our cultural value of unified action.

Increasingly over the past years, I’ve been immersed in interdisciplinary work as a founding member of The Root Experience Collective. We incorporate live music, dance, film, fashion, and poetry into stories of empowerment across BIPOC communities. With a focus on working with Indigenous and POC artists, I see this work as community building and the best way to bring forth authentic performance – storytelling at its best.

I am an award-winning vocalist, producer, and filmmaker who cultivates change in the world through the power of words. I come from people whose future, present and past are expressed through art, song, and movement. As a vocalist who creates conscious hip hop and spoken word poetry, I carry on this tradition.

Notable Tour History

I have appeared at the Summer Concert Series with The Levitt Foundation, The New Mexico Jazz Festival festival, among others, and at many famous music venues, including The Eisenhower Theater at The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in NYC, The New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and The National Museum of Jazz in Harlem. I’ve also played in legendary nightspots, such as Lowdown Tulsa, Outpost Performance Space, and Jazz Forum. In 2023, I made my international debut by preforming in Canada.

Awards & Accolades

A trained percussionist from the age of 8, I effortlessly adapt to create intricate cadences and rhyme schemes through Hip Hop. I am a 2019 Native American Music Award Winner, and 2X Nominee. I’ve also received multiple awards and fellowships through First Peoples Fund, Artist Trust, Western Arts Alliance, and Spokane Arts. I’ve performed or collaborated with Joy Harjo, Pura Fe, Jellybean Johnson, Carlton Turner, Shayna Jones, Smokii Sumac, Ivan Coyote, Charly Lowry, Kalliah Jackson, Mali Obomsawim, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Maura Garcia, Maiah Wynne, and Delbert Anderson.

lámlamt
t̓il̓ ʔícaʔ

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

COVID-19 was such a life changing period of time. In 2019, I had just broken through the national scene by winning a national award and a national grant/fellowship. The calls started pouring in and I started mapping out my breakout year….2020 was going to be it, I could see and feel the stars aligning, but by April the world was shutting down and all my engagements canceled. Full stop.

Now What?

I started analyzing a fast changing Arts Ecosystem and aside from emergency grants or small virtual engagements with presenters trying to adapt with the times, there were hardly any opportunities for money to be made. I’m not sure how we did it but we made rent every month and I started preparing for a new future.

As a music artist, how do I stay relevant in a now all-virtual workplace?

That question alone led to a whole string of questions and insecurities about the path I’ve chosen for my life. I had a lot of long, difficult conversations with my business partner, Devonte Pearson (T.S The Solution – look him up and thank me later, but remember, only one dot after The T.)

We decided that we needed to invest in camera & lighting equipment to begin self-producing our own works. I operate with a crew of innovative, creatives that push the mold of what’s possible in our own ecosystem of The Pacific Northwest. We continually try to find the gaps within our systems and create solutions to begin carving out sustainability for ALL OF US.

With an emergency grant provided by Spokane Arts, I invested in a new phone and a phone gimbal. Money wasn’t coming in and I still needed a cellphone to operate in life, so I had to start small but I made the first step. Applying knowledge and putting into action will guide your vision. Trust me.

I purchased a Samsung S20 Ultra at the time because of its camera quality and tried a few different phones gimbals until I found the right fit. I only have one arm, so ease of access is essential to my success at any given moment and across every aspect of my career. Once I learned how to operate my equipment, I began looking to invest in my first DSLR camera and chose a Sony A7iii, a 50mm kit lens, and a DJI RSC 2 stabilizer. We do a lot of low light engagements & the low light image quality of the Sony Alpha series is pretty sweet. I started learning my equipment even more, we invested in the Adobe suite and started learning a new DAW.

That move alone quickly guided our focus into filmmaking. Premiere Pro came naturally to me, much more so than Pro Tools and other music production DAWS that I’ve tried.

A fellow Colville Tribal Member and Hollywood filmmaker, Ben-Alex Dupris, started to mentor this new path of filmmaking and our first project, “Sister Wolves” won the Achievement in Animation award at LA Skins Fest and received official selections at a few other festivals.

My next project, “HIStory”, was my directorial debut. My best friend and collaborator asked me to help him craft a poem he was still writing into a film… and I’m sorry to do this… but the rest is history. Please don’t stop reading, haha, no more dad jokes. Promise.

HIStory ended up getting accepted into 15 different film festivals in multiple countries and we even won our category in a few of them.

Throughout this process, we found a sense of fulfillment and another tool of storytelling that allows us to maintain complete autonomy over our own stories.

During the creation of this film, I decided to take an opportunity far away from Spokane, Washington as I ended up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. How I ended up in Tulsa, we may never know, but I realized Spokane didn’t have the ecosystem in place to support an Arts career. I didn’t know how to build it from within so it was time to venture out.

3 months after my move to Tulsa, a national touring jazz band from New Mexico reached out and asked if I wanted to be their front man. The world was beginning to open back up and they wanted to position themselves for early success with a new sound and vision. I accepted the gig, moved to New Mexico, and started investing back into my music.

I grew up as a jazz drummer and always wanted to be in a jazz band but the choices I made after high school completely inhibited any goals I thought I had towards that goal. Then, the car accident surely stunted my desire to keep drumming.

Hip Hop was that natural percussive element that my spirit gravitates towards. It’s what my hands, mind, heart, and mouth are trained to know.

This was my dream gig. I lost my arm but still made my way into the jazz scene at the highest levels. I remember sitting in New Mexico, just last year…2022…and we’re preparing to go on tour in NYC, and I’m thinking to myself, “How did I even get here? How did this even happen?”

Then, a bomb dropped. This is my NYC debut… my big moment and this isn’t any dive bar. We’re performing at The Smithsonian’s National Museum of The American Indian. We’re 10 minutes away from leaving the hotel to make it to our engagement on time and no band leader….

Where the heck is he? We’re going to be late.

We start banging on his hotel room door and he answers in the same clothes from the previous night, reaking of alcohol, and slurring unintelligible replies to whatever we were trying to say to motivate him into action.

The museum called and gave us the option of playing out on the streets in front of the museum, rather than in the theater, but that change would push our start time back an hour. So, in the end, we were saved by the venue themselves. His behavior continued into the summer and with my entire human existence being altered by alcohol up to that point, I was shocked and completely triggered. We had some difficult discussions and I ended up leaving my dream gig and moving back home 2 months later.

My business partner continued to hold it down back home in Spokane while I ventured out on this new adventure. We both understood the value of bringing knowledge back home and developing a new system that centers BIPOC creatives and the stories they weave through their art.

Our ecosystem in Spokane is 85-90% white led initiatives and organizations. Our very existence is the definition of resilience in this type of environment.

By the time I returned home from my travels, T.S had invested in his own commercial leasing space and now runs Panoramic Dreams Recording that we both operate from. Panoramic Dreams houses 6 separate studios, a producer co-working space and is a central focus in rebuilding our ecosystem from within.

Our ability to grow, adapt, and pivot during the most uncertain times has built our resilience into a force to be reckoned with. The entire landscape of our city is changing and we’re at the forefront of leading our entire Arts ecosystem into a new era of creation.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The breaking down, adapting, rebuilding, and regeneration process is what I’m most passionate about.

I’m an artist. So, process is important to me. Throughout my creation process, I’m consistently asking questions. How am I creating? Crafting story? Molding narrative? Are we collaborating? Is this collaborative experience meaningful? What’s missing? Who’s missing? Is anything even missing?

Now, I’m trying to develop this same practice when building an entire ecosystem that supports the creation, development, presentation, and financial sustainability of art in my city.

COVID-19 changed everything for us. On a global scale, businesses and human beings alike realized that some of these systems in place didn’t serve us and in many cases hindered us. Work schedules and modalities evolved and continue to evolve into this new hybrid world we see today. As a society we have one foot firmly planted in the physical world, and the other firmly planted in the digital world, with more and more focus centered on increasing the digital footprint and presence in our daily lives, but once we see, we cannot unsee.

The world is changing as well as the systems designed to make the world “work.”

Well… this world doesn’t work for us. So, we’re going to change it.

I’m a 2024 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow and recently returned from Mississippi visiting the home and community of Sipp Culture, a non profit focused on building power from within the Black community. I was surrounded by love, culture, and activism. I learned a whole new lesson about the racism of America and the power of the church and blues music in liberating an entire people out of slavery. My history textbook in high school didn’t cover any of this. I walked away empowered, passionate, rejuvenated, and equipped with the knowledge that we need to build power from within.

Now it’s time to turn this newfound knowledge into wisdom. Stay tuned.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jamespakootas.com – www.therootexperience.org
• Instagram: @epic.ndn @panoramicdreams @theroot.experience

Image Credits
1st picture – self credit/no credit (me in front of fire) 2nd picture – Bazh Nibah (with me on stage in business suit, colorful projections behind me.) 3rd picture – Mersaedy Atkins (me in business suit with my mom) 4 – 7 pictures – Jay Digital (me performing in green shirt 8th picture – Jonni Shoots