Celebrating Buffy Sainte-Marie, earning a PhDrake and more arts stories you might have missed

Here at CBC Arts, you won't just find our original content — we also bring you the best art posts from across the entire CBC network.

These are the week's can't-miss stories:

Buffy Sainte-Marie honoured with humanitarian award, calls for new generation of protest songs (As It Happens)

Buffy Sainte-Marie's music has earned her a trophy case's worth of awards over the years — but now she's being lauded for more than her songs. This year, the JUNOs will honour her with the Allan Waters Humanitarian Award in recognition of a lifetime of activism and fighting for Indigenous rights. "It's pretty humbling to be included with the other artists I see are on this list," she told As It Happens following the announcement. "I know we can make good changes — not only within our own communities but beyond our communities where help is really needed in understanding the tangle of colonialism."

Western University student getting a PhD in Drake (CBC Kitchener-Waterloo)

YOLO? Western University student Amara Pope is bringing a little academia to the world of the 6ix God. After writing — and having published in an academic journal — her master's thesis on Drake's "hybrid cultural identities," she's building on that research for her PhD. "I still love his music," she explains, "but as an academic I'm just very much in awe in the ways in which he was able to brand himself through these different forms of identity politics and really generate so much marketing and attention to his image." What a time to be alive.

Sonny Assu intervenes in Emily Carr's 'colonized' landscapes in new exhibit (q)

Think of it as a modern mash-up — one with an interventionist purpose. Artist Sonny Assu's latest project We Come to Witness sees him "in dialogue" with Emily Carr, with Assu overlaying abstract shapes on the Group of Seven painter's classic works. He first began the project as "a way to place an Indigenous voice back onto [the] colonial landscapes" — but through working on it, he's gained a deeper understanding of Carr's original pieces.

Leonard Cohen to be revered at Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art (CBC Montreal)

"Unrelentingly interesting." "Profoundly Montreal." "Totally planetary." These are just a few of the ways organizers of a new exhibition celebrating Leonard Cohen described the man at its heart. With the commemoration arriving at Montreal's Museum of Contemporary Art this November, CBC Montreal gave us the first glimpse of all it will entail: multidisciplinary artworks, performance pieces, immersive musical installations, original CBC productions and more will honour a legendary musician whose legacy needs much more than words to capture.

Montreal filmmakers' doc Rumble exposes unheralded influence of Indigenous musicians (CBC Indigenous)

Everyone knows it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock n roll — but for early Indigenous innovators, not getting proper credit for their contributions to popular music often held them back from holding their deserved place in music folklore. Now, a new documentary is aiming to change that. Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World — which just held its world premiere at Sundance — traces the influence of Indigenous artists on legends like Slash and Iggy Pop, dusting off decades of neglected history in the process.

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