DJ KOOKUM
She further honed her technical craft through the Electronic Music program at the Art Institute of Vancouver, mastering audio engineering and production. While she started her journey spinning strictly house music, her extensive DJ career has molded her into a highly adaptable, multi-genre crowd-reader who loves dropping unexpected surprises. Raised on hip-hop and an early obsession with EDM—her signature sound is a fierce, globe-spanning soundscape. Expect hip-hop edits seamlessly blended with heavy bassline house, trap, bass music, and infectious global sound engineered to make the bass rattle and the booty shake.
To fully channel her lifelong passion for electronic music, she is now stepping into a thrilling new era under the alias Kooks. While the DJ Kookum name will continue to thrive—bringing her signature multi-genre, all-ages sets to diverse dancefloors and community events—Kooks is her dedicated vessel for the underground, built strictly to dominate heavy-hitting music festivals and the global EDM circuit.
Her dynamic career has taken her from weekly club residencies at Vancouver’s Biltmore Cabaret and Granville Room to massive international stages. As the former DJ for the hip-hop duo SNRK, she spent years touring across North America, Europe, and Australia. In recent years, she has brought her electrifying sound to global platforms like the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, Jazzahead in Bremen, Germany, and the Internationale Tanzmesse in Dusseldorf. Back home, she has commanded the decks at the legendary Bass Coast Music Festival and the iconic Skratch Bastid’s BBQ. Also, a passionate fashionista, she is a highly sought-after DJ for high-profile runway events, scoring the Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week, Edmonton Indigenous Fashion Week, and the Runway of Rezilience in Toronto.
Beyond the stage, she is a dedicated producer crafting beats and custom edits in Ableton, with dreams of one day opening her own studio to foster emerging artists. But at her core, she is driven by a profound mission: to shatter stereotypes and prove that Indigenous women belong on the world's biggest stages. She has fiercely paved the way for other female artists, taking up crucial space in a male-dominated industry. Believing deeply that music is medicine, her goal is to create a healing space on the dancefloor where people can let loose and forget their troubles. Ultimately, whether she is uniting a community event as DJ Kookum or commanding a festival rave as Kooks, she aims to inspire Indigenous youth to relentlessly chase their passions, living by a powerful truth: our people have been through enough, and it is our time to shine.
An unstoppable powerhouse behind the decks and a proud member of the Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation, Vancouver-based DJ Kookum is a master at commanding any stage she touches. Born from a childhood nickname that perfectly captures her energy—she is quite literally "cooking " on the decks live on stage—she has spent the last 15 years breaking boundaries and demanding space in the music industry. Growing up in Cold Lake, she was the kid burning CDs for friends, deeply influenced by a mother who instilled a lifelong love of live music. Though young Kookum never imagined she would become a DJ, she managed to get her hands on a pair of CDJs and a mixer and her entire world changed.