DJ Tory Johnston

An interdisciplinary music scholar and PhD Candidate in Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis. He is Quinault from Taholah on the Mouth of the Quinault River and has recently moved back to the Salish Sea from Ohlone territory in San Francisco.

A self-taught guitarist and composer, his passion for music stems from a deep curiosity about how relationships between people, traditions, temporalities, and the more-than-human world are sounded.

He also strives to bring the sounds of modern progressive metal to the Indigenous music scene. During the school year, he will be lecturing part-time in UW’s American Indian Studies Department and hopefully writing some riffs that are worth sharing. 

You can find him floating around open mics, seeing live local jazz, in the front row at a metal show, signing up for karaoke, buying ridiculously expensive food for his cat-companion Rikke, and/or endlessly searching for the next great cup of coffee.

“I am so honored to amplify Indigenous sound through the Global Indigenous Radio Show! Listen with me from 3 AM to 5 AM on Mondays to hear the density of cross-continental Indigenous music from a variety of genres. From love songs to resistance anthems to free jazz, our ancestors always hear us.”