SPOTLIGHT: William Prince on Origins [ESSAY]

Editor's Note: William Prince is No Depression's Spotlight Artist for October 2025 and we're thrilled to share this deeply personal essay on the release day of his new album, Further From the Country, out today via Six Shooter Records. Keep an eye out for more from Prince all month long.

For a while, I lived in a small house on the Peguis (Peg-wiss) First Nation, an Indian Reservation on Treaty 1 land about 90 minutes north of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

First Nations or Indigenous is the preferred term for describing Native Americans in Canada.

This place is a beginning of the universe for me. My new record Further From the Country explores this origin; it is a look back on times in my life that challenged me so profoundly. A peek at where I’ve been, where I am today and how much further we have to go.

The house had one bedroom for a family of four and no running water. The peeling linoleum on the floors and windows that didn’t close properly sit vividly in my mind. I can still feel our drinking water splashing out of the bucket onto my ski-pants in the dead of winter as my mother and I carried it across a field from the neighbor’s outdoor faucet.

We were lucky. You could drink the water. There are still so many First Nations communities in Canada without access to clean drinking water.