Watch: Raye Zaragoza – American Dream

Raye Zaragoza is an award-winning singer/songwriter and performer whose multinational heritage (Native American (O’odham), Mexican, Taiwanese and Japanese) deeply informs her music. This perspective can be heard in her anthem ‘American Dream’. The powerful and thought-provoking single is inspired by the destruction of Donald Trump’s election, the lack of mainstream media for Standing Rock and the struggles Zaragoza faced growing up as a female multi-cultural youth in the US.

Inspired by numerous elements which have impacted Zaragoza’s life, she tells the tale of her great grandmother and how she was forced into a boarding school to be raised by a European woman, separated from her parents and siblings.

Zaragoza reveals, “Her story haunts me, because so many people don’t realize the awful things that have happened in this country just within the past 100 years. The only way to move forward is to acknowledge that change is a choice that can start with you”.