After years of speculation, we finally know why “Feathered Indians” has effectively been shelved by Tyler Childers.
The song – which was featured in Childers’ 2017 Purgatory – is undoubtedly one that rocketed the Kentucky native to country music stardom. His sophomore album is considered to be one of his best, and in addition to “Feathered Indians,” the project also features hits like “Whitehouse Road” and “Lady May.”
And while Childers still includes those two latter songs in his set lists, the former (“Feathered Indians”) hasn’t been played live since March of 2020. In a new interview with GQ ahead of his Snipe Hunter album release, Tyler said that he wrote the song when he was young, and at the base of things, the love song was inspired by a Red Man Chewing Tobacco belt buckle that he owned at the time.
Hence the opening line of “My buckle makes impressions on the inside of her thigh.”
Because the track is considered to be romantic, many fans chalked up Childers not playing it anymore as a simple “must have been about someone other than his wife” scenario. Others have said that since he is now sober, he doesn’t want to revisit times of intoxication. And some say he just got sick of it…
Let’s face it… “Feathered Indians” is great, but Childers’ catalogue has only gotten deeper and deeper as time goes on. There was also a vibe that he wasn’t playing it because that’s considered one of his biggest hits, and it would be an obvious choice in live concerts.
But as it turns out, it wasn’t any of those reasons that led Tyler Childers to remove the song from his set list. In reality, the talented writer and artist did some soul searching in 2020 (when a lot of us also had plenty of time on our hands), around the time he released Long Violent History. While doing research for that album, he evidently looked in the mirror and really contemplated the use of the word “Indian” in his hit song.
Because some Indigenous groups often distance themselves from that term, and there was a lot of conversation at the time about what was right to say and what wasn’t, Childers had this realization:
“If there’s conversation amongst those individuals about whether they should be using that word or not, then it ain’t for me to be using. It’s not mine.”
On top of that, Tyler Childers told a story later in the interview about how he visited a Blackfeet reservation in Montana a couple of years back, and when he met an Indigenous man named Shawn there, he felt guilt. He revealed that he had hoped the Native American hadn’t heard “Feathered Indians,” and when he found out that Sean’s nephew was a fan of his, he cried.
It seems like Shawn’s nephew didn’t have a problem with it…
According to the GQ interviewer, Tyler Childers got choked up telling the story, and admitting that he loves the song… but feels as though he’s making a statement by not playing it:
“That song has some of my favorite lines I’ve ever written, some of my favorite melodies. Not playing that song is going to make people think.”
So now, instead of playing the song, Childers and his wife Senora donate the royalties from it to help support Indigenous communities through grants and other community aid. They do so through the Hickman Holler Appalachian Relief Fund, which the Childers family established around the same time as Tyler started to explore his relationship with the hit song.
Ultimately, Tyler Childers knows that he didn’t mean any harm with the song initially, and that it’s probably not super offensive to most Native Americans. But to him, that’s not a valid excuse, and his personal beliefs about that are why he’ll likely never play “Feathered Indians” live again:
“We must leave behind that which causes harm to others, even if we never meant harm to begin with. We must all be willing to change as part of this journey on the road.”
Fair enough… still a jam though.
Snipe Hunter is out everywhere tomorrow, July 25th.
