Lawrence Martin

About

The artist

Lawrence Martin, also known in music as Wapistan, is a Cree singer-songwriter, guitarist, and community leader from Moose Cree First Nation. He grew up in Moose River Crossing near Moose Factory and learned guitar from an aunt before developing songs shaped by country, folk, rock, Cree language, drumming, and the stories of Northern Ontario. His first album, Wapistan Is Lawrence Martin, arrived in 1993. It received the first JUNO Award for Best Music of Aboriginal Canada Recording in 1994, making Martin the inaugural winner in the category. Message followed in 1995 and earned another nomination in 1996. He later recorded The Right Combination with Vern Cheechoo, which received a 2003 nomination in the same JUNO category, followed by Dancing for Life in 2009 and Train of Life in 2014. The exact Spotify identity currently carries Train of Life, a self-released 13-song album dated June 2, 2014. MusicList excludes Poradu, a 2024 Tamil-language release that Spotify has attached to the same artist identifier despite its separate label, collaborator, rights line, and musical identity. Martin's earlier song I Got My Music also appears on Light in the Attic's artist-cooperatively researched anthology Native North America, Vol. 1. His musical work has continued alongside public and community leadership. A June 2025 National Indigenous Peoples Day event in Cochrane billed Martin and his son Neil as a father-and-son musical duo, confirming current performance activity. Martin's current public professional profile places him in Cochrane, while Five Nations Energy continues to list him as chair. Professional contact details are not republished because no current artist-designated inquiry route was confirmed. Spotify media is rendered live with provider attribution and a monogram fallback.