As Director of Engagement Programs and Partnerships for Pacific Opera, she won the Nada Ristich Change Maker Ruby from Opera Canada for 2022, the 2021 Creative Builder Award and the 2019 Arts and Culture Award for the city of Victoria. Rebecca is a co-director of the ANSWER drum group, an all-indigenous women’s collective, an ensemble that brings songs as medicine to audiences throughout Vancouver Island. She is currently developing workshops and a performance piece that explores connection to ancestors and place, through stories and songs. Rebecca is becoming internationally recognized for her passionate advocacy of music, theater and voice as a means to tell personal stories that need to be heard.

My Métis ancestry

My Métis family names are Delaronde and Croteau. I am also related to the Lizzote family through marriage. I am a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario, with secured hunting rights on my family’s traditional territory. These rights are given only to Métis who meet the criteria as laid out in the Powley decision of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Through my late father, Fraser Hass, and his mother, Louise Marie Croteau, I learned to hunt and fish, clean my own game, to take only what I need and to share. I learned which plants were for medicine, and how to walk on the land to care for my animal and plant relatives. I was raised with teachings to honor Mother Earth, and to always walk in good relationship with her.