Nuanced. - 61. Shayla Raine: Indigenous Writer & Author of "The Way Creator Sees You"

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

Shayla Raine is a Cree author from Maskwacis, Alberta. Her book, The Way Creator Sees You, is about a Plains Cree boy who struggles to accept his Indigenous features after facing adversity at school. In this conversation, Shayla shares her experiences growing up, and her journey into writing and publishing The Way Creator Sees You. Her book has been highlighted by Indiginews, the Toronto Star, APTN News and CBC. Aaron Pete asks about her childhood, experiences in the Canadian military, the journey of writing her first book, and the documentary series she is working on that releases in 2022.Shayla Raine used writing as a creative outlet growing up, and now uses writing as a form of healing. Shayla self-published “The Way Creator Sees You” on Amazon in January 2022. The poem was a creative side-project Shayla did while editing her manuscript, Mimikwas. Shayla is currently finishing the editing stage of her fiction novel which is about a Cree girl that uses physical activity as a form of healing from trauma. Shayla is currently working on a documentary called Decolonizing Wellness with her partner, Ryan Oliverius. Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

This episode is sponsored by the Real Estate Foundation of BC. REFBC is a philanthropic organization that supports sustainable, equitable, and socially just relationships with land and water. Learn more about the foundation's grants and initiatives at REFBC.com. My name is Shayla Rain. I am 23 years old. I'm from Muscochee's Alberta and Plains Cree. I'm currently studying and residing and working on the understanding. seated silk territory out here. I am a third year human kinetic student at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, an independent author. And yeah, I wear many hats. I dabble into art a little bit. So yeah, and I'm a mother too. That's incredible. Can we start because I think it's so

valuable for people to be able to hear about what it means to be from your community. Because I think the problem we're facing right now is we treat all indigenous communities like they're the same. Like most people are now understanding there's indigenous people, but we're still in such the early phases. Can you tell us about your community and what your experience was there? Yeah, so I grew up on, I'm an enrolled member and I grew up on the Kisputnak tribe in Louis Bull, which is one of the four reserves in Muscochese, Alberta, on Treaty 6 Territory, Central Alberta. So my experience growing up out there, I was raised like about 60-40 with my grandparents and my mom, so I would live with my mom for a little bit, then I would go and I would live with my

my Gukum and Muslim, my grandma and grandpa. For me, when I think about my childhood, I always felt like there was like this glass bubble, you know, over my Gokam and Muslim's house, because I always felt so safe and protected there. We lived on like an acreage out in like the, like the countryside of the reserve, and, you know, we had a long driveway, we had like a quiet area and everything. So that's why, and it was also a sober household too, my Gokam-a-M-A-M-A-M-A-M-A-M-A. That's why I loved being there so much. And living with my mother, too, she lived in, like, the town site area of Kisputtnock, and just some of my experiences growing up on both sides is we never had clean drinking water, and there still isn't clean drinking water in Kisputtnock. And it was just one of

those things that was just normal to me growing up. Like, I never really, like, I never really thought too far into it. We did have, there is some gang violence up on the town site area where my mom lived, partying gang violence. There, I do, there is like one experience where someone was broken to our house and like stole some things when we weren't there. And then another experience when I was pregnant with my daughter and someone did break into our house, but like not, they didn't get too far because like we pushed the door and everything. And when I was pregnant with my daughter, that's when I realized that it's probably not an ideal environment to be raising my daughter in. I don't want to be living in fear like that anymore. So I moved in with my

Gukkima Muslim when I was 14. And I wrote out the rest of my pregnancy there and then I started raising my daughter there. So I would say that like my grandparents, they played a huge role in raising me and giving me good values and just making me feel really protected. You know, they had that they had that safe and sober environment where I was able to grow and my daughter was able to grow. So that's so beautiful. It sort of reminds me my mother was a part of the 60 scoop. So she was actually raised in a Caucasian household by a registered nurse who saw the care she was going to need. And I just remember seeing her life circumstance. And she had like what is net what we sold ended up being like a million dollar home. She always had cookies and milk and like anything you could kind of want as a kid. But then being at home, money was always a concern. There were other people in our building that were committing crimes and struggling with. drug use and so going to her place like yours it felt like an escape and it felt like I want to live this life this is where I'd like to go and if I can work towards being in that circumstance over continuing in this circumstance how did that shape you knowing that there was one circumstance

crime and another circumstance sort of peace safety warmth love what was that sort of like did that develop you yeah well yes it did it really I'm really grateful that my grandparents were sober and everything to give me that like environment where I could like you know sleep in peace and not worry about like not worry about like the crime happening around and everything um so sorry what was the question I'm just curious as to how that shaped you like did that like motivate because to me I I'm very motivated now like I enjoy doing 12 hour days trying to make an impact on other people trying to do good because I see that that can pay life dividends that you can feel warm and loved and valued if you work towards that rather than the life of crime and

living that life. So I see like that motivates me and seeing what I like to work towards motivates me. And it seems like that motivated you as well to go get an education, try and provide for your family and make sure they feel safe and loved. I'm just interested to know. It really, you know, being growing up with my, my Gukum and my Musa, it really did motivate me to work hard and make sure that I can provide that for my daughter and also my grandchildren. too. I always wanted, because they were my safe space growing up, I wanted to, it did shape me into trying to become my daughter's safe space and my future grandchildren's, my future chopin's, great-grandchildren's be there safe space and provide that home. And, you know,

my Muslim is a really hard worker. He's a businessman and he was running his own busing company for, and he just retired last year. So, so that was like, and he started that when my mom was a baby. so he was always a really hard worker and my Gukkum worked at his busing company until she was like in her 60s so they were really really hard workers and they would always wake up first thing in the morning they always taught me like you know don't sleep in until noon you know you know like always keep busy always do something don't ever do nothing you know even if you're like lost in life and you don't know what to do have something that you're doing don't stay idle and everything and um so my Muslim and my Gukkum they did really inspire me to work hard because that they showed me that hard work gets you those spaces and so that's beautiful can you tell us where that came from for them do you do you know what made them because having a clean household where there's not alcohol there's not parties taking place that can be challenging when the community around you has such a strong culture do you know where that came from for them yeah well um i don't really i i wouldn't really know um i feel like i would actually have to like sit down

and asked them about that, but from my own experience and, like, just the conversations that I had around it, they weren't always sober. They were, they both went to Ermanskin Residential School and they both, like, they both have been through some things that they don't really talk about. And I know that they've been through some things is because, like, they never told me about residential school until I was, like, in my late teens. I had to ask about it. That's when I learned about it. So it was never a conversation in our, house. We never really talked about that stuff. But I did, I did know that, like, my, um, that my Muslim did struggle with alcoholism for many, many years, decades. Um, so I know it wasn't easy

for him to, like, stay sober and everything. There's been times where he's fallen off the wagon. Um, my Gukum, too, I know that she has, like, the most outstanding patients because, um, she's never had, she's never had drugs or alcohol in her system. She's always been sober. So she had to, like she had a lot of patience, a lot of love, and a lot of faith that like being there for him, for my Muslim, and for her family, it had a brighter picture at the end, you know, because now, now they have, they've had a clean household for as long as I've been alive, so 23 years and everything. And now it's just like all I've known was peace. So yeah. You also talked about how you were sort of bullied or called names. Can you tell us about how

that sort of shape to you? Yeah. So Musco cheese is surrounded by two small towns in central Alberta. So there's Wataskin and Pinocca. And I went to school in Pinocca. And Pinocca is known for, honestly, I think it was one of like the biggest like stampedes in Canada. I don't know if it's the big, no, Calgary has to be bigger than that. But I think it's like the second biggest. And Pinocca, they really thrive on that. And it's really right wing and farmers. and really predominantly white town. So I went to a Catholic school there, and that's where I did face some racism.

I was always, like, one of the only native students in the class, and I remember from, like, a very young age, like, younger than my daughter in, like, around kindergarten time, that's when I started to really realize that I was different from a lot of my peers. And it was, I, like, kind of stood out a little bit. And so that was, like, my experience. And then, like, growing up,

as soon as we, like, got a little bit older, like, around grade six. And that's when you really start to see, um, students, like, their, um, other, like, peers around you, how they're being raised, like, what information their parents are feeding them. And, um, I remember that day so, um, so vividly, it was like during recess and there is, uh, there was a kid in my class. And he was known as like the, as like the farmer boy and everything. And he was, um, I remember he was like taunting me at recess. I don't know why. He just chose that day to taunt me and he was like walking around calling me like a drunk indian calling me a dirty Indian and everything and you know when I would walk away from him he would like still follow me and

like just taunt me and stuff like that and I remember um feeling feeling so like for lack of better terms like feeling ugly in that moment and feeling really like out of place like I don't belong like maybe his words are true and I had another fellow native classmate that was like with me and like really really hearing that too and we went into the bootroom because recess was done and he was still following me like oh like shela like you're you're a dirty drunk indian like dirty natives like they don't deserve anything saying like little things like that and the guy i was with he was getting really really sick of it so he pushed him and he pushed him into the trash can he fell right into the trash can and then after that i was like i saw that and i was like okay i'm

staying out of this and then um the the next period goes over it's recess again and we're all sitting there and we're talking to the teachers and he's you know crying and everything and saying like oh like they pushed me into the trash can i didn't deserve it and then we're both saying you know what he was saying these racist things to us we didn't know the word racist or anything at that time but we were saying like he called us this he called us that he made us feel like this he was bullying us he wouldn't leave us alone and i remember at the very end of that conversation it was us who had to apologize because we pushed him into the trash can you know so it was like so i had to really experienced that how do you say it like that that power imbalance and from that moment on that's when

I realized that um you know it's not really fair sometimes and like especially in like the town that I grew up and I realized I started to really see that um being indigenous and everything for other people like no matter what you do no matter how good of a person you are like you can't really shape their beliefs it's like it's so instilled in them from their parents and so yeah so that was like one of my very first encounters of experiencing racism in school, and that's something that has stuck with me for years. And for a while, I did feel very, how you say, like, very down about it because I was thinking at that time, I didn't know, I wasn't really educated on who I was as a native person. I wasn't really, I didn't know about residential schools. I didn't know

about the history. I wasn't taught it. Not really at home, not really at school. and all I knew was I was one of the only brown kids in my class and it made me and that's how I was treated because of it but eventually I came around and I told my Gokam and Muslim I told them everything that this guy said to me and I can't remember the exact words that they told me but I remember from that day forward I had to my Muslim was telling me be proud of who you are as a native person

you know and then telling and then saying that like basically this is native land and everything and it was like stolen taken over a little bit of that and so from that day forward I was like I had his words in the back of my mind and everything and at first I didn't really believe it like to like to say like I'm native and I'm proud of it and everything I didn't really fully believe it but I would have to keep saying that and because it was a matter of survival in those predominantly white right wing conservative schools right what was the harder challenge being called names or having of a better term, the system, the teacher, the person you went to, sort of pick the wrong

side where they, like, you have to say, you have to apologize, even though, A, you didn't push him in. And B, you were the one being bullied. Like, that's, that's a deeper portrayal where you look at the system and you go, I'm not going to get like a fair shake in this conversation. And so which one stuck with you more? Was it the names or was it the, or was it both? It was a little bit of both, but mostly the power imbalance, how you go to these teachers, these people in power who are there they're supposed to protect you, and then they don't. And that's when it made we realize that it's not just my peers and everything. It's people above me. It's my teachers. And then from there, I was actually able to really pick out teachers that would treat me differently and everything.

Like, for example, a couple of years after that, I was at the beginning of grade eight, and I was living with my mother and with my mother and everything my mother was in a very like she was in a abusive relationship at the time so there was some domestic violence under my household and me and my older sister were living there and I remember this one this one time we didn't get a lot of sleep that night and because there was some fighting back and forth between my mother and her then ex-boyfriend and I remember I was just like feeling a little bit low in everything the next day because I didn't get a lot of sleep that night. And I wasn't in the great mood. So I remember we were in math class and I had my head down. And my teacher at

the time, he was like, he was teaching a math lesson and I had my head down. And he said, he was like, Shayla, is there anything going on in your house that I need to know about? Like, perhaps I need to contact social services. And I put my head up and I was like, what? Because I was like tired. I was like, what? And he was like, well, I couldn't help but notice that you and your sister both had your heads down in class today? Is there something going on in the home that you need to tell me about? Because, you know, you're a math class right now, and both you and your sister have your head down.

And, you know, I would have, I feel like if he pulled me aside after class, instead of asking me that in front of all of my peers, I would have definitely opened up and been like, yeah, you know what? Like, there is some things going on, and I might need, like, some extensions for my assignments. But he didn't do that. He instead, he resorted to asking me that in front of all of, my peers and I remember I felt like this intense shame you know so I remember you know experiences like

that remind me of the very first time where I wasn't protected by my teachers that intention too it doesn't sound like he was asking the question with the intent of supporting you or improving the situation it was more just to shame you it didn't seem like he was there to help yeah I was able to see right through that and I was I from there I just like I'd never I never really open up to him about that stuff at all. Yeah, I really hate that because, like, I know teachers get into a mindset of, like, they're there to help, they're there to lift others up, and that's good, but, like, they stress so much about the grade or the class.

And the thing I constantly critique, particularly with my partner, is she views herself as not a math person based on a grade 10 math class. Like, this is, your dedication is not to that grade 10 math class. You've got peers, you've got other influences going on in your life, you've got a whole other world going on. Maybe you are experiencing abuses at home and challenges at home. So to think that everybody's their best when they're in grade 10 in a classroom is like, it seems like silliness. Yet so many people go, I'm not a math person. I'm not a science person. And it's like you could be if you were able to like clearly and coherently focus on the topic without pressures and without

judgment and without having a grade at the end of the class and saying, okay, well, maybe I just need to improve. And like, maybe I just need to focus on this, that or the other thing. And, but we put time parameters on you need to know this by this day and if you don't then you're behind and then there's such shame in that that you start to try and hide it rather than going wow i should seek out support and help and i think that when people like yourself choose to seek out support and talk to people and say hey this is what happened to me it creates the space for others to say maybe i'm maybe i could be a math person maybe i am not defined by this person or that person and i think that that's so important that people hear that that inspirational message

Where did you go? Because you ended up having a child, I guess, to your own standard, fairly young. What was that? Was that scary at all? Or was that just a next step for you? It was definitely scary because I was going to the Catholic school at the time when I did get pregnant. So around that time, that's when I like kind of dropped out of that school. And I went to an outreach, you know, and I was trying to keep everything really on the download, keep it really secret because I knew that I was very young. but you know how small towns go and everything I had one best friend and then that best friend told these people and everything so eventually by the time that I returned to the public school system where we were in where I wasn't in the outreach doing modules I was in a classroom setting everyone already knew that I was a teen mom so it was a little bit scary it really was because it wasn't just being like being a young mother and going through the changes of pregnancy so young when I don't even know who I am myself but I was also a involved in a very, in a relationship that looked a lot like the relationships my mother was

in. So, you know, that intergenerational trauma, I, I wasn't aware of it at the time. I really wasn't. It was normal for me to be involved with people who didn't treat me good. And so it, there was that factor. It had, it did damage, like, my, my, my self-esteem and my motivation to, like, get things done to, to be in school and everything. It really, it really took a lot out of me to be a young teen mom involved in an abusive relationship and not having a lot of friends being really isolated from my friends and my family and everything. So there was that factor. I did I was dealing with a lot more. My mother would say that I that I have like 10 times more on my plate than other people my age do and just to like you know take it one step at a time and everything and um I did have my

family there with me. But there was, I actually spoke at a conference recently talking a little bit about being a teen mom and everything and really pinpointing that that breaking point where I didn't want to go down that path anymore of really being in like the cycle of intergenerational trauma and really wanting to change it from, you know, being more like my grandparents in the future than being, than like, you know, living in the cycles of trauma. And on that speech, I shared with people that one thing that happened to me when I was 16 was I ended up in a woman's shelter in Muscochise. And it was, it really, it was really one of those things where all these things had to happen to me to put me in that spot. Because in that spot, that's where I realize, you know, I never want to be here ever again.

I don't belong here. I belong, you know, in a safe environment. that's predictable i belong in a loving home and everything and that's when i realized that i need to start living for my daughter i need to i need to heal for her and at the at the time i didn't really know what healing meant i really didn't know anything about that but i took the first step of going to therapy and through therapy i was my therapist my very first one she gave me a journal and that's where she's like do you write and i was like well i used to write as a child i used to make comic books and everything and she said well i really strongly encourage you to start writing in the

journal. And then that's when I started realizing how therapeutic writing was for me and going to therapy, you know, reconcealing all of my relationships with my family and raising my daughter in that safe and sober household and, you know, really, really healing my inner wounds and everything and fostering healthy relationships that got me in like a good, you know, dynamic with my immediate family and they supported me so much because they knew that my in my heart my daughter was there and I wanted to do good for her and with that support I was able to graduate high school on time so so yeah it was that's amazing a lot that happened a very the very beginning of being a teen mom it was a really dark place for me but I had to get to that rock bottom to learn those lessons

that mountaintops could never teach me that's incredible I think that that's really well put and that was going to be my next question is it seems like I've met people in my life who are struggling, but they're not at that point yet where they're ready to let go of the vices, let go of what ails them. There's people who struggle with drug use and they're like, it's not a problem yet. I've got it managed. And they're justifying it so much to themselves that things are going to be okay. Just another couple of weeks and things will improve. And yet things, you have to hit a point where do you have any advice for people who might be in that spot, who might be kind of telling everybody, I'm going to figure it out,

I'm getting my life together, I'm going to start to take those steps. But in a few weeks, I just want things to calm down. And they're always kind of looking towards the future. What kind of clicked in that moment for you? Or was that something you were struggling with? To be honest, I would say the biggest thing for not just that situation, but for any situation at all, if you're in a slump and you feel like you can't get out of it, you don't necessarily have to believe in yourself at first. You just need to take action. And you can like, like for me, like I didn't know what healing was. All I did was take action and went to therapy. And through there, I start to gain momentum. And then I start to gain a lot of self-awareness. And then through seeing

how how much I healed, I was able to start really believing in myself. And I can't stress enough how important it is to also have the people close to you, believe you, and support you too. it's not one of those things where I did completely by myself I had the love of my mother I had the love of my grandmother my sisters my my immediate family I had their support and they believed in me and that was that was a lot that made quite the difference having that because people believed in me before I believed in myself and my therapist believed in me before I believed in myself so just take action and sometimes you know you have the courage to take that leap you know and then through taking action that's where you

really gain the awareness and the confidence to keep going. And that's when you're like, oh, wow, I can do this. And then you start believing in yourself down the road. There's this great quote that we accept the love we think we deserve. How did you let go of the negative influence and strive towards better? Was that part of that motivation? It sounds like was your daughter and saying, I don't want this for you. And so I need to go break this cycle.

It seems like that's something that people need is like it needs to be bigger than yourself. It needs to be something where if it's just about you, then you can go to the casino all weekend long and blow all your money because there's no consequence. But when there's someone else who's going to be impacted by your decisions, then there's like, okay, but I have to do it this way. How did that kind of play a role for you? So that's one of the gifts, I believe, of being a young mother is that I was still a child myself. So I was able to really see myself and my daughter. You know, I was only 15, 16, and I was able to really remember. like big moments in my childhood, especially being like raised in like a household where there was

domestic violence. I remember having to grab my younger siblings and put us in a room and keep them company, you know, just to, you know, block out the noise going on. And I remember, you know, having to do things like that. And I just remember like just the feeling, you know, like, of like, geez, why can't they just get it together, you know? And feeling, you know, like I wasn't loved in that moment, even though, like, my mother loved me so much. Like, and, like, I don't doubt her love. But in that moment, as a child, you feel like there's these different priorities, you know? And I remember feeling, like, unseen and, like, a little bit unloved and feeling like I had too much on my plate having to deal with the domestic violence going on in my home. And

when I had a child and everything, I was able to, like, see through Ayla's eyes around when she was six months old, that's around the time when I ended up in a woman's shelter. And I was able to see, you know, I don't want her to, like, be hiding under tables and everything, trying to block out the noise of fighting and everything. I remember thinking to myself, I don't want that to be her. That was my childhood, but it doesn't have to be her childhood. So having that, you know, really being aware of my daughter and, like, how she's being raised, how her experiences are shaping her and everything.

So I really stressed that, like, I don't want any fights to be. happening in front of my daughter because I just know how lonely that is as a child and so that that really did help me that's incredible one of the challenges I think people face though is that those people seem to reach out the people who are worst for you or who have maybe not your best intentions in mind they seem to try and scrape their way back into your life in one way or another was that ever a challenge um so what like sorry can you like refer to like are you like in regards to like my like my stepfather No, the person you were with at the time who is not treating you well, those people tend to want to kind of reenter your life and they try and get a foothold back in when they start seeing you succeed or when they start seeing your life go a different direction. Was that ever a challenge? Yeah, I would say it was like a little bit of a thing, you know, and it had to, through going through therapy and everything, I had to gain a lot of self-control to know that like to really pinpoint the manipulation tactic.

and everything the cycle you know oh it starts it starts out with love bombing and everything but don't fall into it because sooner down the road they fall back to their old patterns and everything so it was um after the women shelter situation and having to really like um remove myself from there it was a lot it had to take a lot of self-control to not fall back into what was familiar to me because familiar isn't healthy i had to i had to make up a new familiar for me and like what you said like we accept the love that we think we deserve, I had to really learn, go inwards and really think about what I deserve. And for me, it was something that wasn't in my vocabulary. It was almost like I didn't really envision a life outside of my trauma that I had to really redefine. What is it

to be in a healthy relationship? What is it to have this unwavering love for yourself where when someone tries to step on you, when they try to manipulate you and disrespect you, you have to put your foot down and put up those boundaries and it was it was hard it took took years for me to really like know what what my boundaries were and you know really really stand rooted in who I was as a person and you know yeah I think that that's the challenge because we sympathize with the flawed individuals we can see like they didn't have good parents they didn't have a good upbringing and so we can empathize to a certain extent with their circumstance and then we don't want to be another person who throws them to the side, but it's about first you kind of have to take care of yourself and

your family before you can look outward and say, I can give that hand up. But when you're just kind of climbing out of hell, it's tough to give that hand up because you're not out yet. It's not like you have that piece and that everything's going to be okay. But you said something before and I just want to make sure everything connects. You talked about comic books. Can you tell us about making comic books? Because I think that that will likely lead into the journals and then writing and creating books. Yeah, so as a child, I was always drawing and always writing. My older cousins, they read manga all the time.

So that was one of the first books that I read was manga, and I loved it. I just loved, like, the comic books. And, like, the way they drew their characters, I always thought that, like, anime drawings were so cute and I just loved them so much. So I would always, like, try and copy it. And so starting really young, I think grade one, starting in grade one, I started making my own little comic books and everything. and I would even make them go, like, read them left to right, no, right to left and everything, the way manga books were.

So I started doing that really young. And then when I was in grade two, three, no, grade three and four, that's when I started showing my teachers and they would get it laminated. And looking back now, that was 100% a coping mechanism for me to, like, kind of escape the reality of what I was living in and really dive into this fantasy world and really, you know, thinking, oh, what would my perfect life be in everything? And then just like writing it down in the book. And then that really, that was the start of my writing journey. That seems like it would be so important for people to do in their lives because we start to lose what our potential might look like.

And when you're young, people say, like, what do you want to do? And you say doctor, police officer, lawyer, judge, all these great things. But then at a certain point, it's like, be realistic. And all the things that you ever wanted to be seem out of reach. And I think that that's so unfortunate because there's lots of doctors who start at 40. There's lots of lawyers who start at 40. There's lots of people who find their passion later in life. But you get into a rut and you start to think that this is life.

And I'm just interested to know how that journaling impacted you because it sounds like things started to calm down and you were able to say, what do I want for my life? And so what was that kind of reestablishing, rekindling that relationship with like your dream life? What did that look like for you? So when I started journaling and everything in therapy, it was strictly journaling and just like, you know, the thoughts in my head. And sometimes I would get a little bit creative, but I wouldn't really get too far into it because I wasn't really, I didn't really have that, like, that passion like I did when I was a child. In that moment, I was just focusing on healing and surviving. And sometimes I would start, when I was around 18, that's when I started to really get back into poetry and really start like, like researching in my old time like how do you write poetry and stuff like that so i remember um around 18 And that's when I started writing poetry, just like things to keep to myself. And I never really wanted to share it with the world. I honestly never thought I would ever share my writing with the world.

But one thing that did happen, that going back to what you said about, like, thinking more realistically is when I was in high school and I was thinking about applying for universities and stuff, I didn't know what I wanted to do at all. But all I knew was that I wanted to get the heck out of Central Alberta, just because of my history, you know, being a teen mom, being in an abusive. relationship, I truly felt like I just needed a new, like, a change of scenery so I could really figure out who I was as a person. So I remember one day in high school, my academic advisor comes up to me and I'm sitting with my friend and we're talking and we're in a cafeteria

and she says like, oh, Shayla, like, what are you thinking about for a university? Are you going to start applying? Like, what are you thinking? We can get started on these applications. And I told because I had been single for about three years at that time and I've been consistently in therapy so I was like really feeling you know I'm on the grad list I can do anything I never thought that I would be on the grad list graduating with people that I grew up with so I was like I can do anything I had just like fire in me so I told her I said you know I don't really know where I want to go for university but I want to go somewhere far like I want to go out

a province I want to go somewhere that offers a study abroad program so I can like travel abroad and like maybe study in Italy for a semester and I remember saying that to her and she said well Sheila that's not realistic you know because you're a teen mom so let's start thinking like realistically like red deer college and I remember in that moment my friend was like man like don't shoot down her dreams like and she was like I'm not shooting down her dreams I'm just being more realistic you know and I remember in that moment I had just enough confidence to start thinking of myself in those spaces, but not enough confidence to like get momentum going, to take action, you know. So I listened to her and I, um, you know, it's crazy like that fire in me that I worked so hard for. It was so easily

like put out by someone who didn't really know me that much. So I listened to her and I went to Red Deer College for a semester and I failed miserably because I just like I didn't, I didn't like anything that I was doing. And in the moment I thought, you know, looking back now, I can be like, oh, it's because I was at the wrong university. But in the moment, I thought that I didn't belong in university, period, because I was just like, you know, man, if I'm failing all my classes here, would I be failing my classes in Italy? Like, maybe my academic advisor was right. So I dropped out of school, and I joined the military and everything. And, yeah.

Okay. You didn't know that? I did not know that. I did not find that in my research. Yeah. So I did join the military. I was in the reserves for a little bit. And I did that to, you know, make my Muslim proud because I do come from a military family.

I'm the fourth generation in my family to serve and the first woman in my family to serve. So I was like, you know, I don't know what I'm going to do academics. So I'm just going to try and make my Muslim proud because I probably didn't make him proud when I got pregnant young. So I just did that. And through the military, I was able to really get that confidence back. And I was like, wow, you know, whatever strong I think I am, I am 10 times stronger than that. And then that's when I was like, you know, I, I, why don't I just apply? Like, you know, I don't have my academic advisor behind me telling me what to do.

Why don't I just apply to a different university out of province? So how did that strength come about? Was that through just hard labor of like running and realizing like, oh, I've only ever run like two kilometers and now I'm running like 20 or I'm doing things that I never thought I was capable of and just seeing. So like it was the fitness and the athletics that kind of shaped your opinion of yourself? 100% and also just the mental part of it too because in the military it's not just like it's not like a like a civilian workplace where it's like hey can you like do some filing please it's more like it's yelling it's swearing it's their purpose in the military is to break you down to see how strong you are so it was a lot of mentalness it was a lot a lot of mental toughness you know having people above me like saying these words to me and everything and really differentiating myself from them and saying like you know I don't have to take what they're saying you know I don't have to take what they're saying personally they're just trying to make me stronger and you know having that like the you know having the words of others and their actions not taking it personally and using it as fuel to make me stronger so I remember like we we went through a lot in the military a lot the training is not easy

physically or mentally so you really figure out your limits and everything so it had a lot to do with the physical part of it and the mental part of it that really like grew this confidence in me where I just, like, I wanted to see how much farther I can go. And I also, even though I was training in the military and learning a lot about myself, there was, like, this urge that, like, I needed to get out of, like, I need to get off of the res. And I needed to expand my horizons and see the world out there because at that moment, I'd never, I didn't even have a passport. I'd never flown, like, overseas or anything like that. So I just, like, I just knew that there was more to life.

And so I applied at UBCO, and I got in. And I moved here with no friends, no family in the province. I didn't know anybody. And then at UBCO, that's where my writing journey really took off. And it was because that's all I had was just myself and, you know, my ability to write and, like, really tell a story. And I had one professor, her name is Aisha Revengeron, and she was my English professor in my first year. And we had an assignment. It was a literary analysis, and I wrote about being in a sundance ceremony and preparing for it and everything.

And I remember when I was writing, I was like, this is the most creative I've written since I was a child. And I was reading it. And I was like, you know, this is actually pretty good. And I was a little shy about handing it in. And, you know, I was a little scared of like what she would like think and everything. But she told me that my writing was beautiful. And she said, please keep writing. And then from there, that's all I needed.

was just one person to tell me that my writing was beautiful because writing was so vulnerable for me at that moment. I'd never shared it with anyone ever since I was like in grade two and writing comics and stuff. So I shared that creative writing for the first time in my life. And in that vulnerable moment, she told me how beautiful it was and to keep going. And that's all I needed. And then from there, it's like my writing journey just took off. That's a huge lesson for people is that that moment where you show someone something, whether it's a video, whether it's a piece of art, whether it's your writing, is that they're entrusting you with their everything, their passion. And I think that that's something we should teach maybe more in school, maybe more at home, is that like, when somebody brings you

something and says, like, look at what I made, that is like one of the most vulnerable moments for a person. Because in that moment, your thumbs up or your thumbs down really shapes whether or not they continue or what do they want to continue. I hate doing this, but I have to go back because this military experience is so interesting to me because we struggle with, we think of exercise merely as like physical fitness. And that's often what we think of. But I don't know if you've heard of people like David Goggins or Jock Willink. There's this other guy, Tim Kennedy.

They're very incredibly athletic people. They run like 240 miles in distance. And they do it all the time to show that they can for other people to. to go, maybe I can start running a kilometer, two kilometers, three kilometers, just to prove to other people that great things are possible with your body and that your body will meet you halfway. And I'm just interested, do you have any examples of how that military experience, like facing that adversity and how that shaped you? Because I think we often discount that the mental toughness that you build when you're running and you're like, I don't

think I can go anymore. And then you go another kilometer, another two kilometers. Do you have any experiences that you can share about that? Yeah. So much experience. in the military. I'm like, I'm forever grateful for my experience there because I wouldn't be who I am today without it. I think right off the bat, one of the first things is we did outdoor training during the Arctic Gortex where the Arctic weather came down into Alberta. So it was minus 40. And the one weekend it was minus 40. We had outdoor military training. So I remember there was people who were, um, they were getting frostbite on their nose. They were getting hypothermia. And we had to keep drinking hot water and everything. That's the first time I ever just

drank hot water. And we had to keep drinking hot water so we wouldn't get hypothermia. And I remember being really scared. And I remember like, you know, are we going to die out here? You know, this is scary. This is like, don't like everyone's inside and everything. And that's when I was really thinking, I'm like, what am I doing in the military right now? But then surviving that weekend and, learning how to navigate outside in minus 40 weather that really like that really showed me like wow i never thought i was able to really do that that's something that was just beyond my scope of like what i thought i would ever do in my life and it did gain a lot i did get a lot of confidence and another thing is that one of one of my other courses um i actually did face racism on my last

course that i went on and um i was told things like you know you know i'm gonna uh just talking about how, you know, indigenous people, they're like the equivalent to black people in America. That's how indigenous people are in Canada. I was being told that from like my fire buddies. And in that course, we had, it was the most mentally challenging because we were up for four days with no sleep. And when it was time to eat, we only had like two minutes to hound down our food and we had to get back.

It was, it was really tough. And I remember during that time, I was up for about three days at that moment. no sleep and around that time that's when people like like they're not thinking clearly right and then at the time that's when I was being told you know all these racist remarks from people and it's a little scary in that moment too because we have ammo we have people who know how to how to use rifles and everything and and when we're training and everything we're always thinking that you know we're in an actual war what would we do if we were in an actual battlefield and everything and to have my fire buddies not like to have that kind of hate towards me because I'm indigenous I remember thinking

that I was like I like I'm scared you know like I don't know like why like in the terms of a battlefield with this person just like let me go you know would they like not even save me or anything like that would they not look out for me the way I would look out for them and so that was one of the biggest challenges that I've had in the military was being like without sleep for four days in a row and then being told these things about like natives and, you know, having stuff like that happened. So it was a lot of like mentally challenging stuff, but I got through that course and I came out of it stronger. And then having that experience, it really reminded me of my experience in grade six when I was told that like I was a dirty Indian. So it really made me think, you know, I in that moment when I was like in the military, I already knew who I was as an indigenous person.

And I experienced the ceremonies. I saw, like, you know, I heard the teachings from my elders and everything. And I saw how beautiful we are when we come together for ceremonies and celebrations. So it was really not letting him get into my head, you know. So that was one of the biggest lessons. Can you tell us about attending those ceremonies and how that shaped you and what you held on to during that time? So ceremonies, there's something that's like, They're so, like, special to me.

But one thing that, like, I will share is when you're in ceremony, you don't have access to your cell phone. You can't go on your cell phone. What you're doing that whole time is you're praying. And through there, you're like, you know, I've experienced, I've experienced my prayers being answered afterwards. You know, you go there and you follow the protocol and then you, like, you bond with the people next to you and you pray. And then when you come out of ceremony, you're like, oh, wow, like, there's a whole. whole other like world out here and everything and then that's when you start realizing that like so many people are just glued to their phones and so that's that's one thing that I'll always appreciate

about ceremony is that it's really it's disconnecting myself from the modern world where everyone is obsessed with like social media and everything and in that moment that's when we're really like we're reconnecting with things that were once illegal for us to practice and yeah so that's it's remembering remembering to remember who we are as indigenous people yeah I think that that's one of the challenges we face now is like we're looking at meditation apps but they're on your phone like we're taking like half measures half steps towards genuine reconnecting with people and coming out of COVID we're seeing people want to reconnect and they're saying I don't want to do Zoom anymore and that's so important for us to connect and put other things away and

start to look at each other and like have long conversations about what your life meant and where you're at because I think that one of the my favorite parts of talking to people for three hours is being able to see them reconnect things with themselves and be like nobody's ever talked to me for three hours straight like all your conversations are 15 minutes at a coffee shop then you have to run and do this then you have to run and do that where you don't really get to sort through past memories and sort of put them to rest in a healthy way and I think therapy is a good spot for that but having your family and friends is where you're going to be able to do that all day every day like you only get to see like i went to counseling you only get to see that person once a week

once every two weeks where if you can make that with your family where you're having nightly conversations about your day then you can start to go yeah that person cut me off and they were rude but i'm just going to let that go because maybe they were in like you can start to let those frustrations go but you see some people and they're just angry at everything all the time and it's because they have like they have no peace they have no sense of warmth in their life that allows them to kind of go, yeah, everybody's going to make mistakes. That's okay. And it seems like that's sort of something you're trying to build. Was it tough moving here to BC? What was that initial phase like to be here? So it was quite lonely, to be honest, at first, because I don't have any friends

or family out here. So I had to really come out of my comfort zone and start like making connections with people. But over time, I started to realize, you know, I don't have to, like, I don't have to have my guard up and be like, you know, protect myself the way I did, like, growing up back in, like, you know, being the only native in a Catholic school and then being the teen mom in the school, you know, I didn't have this wall up anymore. So I just said, you know, I'm just going to show them who I am, who I truly am. And then people who are meant to be in my life, they will gravitate towards me naturally. And through that, I was really able to see that I'm like worthy of having good friends who are healthy and like supportive so yeah it was it was a

really tough transition phase and everything but um but yeah it was quite the transition was the was the teacher that you mentioned that had such a positive influence by approving your writing did you keep a connection with with her yeah you know she I actually I did a poetry collection last year with, I had a poetry class and I had a, for the first time in my life I made a poetry collection and she was in my acknowledgments and I, it was a little bit hard like keeping in contact with her a little bit because she's very busy and she is also, she has cancer and everything so she has a lot of time to like, she needs a lot of time to rest and so I remember dropping off my poetry collection with her. I sent her the link to my book when it was published

and, you know, when I actually started writing again in COVID and everything, writing fiction novels, because I do have a fiction novel right now, and I'm in the final stages of editing it, and I'm like, I'm really holding on to it because I really, I wanted it, I wanted to go somewhere where it's going to be taken care of really well. When I started writing that, I remember in my head, I was like, well, I have one person that believes in me, and that's Mrs. Rebendron. And I remember, like, really holding that to me.

And when I was writing and everything, I would send her like bits at a time. I'd be like, hey, what do you think about this, you know? And she would just give me encouragement, like, oh, keep going. I love it. And then last May, when I fully finished a novel and everything, I was like, I was like, I need, you know, people to look over this and give me their opinion. So I sent her the manuscript.

She was one of the first people to read my full manuscript. My partner hasn't even read my manuscript yet. So, like, she was, I really, really trusted her with it. And she took the time out, like probably hours out of her life, just to read through it and critique it and give me her constructive criticism and encouragement. So she has, she's still a very important person in my life. And we keep in contact with each other. Every time I have something new, I always send it to her because she is that one person who, she's the first person that believed in me. Wow.

And does she, does she recognize that? Does she see the influence that she had? I hope so. I really hope so because I tell her. tell her like how grateful I am for her. Okay, so you go to university. I'm just interested because your field of study is so far from perhaps you're writing. Was that by design? Are you like, I want to have different paths in my life? What was that decision? Can you tell people what you're doing for school? Yeah, so I'm in health and exercise sciences, so human kinetics. And I'm also,

I'm planning to minor in indigenous studies too. So one of the things is in my first year of University, I was in this program called the Access Program where I, you don't have a degree yet, but you're taking all these courses to see what degree you want. And I took a human kinetics course at the intro to it. And I was, that's when I realized, you know, growing up, I was always in sports. And that was really my outlet that, like, it was an outlet for all of my feelings. And it helped me grow confidence. And it helped me, you know, be strong. And, you know, so sports have always been important to me. And after sports running was important to me. So going to university, my first year, I was taking a human kinetics course and an indigenous studies course at the same time.

And that's when I realized, I learned about all the benefits of exercise of having a healthy diet and everything. And at the same time, I was learning about the history of indigenous people's health and how before, prior to colonization, indigenous people thrived in health in all systems from like spiritually, emotionally, physically, you know, all those systems. We had great diets. We were always in shape. We valued having healthy bodies and we lived long lives. And through colonization, you know, our hunting rights were taken away, our fishing rights, you know. And then we were into, then we had to, like, move onto these reservations where we had to get a pass from an Indian agent to leave. And then we relied on these Indian agents because our hunting rights were taken away.

And these Indian agents gave us rations of, like, flour and, you know, oil. and saturated fats and we were just like we were introduced to this new what they call it the colonization of the body and you know so I was able to see you know growing up you know my grandparents they both have type 2 diabetes and are we I never always like really saw fresh fruit in my house growing up and everything so I started to realize you know I don't want to have you know diabetes and everything I want to live a long life I want to learn about hunting I want to learn about gathering I want to decolonize and go back to those ways. So I really took those two classes and I used that as, you know, something that I would really love to study. And although I am an author and I'm publishing books on the side, I'm also working on a documentary right now with my partner called decolonizing wellness. We got a grant from Tell a Story Hive so we can do this documentary and I'm taking all these things that I've learned from school about wellness through the Western world and wellness through the indigenous world and everything,

mixing them together as sort of like, you know, a series where we can talk about how we, how we as indigenous people today can decolonize our wellness in all aspects. So I do wear many hats. And I love what I'm studying in school. It brings just a greater sense of purpose so I can live a healthy life to provide for my children

and my grandchildren so I can, you know, when I have little choppons, Greek grandchildren running around, Hopefully I can still be like walking with them at least, you know, so I can see them so I can live a long healthy life without these diseases that were caused from colonization. It's not even just physical diseases. It's a mental ailments too, depression, you know, low self-esteem anxiety, all that stuff. It's, you know, colonization plays such a big role in those with indigenous communities. So that is something that I'm very, very passionate about.

And I'm so glad that I have this amazing partner that will work with me on this creative outlet because I've always been a creative person, you know? So like what you said, like I feel like I wear many hats and there's many different things that you can do. I don't want to put myself in this box and everything. I want to do as many things as I want to do in this lifetime and study everything that's passionate that I'm passionate about. Okay. So when did that, when did you realize that was possible? Because there's got to be a certain point where you're like, I don't know what my life's going to look like. things look pretty dreary. Now all the doors are sort of opening. You've got opportunities to make a difference to change the circumstances of the next generation. Did you see that in the

future of like maybe one day I could be making a documentary, writing books, being a published author, like sharing information and encouraging people to reach their full potential? Was that like the goal or has this just one door after another and then realizing, wow, I could do all these things. It was one door after the other and this is the beautiful thing about moving away for university and like getting yourself out of your comfort zone and you know when I moved here with no family or friends in the province and that was the best decision I made in my life because I took these classes that opened up all these doorways for me and I really saw it and one of the biggest moments for me is after my first semester after I took that first human connectics class

I had to write a lifetime research assignment and we had to pick from about like 10 topics, about, you know, you have to do extensive research on this topic with health and talk about how that's going to shape why you're studying human kinetics. None of those topics had anything to do with indigenous people. And we actually didn't learn about, like, indigenous health, really, in that first year. So I was, like, thinking, you know, I'm taking this intro to human kinetics, and then I'm taking indigenous studies. And I, and at the same time, I was reading Indian horse. So I was like reading this fictional story of this, this man who his hockey was his outlet from residential schools and everything.

So I was just really seeing all the connections. And I was like, you know, I reach out to my prof and I told her my idea. I want to, I want to like do a research assignment that isn't on this list, but it has to do about the like how physical health, like physical activity can help heal indigenous people from trauma today. And she was like, sure, I've never heard anybody. do that before, but go ahead. And then through that, I was doing my research and I realized there is not a lot of research on indigenous health, not up to date at least. They're all really like from the early 2000s. But now, now within the past few years, I've seen a lot come out, but at that moment in time, it was so hard for me to like find, you know, research articles that

were within the past five years that could help support my work. So I did, I ended up finding, I reached out to his name is Dr. Braden Tahoei. He's a, he's Maori and he has. Oh, from New Zealand? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, and he works at the university. And I met him around the same time.

And it was a little workshop event. It was called decolonizing physical activity. So I attended that. And he was there and I reached out to him and I told him, you know, I'm doing this research assignment, but I can't find any research. So he sent me about three articles right away of recent research, backing up my, my idea. not my idea, but like my, um, my argument that physical activity and nutrition can help heal trauma today for indigenous people. So I was like, yes. So I wrote my whole paper on that and then

at the very end of it, I got 100% on it. Wow. Actually, no, I'm lying. I had 99% and I got docked one mark because it was too long. I went over the word limit because I was so passionate about it. But, you know, having that my first A plus, I was like, wow. And this is something that my prof said she's never seen before. So I was, so that was one thing. I'm like, wow. there needs to be more research on indigenous health. And I need to do my part on the scholar side to make sure that there's more research on it and, you know, do my best to study it and then use it on my walk of life. That's incredible because, yeah, you get so disconnected from your food and you think of McDonald's

or Subway and there's this feeling that you can just eat it and it doesn't mean anything. But we had the pleasure of going over to my partner's dad's place and he grows almost everything himself. And so he's like, oh, like it's tough to grow. this life and then have to take like take parts of it away like there's a there's a connection to it and she convinced Rebecca convinced me to start we go to like local growers rather than going to save on to get our stuff and it I'm one of those people who's like I'm pretty against the woo-woo stuff but when we tried it it doesn't taste anything like you take the two tomatoes they don't taste anything alike one tastes like water and one tastes like a

tomato yeah and so it's so interesting to be able to start to connect with your food and have a story around it and for indigenous people that would have been how it always was is that like in Chiluac we have a spot called le chiam and it's where wild strawberries grow so you have connections to oh we had to go to this spot to go get these strawberries and like everything comes with a story and so you have maybe this fruit salad filled with fruits from around your area and then there's a connection to it and there's a story with oh and then I saw a cougar when I was grabbing these strawberries and oh I saw like this beautiful eagle over with like and you have like a connection when you're eating the food together where right now it's like nothing is intentional you have no idea

where your cucumbers are from or where you're salads from or where anything you're getting is from and then there's this sense of disconnect and like it doesn't matter what I'm eating doesn't matter and you get like calorie counts but they don't mean anything to you personally of like a connection but when you have like a really good home cooked meal there's something different about it because the person is like showing you their writing they're proud of what they've made for you and they put in and love and care and there's something we all acknowledge that like when something's made with love it's better but imagine if your food like was grown with love rather than on this giant farm where the farmers trying to make it at scale there's no love being put into each and every cherry

and i'm sure some farmers would be like i do my best but when you're growing it yourself and when you're cultivating your hands are in that soil there's like a different connection there's a bit of meditation in trying to get at the food there's like there's so many benefits to reconnect with the land and I think we're starting to see people take those steps forward but it's just funny because when you hear about people wanting to be more natural this is again where indigenous people we started from and so it's just interesting to see like it come sort of full circle where everybody's like non-gmo I don't want antibiotics and it's like hey we were never doing those things like that was never a part of our plan yeah wow that you just like you hit it right on the

nail that is exactly it and do you believe in like you know the energy you put into your food, it really affects, like, the way it tastes and everything, because one of the biggest teachings that indigenous people have is that, you know, when you're making your food and you're preparing it, either for your family or for a feast of people, you know, you always put good, loving thoughts into it, good prayers, and then it tastes good, and then that energy, people are eating that energy, and they can feel it, like, that gratitude. And it's so different than when, you know, I worked at McDonald's before, I was, like, stressed out making burgers and stuff and I you know it's different when you go to

McDonald's you get a quick food and everything and then like you then you wonder why you're angry after you wonder why you're irritable you wonder why you feel so tired and everything so yeah it's really you really hit it on the nail that energy and you can see it literally like when you think of like how subway squirts on your mayo versus if you're making a sandwich and you're making it for someone you care about you want to make sure that that mayo hits every corner you don't want to just like slop it on and like figure it out and it's it's not flavorful you take the care to do that with each thing. And when you're raising animals and you're trying to make sure if they're stressed out the whole time, I have very little argument now that now you're going to be

stressed because their bodies were physiologically stressed. I forget who said it, but they said when like black bears eat garbage, their meat isn't that good, which everybody's like, that sort of makes sense. But if they're living a really low quality life, if they're crushed into a cage, why wouldn't you think that the stress that they're under of not having any room and their mindset is going to impact the quality that they produce in terms of their eggs or in terms of the meat that they produce? And it's, we're at that time where like, vegans are like, we and vegetarians are like, we need to take care of the animals and that's why I don't eat that.

And so, like, I guess from an indigenous perspective, all I would respond with was that, like, it matters more that you show appreciation for it. you say a prayer when you're taking that life, that you demonstrate your gratefulness for that and that you take responsibility for the life you took and go be a better person afterwards. Treat the person you're dealing with nicer because you just took a life. And so you have like obligations now and like an onus to do better in your community to to think larger. But it's so easy when you're at McDonald's to be like, oh, like who's this cow from?

Like I don't know this cow. So who cares? But when you feel that onus, I think the onus that. vegans and vegetarians feel is good but how I would play it out would be like I want to show respect by treating others better and owning that I am like a person that eats meat then now I have an onus on me to do better as a consequence of that rather than saying I'm not going to eat it at all it's that I have to help keep like the ecosystems in check make sure that populations are fair like I sat down with Lee Harding and he's a caribou expert and he was explaining how like we're just

shooting wolves from planes to like keep their populations down like there's got to be a better way and that's where like it's so tragic how we in western civilization treat animals treat life when we know that there's so much more intelligent than I think we ever realize because there's this fantastic fungi article uh Netflix I just watched that like three days ago okay so trees communicate with each other through mycelium like what like I first of all I'm that person who thought like trees don't think they don't have feelings like I just assume that they're just a tree and I'm a person and I think so. I'm here, tree. But then when you find out that they can help move their baby tree, their tree child somewhere farther away

when there's not like sustenance for them, it's like I just didn't, because you don't have eyes, you don't have a chin, you don't have a face, I assumed you weren't alive. And so to learn those things just blows my mind. Their animal and plant life is so intelligent and like what a Western way to think that, like, there's nothing smarter than human brains. I actually feel like, you know, something that my partner tells me is that if, you know, animals are so much smarter than us. They know how to survive out there. We're, like, for his indigenous people, um, his, like the silk people, they kind of, he told me that they kind of, they're taught that humans are pitiful. And, um, you know, there's these stories that come about like, oh, these, um, like these certain animals, they give up their

lives for us because we wouldn't be able to survive without them. And when it comes to the bear, they're not allowed to eat the bears or anything like that, but they can eat the bears under the exception that there is absolutely nothing left. There's no other choice. And then the bear would give up their life for them. But they're just like, their stories like originate back to the fact that, you know, humans were so pitiful. We have, we don't have any fur on us. If we were to like, we can freeze to death, just sleeping outside without a blanket on us. And, you know, you You know, we really need to, we wouldn't be able to survive if it wasn't for the animals and the plants and the water and all these other systems that are so much bigger than us. If anything, they sacrifice a big part of themselves so we can survive.

And, you know, going back to like what you said about how, you know, we really need to change the way we see and view animals instead of like viewing them, like, you can say like vagans and vegetarians, they say like, oh, we need to like, just let them live. We don't eat them. And although that comes from a good intention, indigenous people have been hunting for years. since not years, centuries, you know, like since time and memorial, you know. And we're always taught that when we hunt for an animal, we do it in a good way. We're not doing it in like where we just take and take and take. No, there's reciprocation in that. You know, there's protocols to follow for my people, free people, we have to like, we put down tobacco. There's like a whole preparation phase for hunting and we put down tobacco once we get a kill. And once we get a kill, we use every single part of the

body, you know, when one of my greatest experiences, just down this road and up those mountains over there, I got my first buck with my partner. And for the first time in my life, I got to witness what it's like to hunt, you know, a buck and then all the processes that go about it. And, you know, watching him, you know, like, gut the animal and everything. And then he grabs, we grab the liver and we, no, not the liver. We grab, I forget which part of the animal that we grab, but we grabbed as much parts as we could. And we scattered them around and we put them up. And he grabbed me, he gave me a certain body, like an organ, and I put it up on as high as I could on a tree and everything. And there was vultures and crows, you know, going around and everything.

And not even a minute after I put on that tree, I got down from the tree, and I looked up, it was already taken by a few birds. So we, we share that stuff. We spread it abundantly. And we try and use every single part of the animal as we can. We don't let that animal's life go to waste. And, you know, there's prayer with that, you know, gratitude. Thank you for giving me your life and now because you've so selflessly given me your life I can you know harvest you you know in a good way and then you can feed 10 other families and you know it was just and even to this day we're still finding ways we still have pieces of my buck you know my mother-in-law she she's cutting up like a song off the antlers and using them as buttons and shirts she's making these ribbon shirts

and she's using them as buttons and she's giving them you know she's making that with love and then She's giving that, you know, that medicine to other people. And just recently, a couple weeks ago with my decolonizing wellness documentary, we used my Bucks Hyde for the very first time. And, you know, my mother-in-law, she scraped the hide, she prepared it and everything, and we made a drum. And we used that drum and we gave it to my daughter. So we're still two years, almost three years later,

we're still finding ways to take that gift that was given to us years ago and finding ways to still use it, to still spread it, part and everything. And we, with the meat that we got from the freezers, we gave it away to, I think about three houses down here. And then I gave about half of the buck. I traveled all the way to Alberta and I gave it to my family. And my Muslim grabbed that and he dropped it off at Elder's houses. At least 10 houses were fed because of that buck. And there's so much gratitude that goes behind it and so much more meaning of, you know, what it's, it gives you so much more gratitude when you're it makes you think twice you know when you have a plate of food and

you have like a steak or ribs any sort of meat it really makes you think twice before you eat that and it makes you think you know give thanks absolutely i think that that is one of the best arguments for hunting in that way because i think hunters typically if you go into vancouver and you say i hunt the typical responses be like how could you i could never and it's like but you're like there's a responsibility that flows that you don't talk about when people say like I shot this or I killed that is like you don't have the full context of all the processes that people go through all the experiences and memories of like every time you eat a part of the animal you think like wow like do you remember that day and like and then you share another memory and so it's like

it lives on for it sounds like years and you'll never forget the first time you killed that animal and so it lasts probably the rest of your life you'll have that connection to that story and that's far more meaningful than picking something up from save on foods that you could ever have and so I do think that there's like a longing for that sense of responsibility to use things fully and like a pride that you get to feel when you say we use the buttons and we figured this out and we're we're looking for new ways because it's like it's carrying on that animal's legacy and I think we have that same responsibility to our family members and I think most people don't remember that I don't I think most people if their family

served in World War II or the Cold War, World War I, we don't have like that understanding of like what people gave up for us to be here today. And I think that I'd like your thoughts because a lot of your book focused on elders and their role. Can you tell us about what elders mean to you? Yes. So, you know, going back to the beginning of this podcast, you heard that, right? I did. It's something like, people are probably fishing or diving out there, but I heard that. But, you know, going back to the fact that my grandparents, they played a huge role in my upbringing, and they, without them, I wouldn't be who I am today. And it's not just them providing a sober household. It's their, it's them giving me access to ceremony and them speaking their language around me.

And I don't fully know the Korean language yet, but I can, when they're speaking creed to each other, I can understand what they're saying. And, you know, it's just so much gratitude towards them, even through going through residential, and being taught that you can't practice these things and, you know, being told, you know, you're, that you should be ashamed of who you are, yet they still rise above it in their, they're in their 70s and they're still speaking their language. They're still practicing their ceremony and they're passing that on to their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren, you know, they're doing, to me, and like elders, there are knowledge-keepers. They carry so much life experience, so much knowledge, such a different

perspective, you know, every generation after them has lived such a different perspective of what it means to be an indigenous person in this modern world. And for elders and everything, you know, they're going at, they're passing away, they're getting old. And so there's not a lot of them left that have this knowledge. So it's so important for us to connect with them and learn our language and, you know, learn our culture and everything before they're gone. They need to pass on their knowledge. And also, along with like them having such a different path, wave life and everything, they also have this unwavering love. That's what I found.

It doesn't matter how much trauma they've experienced in residential school, or if they've, like, endured alcoholism, addictions, everything that you can name that, like, colonialism has brought upon indigenous people. Every time I see an elder day, all I see is love and how much, how much they care for their community. Yeah, absolutely. So do you think that, like, normal people can learn something from how there's an admiration with an indigenous culture of elders

because during the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw seniors not getting good care. I interviewed Daryl Plekis and he talked about how the Christy Clark government of the day was very like, we don't need to care about seniors because they're going to die soon. So there's this underlying value that seniors don't have a lot to offer,

that their job is to retire, go buy a place in Kelowna or something, sit on the beach and die. Like there isn't that feeling that they have knowledge to offer. Do you think that that's something that perhaps, like, I feel like when we talk about decolonization, we should put forward good ideas on what they could do better, that our culture does, that they could learn from. One of them is how we eat, the quality of foods.

You can take something from this and maybe start to say, not that we can get rid of McDonald's, but that there's more to be found in eating more naturally. And then the same with elders. That's always one that stands out to me is like so many of my friends are like, I like they'll take selfies with their grandparents and be like oh like look at this old person but it's like that person's lived a life like a crazy life of seeing like at a certain point Hitler was about to succeed and take over Britain and we were going to take up World War II from Canada like what a crazy thing to be sitting there being like oh my gosh is this going to come right here to like this land during the Cold War there was like what if like hide under a desk for a nuclear bomb to go off like these people have like had some pretty crazy time and We should hear about how they overcame. Do you think of what Canadians can learn from indigenous culture? Yeah, so, you know, that whole mindset where when our parents or grandparents get too old for us to take care of,

we just drop them off at a nursing home where other people can take care of them. You know, traditionally indigenous people, we never believed in that. We took care of our elders just as much as we took care of our babies. they were kind of like viewed under the same amount of respect and you know I really do think that's such a colonized way of thinking is just to throw away your elders as if they didn't just live a lifetime and they have so much knowledge to offer us I think that is so important to like take care of your elders and just just give us get as much knowledge as you can from them because they they raised us so when they get older and everything we have to take care of them you know they change their diapers you know so I do I do I do strongly believe that it's the colonized way of how we treat our elders. It needs to be fixed, especially if it gets into our indigenous communities because our indigenous elders, they've like, you know, during the wars, a lot of them have faced enfranchisement because they served in the war. And they didn't benefit from serving in the war because they got their status taken away. They just served in the war because they want to protect our land.

it's just it's a crazy amount of respect that we owe to our elders and I don't from my personal belief I don't think it's very very wise to just leave them drop them off at a nursing home you know I think they when I think of myself as being an elder I think of myself being surrounded by my grandchildren being surrounded by so much family just the way my grandparents are right now I did learn a lot from seeing the way like in my family and everything um because my my grandparents they both had diabetes. They both got diabetes when I was, like, young, probably around my daughter's age, around seven years old.

And I saw the way my whole family had to pick up for them because they provided a house for them and, you know, all these opportunities. They raised them and everything. So when they got sick, my mom, every night she would go in, she would cook healthy dinners for them. So it's really that reciprocation of giving back to our elders. So the other thing, I interviewed Shelley Canning, and she's a registered nurse, but a retired one. And her interest, it is in ageism and misconceptions around aging because we always look towards like younger people.

And for a lot of the guests that I've had on, they've been like, I don't want to age myself. I don't want to date myself. Oh, this is going to date me if I say that like I saw this in 1988 now, you know I'm like not 20. any, like, there's this weird feeling people have towards getting older. And I think that that's one of the most, like, sad things that a person can carry when you hear somebody's like, oh, I'm 44 for the 10th year in a row. It's like, that's so unfortunate that you can't enjoy the journey of your life and the different chapters that you get to enjoy.

And it seems like looking to, uh, indigenous culture again, offers an opportunity to rethink what it means to get older. that now you have sage advice that people should be coming to you for that you have wisdom on how to live a meaningful life you've made mistakes and you can talk about what you've seen and what you've overcome and how you didn't approach it well there

and so you don't have to repeat the same cycle it seems like there's a bit of shame in getting older for so many people and a feeling that you need to look 20 forever do you have any thoughts on like how we can start to incorporate that change in mindset in regards to it yeah it's it's one of those things where I'm I'm like, I'm just like recently getting around to like, you know, the inevitable fact that we're going to age and we're going to get old. And like when we're young and like in our 20s, we don't think that.

We think we're like, I remember this one time I was like sitting next to my Gukum and we were talking and I saw her hands and her hands were like wrinkly and they were like so age. But I didn't think of it in like that light where it's like, oh, that's never going to happen to me. In that moment, it was so beautiful because, you know, she has. such hard working hands and she has like rheumatoid arthritis she has struggled with that for decades yet she's still gotten so much done and she's still brought so much valuable stuff to the world just with her hands and it's just like i remember thinking that you know aging is actually so beautiful and um i think it has a lot to do with social media too is like we have this fear of like getting wrinkles and this fear of aging but it's it's inevitable and i feel like it's only gonna it's only gonna hinder

our love for our self if we just keep trying to you know be youthful there's so much beauty in aging there's so much knowledge behind it i yeah yeah i couldn't agree more so when you come here when do you meet your partner along the journey when when do you to connect is that what was that kind of process like um so i i met my uh my partner i think about a little under a year of living here and we just like and we just met up and we like we like we played played lacrosse together and we just like shot around the lacrosse ball and got some food. And then from there, it really started with like friendship. And we just like, we just connected.

And then from there, I just never stopped hanging out with him and everything. And then he, um, he, I thought it was so cool that he like had rifles and stuff because I was like, oh, I have military experience. So we would go shooting and everything. And then he took me hunting. And then from there, it's just like this friendship really just like developed into like a partnership. And so it was, it was under a year that I had been.

here and and yeah and from there we just like we start hanging out and everything and now we live together just at the head of the lake over here and I'm just so grateful that I found myself like a silk man because now I have

access to his culture and everything that's really what I was lacking when I was living in Colonna there is I had no access to ceremony out here and everything and then his family took me in and now his family is my family and we go to ceremony so it's just it's such a

such a fulfilling partnership that I'm in. Amazing. Can you tell us about what you've learned from his culture, how they compare. Because as I said, I think most people struggle to understand how unique each culture. Like, I'm from the Stolo nation. So we're really into fishing salmon and like the phrase were people of the river. And that's, we have stories and values around that. And that's completely different than people who live on the island who hunted whales, which blows my mind. And so can you tell us about learning about the two different cultures?

Yeah, so I actually wrote a poem about him. I wrote a few poems about him, but he was a little bit of my muse when I started getting really into poetry again. But we come from such different cultures, but they're the same. They have so much, they connect with each other and, like, they cross over, and we both have the same belief that there's a creator out there. We both have the same belief that animals are so, you know, we respect animals and we have like the same, you know, neither of our people and like came from like invented the sweat lodges, but we adopted the sweat lodges from from the Sioux people, I believe it is. And so there's there's a lot of both of our people. We've done a lot of adopting certain ceremonies and everything. So there is that. But there is some key differences like his language, for example, is very, it's like there's a lot of. of um there's a there's a lot of different like pronunciations that i'm still getting around to but he can just pronounce it so well and i'm just like struggling so much um but yeah i did i did write a poem about us like reconnecting with our cultures and learning each other's languages and that's been

a big thing and us um uh in our relationship is learning each other's languages it helps us you know it helps us learn when we're teaching each other it but but yeah there is there's there's some there's a lot of similarities and there's a lot of differences too What are some of those differences? Because I think that that's, because when you described their belief that humans are, like, less competent than others, I read Stihilis's, they just signed a reconciliation agreement with the provincial government. And in it, one of the first pages is their origin story. And one of them is that, like, basically all the plants and animals in life basically went, like, you guys are incapable. And so we're going to, like, give ourselves to you because you're incapable.

And that feeling of, like, supporting and connecting, I think is so cool to see those connections. But do you see any of those differences that sort of stand out to you at all? Yep. So there's a similarity that we both have tricksters in our cultures. And for Cree, our trickster, I actually, I can't say their name right now because it's not wintertime. We can only say their name in the wintertime and tell their stories in the wintertime. So unfortunately, I can't say the name of our trickster. but for his trickster, his trickster is coyote.

And so they have like strikingly similar like lessons in their stories, but their stories are different. And the bottom line is that we had these tricksters who basically they went, they walked through so many different paths of life. And we tell stories about it to teach lessons to younger children. Right. And there is like there's, for example, like they do a lot of, how do I say it? So when it comes to grieving people and everything, for my people, we like, we do different protocols where we cut our hair, depending on how close they are to us, we cut our hair and everything to grieve. And when it comes to, like, at the end of the funeral, we have a big giveaway of all of their things. We give it away.

And then we put our pictures away for a year. And that's just the protocol that we follow to help us grieve. But for them, for my partner's people, they do it a little bit differently, but it's not like they, depending on how close they are, they have, they tie themselves with hide around their neck, their waist, and then their wrists and their ankles and everything. And that's just to like really protect them. And then I'm not sure about cutting hair. I actually don't know if that's, that is a part of their tradition or not. But I know that they don't put their photos away for a year. And when it comes to their loved ones personal items, they actually burn all of it instead of giving it away. So very key differences, but not to say that one is better than the other, one is the right way or the wrong way, it's all like there's, there's all just different ways of being and practicing. And then it just comes down to really like, he sees the way that my people do things. We do co-ed sweats.

And then we're in the sweat lodges, we have men and women together. They, with their sweats, they don't believe in doing sweat lodges. is um because like women are viewed as very powerful so when it comes to sweat lodges the men's sweat lodge is exclusive from the women's and the men's sweat lodge is um above the women's and then the women's would be down closer to the water and everything because um they're so we don't like how do you say not really use the word contaminate them or anything like that but when it comes to like a stream of water and everything our power isn't like you know like put on to them like it doesn't crossover. So there's like a lot of differences in the way we practice our ways, but it all

comes down to like the same beliefs. Do you feel like you like because the cutting the hair, it seems like that would be symbolic of like you've lost something and like showing that you've lost something so people can see it. Is there is there a different logic to it than I'm aware of? So a lot of indigenous people believe that like our hair is like the extension of our spirit so that's why a lot of like native people grow their hair long it grounds you closer to the earth and everything and when you lose someone who's very important to you it's almost like you you know it's demonstrating um from from what i've been told it's demonstrating how close they were to you where you don't want to you don't want to keep going on with life just like having everything

to you want to like you want to bring like leave a piece with them a piece of yourself with them and then from there you grow you you know you grow new hair and everything and it like it has helps with like the grieving process. It sounds like another thing other people can learn because we've got really terrible way of remembering people in like today's society outside of indigenous culture, which is like you go to the funeral,

some person you don't know talks for like 20 minutes about what death means usually a priest and then you see the body, you put it in the ground and you leave. And like, that's it. Like there's not like, I just lost my grandmother and like the hard part is like we've had to create something to fill that gap or that feeling of like she's gone but like her legacy is still here and it's

just who's going to pick it up who's going to try and find a way to make sure that her memory and everything she worked towards is preserved in like a meaningful way because to me like the way she adopted my mother my mother wouldn't have survived had it not been for her and so I would have never been born had it not been for her saving her so like to me her effects are so vast that it's hard to imagine like even with your family like if you're grandparents didn't do that for you, perhaps you're not here today, perhaps you don't make a documentary, perhaps you don't make, so like people's effects on you, they can have such a cascading effect. And I don't think that we do a good job of recognizing that in Western

culture. And I like that there's processes that stronger cultures have towards remembering and respecting and giving thanks and like understanding that life is like so much more. Because right now, we just talked to somebody the other day and they were like, I like David Suzuki's take, which is like people are cancer on the planet. And I think that that is like the worst mindset you can have towards people is that we're a cancer on the planet. We absolutely have flaws and like I'm not here to disagree with that. But there we're also here to like harmonize the ecosystem. We're here to make sure that the wolf populations don't outsize other populations or bears or like we're here to try and keep the peace amongst all animals and that that if we

don't take up that responsibility, the whole ecosystem's worse off. Like, humans do play a role. And I think that that's something maybe people avoid, but it's something in the grieving process. Like, I've seen whole communities, like shut down band office isn't open. Nothing's open for the next week because we lost a person and this person mattered. And like, when you go to a regular job, they don't, like, I lost my aunt. And it's like, who's your aunt? Like, that doesn't matter to me.

You need to be at work 7 a.m. or you're fired? Like, there isn't that, like, care of, like, this was a human being. like they lived a life and like I want that time to like to grieve and to figure out how I'm going to rebuild their legacy whether it's a bench or whether it's doing something to honor their memory it seems like that's something we sometimes miss yeah I agree and it's so like indigenous people we do such a like a great job of really honoring this person's life through having like a four day a four day funeral sorry a four day wake where as soon as we hear that the person has passed away someone has to start a fire and nobody can leave that fire that fire needs to be burning for

four days straight we need people to watch it overnight and we need we all come together and we make food we make that food with love and then we we share these memories and everything and even after the person has passed on and like what you said like here on my on my partner's reserve every time someone passes away like his meetings get canceled because he's on council and everything so they really it's really one of those moments where indigenous people know to like stop and just like stand still when someone leaves this world because people are grieving and we need to remember them in a way. And another difference between mine and his culture is they have memorial feasts and everything. But for my culture too, we have this belief that every one year, one human year is one

day in the spirit world. And our creed believes is that after a person passes away, they go on a four-day journey in the spirit world to find their way to like the happy hunting ground to heaven and everything and so every day they need to eat so every year on the day around the day that they passed away we have a feast a memorial feast of all their favorite foods so we can feed them and then after we have a spirit plate and everything and then we we put it somewhere where no humans walk and we leave it there for them and so that's our way of remembering them even years after they pass away we're remembering to feed them in the spirit world And not just after those four days that it takes for them to find their way to the happy hunting grounds.

It's, you know, years after that, too, every few years we'll have a memorial feast or even every year we'll do something to, like, celebrate them. I've heard of people having hockey tournaments in their name and, like, you know, just finding ways to just keep their memory alive. And because one of our beliefs is that spirits get hungry, too. So we need to keep feeding them and we need to keep, you know, keep their memory alive in that way. Yeah. I actually had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Keith Carlson, who's an expert in Stolo history and tying it in with his understanding of like what happened with colonization and stuff. And he actually, he's a Roman Catholic and he was able to like, I'm always interested in the parallels. Like I see grace for Christian people as comparable to like saying a prayer or salmon ceremonies to indigenous people. Like I like those overlaps because then I think it's less about how we're different. And it seems like the last hundred years of been really about like what you're not you don't practice your faith in my way so we're different and i don't i don't think that that yields a lot of fruit like i don't think that that's gonna aid in reconciliation is focusing on how we're different and he was talking about how i think it's around

easter time they they burn something and they go through the church and burn it and that's putting smoke up to the spirits and then indigenous people we feed the fire and that's feeding like the elders and the spirits above and so like i like those parallels because then it it opens the door to realize and we're not so different and like I think that the danger is always looking for differences than we're looking on like fighting and disagreeing and arguing about it's it's god or it's creator and it's like they're they mean something to both of us and we can all agree that there's something bigger than ourselves and that that can perhaps bring us together can you tell us a little bit more about your partner and lead that maybe into your I don't know where you want to start do you

want to start with your manuscript because you started that first your upcoming book I think you started that first and how a creator sees you was your your pastime. Yeah. Can you tell us about that? Yeah. So I actually started writing MimiQuas at the beginning of the pandemic when, you know, the world shut down and everyone was forced to stay home and everything. I started writing my manuscript for MimiQuas.

And so when it comes to writing that, I was really just taking, you know, a lot of my experiences of like being raised in a home where there was domestic violence. and then taking on that intergenerational trauma where I endured domestic violence and then how I healed from that and a lot of my healing came from really going back to myself and valuing my health you know and redefining what health is for me so a lot of what's in that manuscript it was it was healing for me to write it because it's a lot of my own experiences but also I want to make a fiction because I also want to like you know make some other creative ideas in there and like make it make it a new story you know so So I wrote that manuscript and I finished it and everything. And my partner has been my greatest, like, supporter and pillar in my writing journey because he's always believed in me ever since day one. When we started dating, I wasn't finished my manuscript yet. I was about, like, three quarters through.

And he never read it. And he already believed in me. He was already connecting me with mentors. He connected me with this woman. She wrote in my own moccasins. Hell and Not, and calling my spirit back, Elaine Alec. He connected me with those two indigenous female authors, and I got their emails, I got their, like, social medias,

and I told them, you know, I'm not done this manuscript yet, but, like, I need some advice from, like, because I didn't know any other people in the indigenous literature world, but he did, and they just, like, they just having those people to look up to and mentor me and give me advice. It really, like, it just shot me right, you know, like in the right direction, and I finished my manuscript and I had all these people that believed in me. And then going through the editing stages of my manuscript and everything,

I really have to remember the reason why I started writing the medicine behind it. But it's a little hard when you're critiquing your own work all the time. You're like, oh man, why did I put that? How do I, you know, you get writers blog and you have to like remember to be creative again. So that's when I was with my partner and he was like, he's always like, you know, shot so many new ideas with me when I'm like, I want to do something creative. He'd be like, well, write this, write this, write a story about this. You know, he's really like just throwing ideas out there and really getting my gears rolling.

And I was editing my manuscript and I was starting to feel like a little bit discouraged because I was like, I was getting to that part where everything was a little bit too technical for me. And I was thinking about the possibility of me even being an author. I was an author at that point. I was just a student at UBCO that had this manuscript that I couldn't seem to like, you know, really tie the ends together with. And so I told him, I was like, I kind of want to, like, write a children's book. And then I want to, like, but I want to make it different. I want to make it my own. I have, I have yet to really see, like, an indigenous children's poetry book, you know, like, Dr. Seuss.

And I'm sure there's, there might be some out there, but I just never seen it. I never, I never read it. I never seen it. So I was like, I want to, like, kind of make, like, a Dr. Seuss inspired, you know, children's book for indigenous people. And so we sat there and we brainstormed and everything. And I was taking a poetry class at the time too, so I was like, so the poetry gears were already rolling. I was like getting really creative in that area.

And then after brainstorming and everything, we came up with the idea of writing a poem to really empower indigenous boys with their braids. And then I took like my experiences of when I was called a dirty Indian in grade 6 and I was like, you know, how did I feel at that time? You know, I felt like, you know, I didn't like my skin. I didn't like I wish my skin was lighter I didn't like my hair I wish my hair was blonde I wish my eyes were like blue you know I wished all these things I wish that I looked like a white person and I remember like that's and I know that I cannot be alone in that so I took that experience and I found a way to like really make it into a big poem and then using my my Gukum you know keeping her memory alive because she's she's getting old and I know that like she's not going to be here for like I don't know, I can't guarantee that she's going to be here 20 years from now. I hope that she is, but I can't guarantee that. So what can I do now while she's alive to honor her memory? So she knows that she will be remembered.

And like she's the inspired character long after she's gone. So really taking those teachings of like honoring your elders, taking the experience that I had of facing racism and really turning it into a story. Indigenous people have always been storyteller. So it's kind of a way of me also decolonizing, you know, storytelling too, putting it in a paper format so it can be, like, printed and passed down and in stores and people can buy it. So I really, like, I put so much love into this poem. And, you know, it's actually kind of funny because once I perfected the poem, it took me a week,

Max, and I ordered all the illustrations and everything. And, like, the poem, I loved it so much, and it was about this little boy named Musqua. And his name Muscoa means bear in Cree. And it had to do with his braids. And I took in the teachings of, like, the metaphors of like the bears and stuff and i mixed it into the poem and then it came up to the time where my illustrations were almost done i think there was only like two more pages left of illustrations left and i was done editing it and everything and i was like just waiting for that those illustrations to come in so i can put it all down on paper and um i was scrolling through facebook this one morning and i don't usually go on facebook first thing in the morning but for this time i did

And I came across this advertisement for this book that was published. And this woman was holding this book in, I think it was like a Barnes & Noble store. And it was so similar to my book. And it was down to the name. His name was Bear, and it was about his braid. And it wasn't a poetry book, but it was the same theme and the same name. And it was about his braid. And I was like, whoa, I just came to this like, you know, the standstill where I was like,

I put so much love, I put money into this, and now, like, do I still go through with publishing it, even though, like, you know, I don't know how, like, it works with, like, getting sued and stuff with, like, you know, copying someone's idea or anything like that. Even though I never knew this person, I never even knew that, like, this book was out there or anything until that moment. And so I was almost, like, feeling a little bit discouraged. And then my partner told me, he was like, you know, successful people don't just give up. They pivot. They work. they work around it so just like like how can you pivot from this what what can you learn from this and well the first lesson was there's no such thing as an original idea everything is adopted

you know everything's adopted and recreated and like made their own so that was one thing it was really like it really brings like your ego down to like a humble a humble level where you realize that there's no such thing as an original idea and then um finding a way to pivot it because at that moment I truly believed that there was, you know, a greater purpose behind this book because while I was writing it, I was in too deep. I already saw the little, I already saw myself reading to all these little indigenous children and them looking up to me and, you know, like their eyes beaming and, you know, seeing themselves in me and me seeing themselves and them, that reciprocation. I was already visioning that when I was writing the book. So I was emotionally invested already. So I was like, I can't give up now.

I have to like, I have to pivot. it. So it took me a little while, but within a month, I had changed my whole poem around, and I changed his name to Cahue. And I brought in the teachings of, like, eagles who fly the highest in the sky. And, you know, at the very end of it, I, like, re-edited my illustrations and everything. And once I finally got it all down on paper, I realized that everything happens for a reason because I loved this version 10 times more than I loved the first version. And I love the first version with all of my heart. So it was just such an intense amount of love that I put into it. And I was like, Everything works out the way that it is supposed to work out.

And then I self-published it. And then my partner, he helped me with marketing and everything. And eventually I got to read to a school in the town that I grew up in, not the Catholic school, but the elementary school, Pinocca Elementary School. I read to them twice, once through Zoom and once in person. And both times, at the very end of it, they're like saying hi-hi to me, which means thank you in Cree.

So it's just so amazing, like, to that community. They're doing so much work with Reconciliation. work with reconciliation much more work than when I was a child but to see them have that work with reconciliation where a whole class says hi hi to me like thank you in my language it was just like coming full circle and like having this feeling in your chest and that's the thing like every time after I read to children I read my book to them I have like this feeling and like my diaphragm and I couldn't really quite pinpoint it until last May last month in May where I was reading to them in person and At the very end of reading, I had that feeling like in my heart and my diaphragm.

And this little boy, he was wearing a purple ribbon shirt. And he had like long hair, like probably up to hair. You can tell it's like in that awkward stage where they're growing it out and everything. He had these like big glasses and like these big teeth. And he raised his hand and he was like, my name is Cahue. And your book helped me like love my hair and love my braid. And in that moment, that's when I realized that, you know, that feeling that I was getting after I was reading to them, it's only passion and purpose that can really feel that.

So yeah, my partner, you know, he's played such a big, he's been such a big support in all of this. Would you be able to tell us the story of how the name came about? Because I think that that's a really beautiful connection between you and your partner and how the name sort of came about for your first book. So I was writing a poem about my partner and it was on our anniversary. And I was just trying to like, you know, when you love someone, I feel like love is such a deep, a deep feeling that, like, it's so hard to put it into words.

And at the end of my poem, I just asked him, like, you know, do you see yourself the way creator sees you? And that was just my way of, like, asking him if he really, like, knows his worth and, like, his purpose on this earth and everything and just how precious he is. And that was at the end of my poem. And then I remember, after I wrote that, I was like, that has a good ring to it and everything. So when I was, when it came to writing my poem and everything, I, like, I was looking at my past poetry and I saw that. And I said, you know, that really, like, that statement, it really stemmed from a pure place of love. So I took it and then I remade it into, like, you know, asking children that. I'm like, how powerful would it be if you asked a child who is still growing, who is still so naive to this world?

And someone, like an indigenous person older than them, asked them if they saw themselves the way creator sees them. I feel like that would, you know, I was really thinking, you know, is that something that I needed when I was a child? And that's where I like really ran with it. And it's just like my greatest work has all come from a place of love. Yeah, that meaning and like it's easy to do something when you feel the meaning and the drive behind it. Because as we were talking about before we started recording, there's this like people say, I want to write a book. They have no idea why they would write a book, who they would write it for. and it's like, I just want to check a box.

But you've done it with such intent of like these things sound like they've come naturally. What was the decision to self-publish? Was this partly like you were proud that it was yours, that it was made by you? What was the kind of decision to self-publish? Because that sounds like far more work than hiring somebody else to do it all for you. But I've also seen people who hire those publishers and they don't get any of the support. And now they've paid a lot of money and like partnered with somebody. and then they don't have somebody on their real team

that's trying to get their word out on their book. So what was the decision like? So there was like a few things that made me self-publish. And number one is that when I was writing my poem and everything, I didn't want anyone to change my words. And although it is good for you to get like outside sources to edit and critique your work, I'm like, I'm not saying that that's not okay.

Like that's really important in the writing process is to get like those second opinions. But for this one, I held it so. close to me that I didn't want like after reading the poem and everything I'm sure people like who do good editing and stuff they probably like oh I would have done it like this and stuff but for me for my first book I really wanted it to be 100% my words and my work and I wanted it to see just you know how much I how far I can go just doing it on my own and then from there like taking the lessons and then like and then start like expanding and going through publishing

companies and everything so that was one thing is I didn't want anything any of my words to be changed and another thing too is I had a sense of urgency to publish it and um you know it goes back to like me like really believing that writing is like a spiritual practice for me like storytelling and there's such a greater purpose behind it um when it came to this children's book once I started writing I said I need to get this out as soon as I can I can't wait six months for a publishing company to get back to me and I can't like I don't want to I want my I had this vision, I wanted my artwork to be a specific way and I wanted everything on the book, from the front cover to the back cover to all of the words. I just had this like, you know,

this knowing that it had to be this way and this is the way it was supposed to work out. So I watched a quick YouTube video on self-publishing and I was like, that's actually quite easy. And Amazon, um, Kindle Direct Publishing actually does a great job with like giving you all the resources and the outlines for like templates and stuff like that. So it's fairly easy to self-publish once you put in, like, all the work and everything. So, yeah, but it really got back to, like, me, like, having that sense of urgency to get this out in the world. And I feel like everything happened, the way that it was supposed to happen, like, getting pivoted to go in a different direction. And, like, the publishing date, it was, like, divine timing.

Yeah. Was there, like, a sense of pride as well once you hit that self-publish button, like, once you hit that point that this is all you, there's no people, behind the scenes trying to pull strings or anything that this is authentically your first step into the publishing world well when I first published it um I didn't still didn't like really quite believe in myself I was like hey it's out there and I posted it and I was like if anyone wants to buy it you know it's right there and then next thing you know people were buying it and next thing you know I was getting interviewed by these media outlets and then I was like people were reaching out to me and they were like they were reading my book far before I even

got the book in my hand. People had already had their copies and they're telling me how much they loved it. People were telling me they cried when they read it. And in that moment I was like still didn't quite believe in myself, but other people believed in me. So I was like, you know, I took that action. Momentum was coming. People were believing me. And then I held the book in my hand. And then I would say that it wasn't until I held the book in my hand and I read it. And I realized what I just created that I really felt that sense of pride. And then speaking to these media outlets and everything. I had just a little bit of imposter syndrome because it was my first book and I published it all by myself. But over time, like getting these opportunities and everything,

it's really grown my confidence to really be proud with what I've created. Yeah. What has that been like because maybe you see yourself as like the components to doing what you're doing, there's so many more than maybe you've realized in the get-go of like having to do media interviews and having articles written about you and being savvy. on social media what has that like the book is done and that's that's maybe your your comfort zone but now there's interviews and there's talks about it and there's getting the name out and stuff like that what has that journey been like um so it's been it's been a lot to work with to be honest because like in my heart i'm still like this this little girl that grew up in like his spot knock tribe

and like you know was a teen mom i injured like domestic violence and everything so there still was this like belief that you know like what am i doing you know who do you know who do you think you are like that's what the imposter syndrome is but you know i had this opportunity to speak at the can do conference as a national youth panelist and when i was first like accepted into the panel and everything and like seeing everybody else's stories i was like wow like i don't really like i think thinking i don't measure up and everything but my partner really helped me like really was like don't think that way like what the heck you're like you're an author and everything you know it was really learning how to accept like the good things that came with like accomplishing this

and really like accepting people you know saying you know congratulations you're a good writer and then like really accepting that and believing it it took some practice at first but over time after like telling my story over and over again it's like repetition and everything and it's really like making me realize that I have come a long way and as important as it is to be humble and to you know keep like keep striving for higher goals and everything it is also just as important to be in the present in the moment and think wow you know i was like that little i was that little girl who faced racism and like didn't really love myself i was that teen mom who like ended up in like a woman's shelter and everything and now i'm here right now and i have this thing that

people are proud of and it's opening so many gates for me and really saying you know look what happens when you open your heart and you really you really water your passions and you know and it's just retelling my story it's really helped me you know realize how far I've come yeah and being able to tie that not just back to like your own success but being able to know that it's having like a positive impact on those individuals in the schools that you're presenting at and I think you went to the West Edmonton Mall and did work there could you tell us about like the impact you've seen on young people and that inspiration Yeah. So I had some people come out to my signing that were from my community. And it's just like really, it's really amazing to read to these little indigenous kids and, you know, you know, seeing myself and them, them seeing themselves and me and everything. And then them also realizing that I am from Musco cheese too. I am from the same reserve as you. I think it is important to have those people who come from the same place as you and seeing them reach these heights and everything. I think it's so important to see like the like the role that I.

play and you know it really gives me a track with like walking a good path in this life but but yeah it's um it is really like it's very humbling very yeah what was was the response what you expected was it surpassed any expectations yeah 100% surpassed i wasn't i wasn't even really like expecting to like have like media coverage on it just because it is my first book and everything and i was like well i probably have to market myself and like sell like 200 books before like I get media attention but I probably only sold like a hundred books before I like got media attention and everything it was just like I wasn't expecting it all to come so fast it was very fast almost like a little bit too fast where I had to I was like talking to my

partner Ryan I was like this is happening too quick I don't know if I'm like ready for this I don't know if I believe that I can really do this yeah so yeah what was that sort of journey like to start to adapt because I think that that's the inspirational part of like nobody envisions themselves reaching those kind of heights nobody but like you kind of have to ride the wave and and take advantage of the opportunity but there is sort of that like let's put the brakes on let's slow this down a little bit because people are knocking so what was that kind of journey like it's it's going back to you know you don't have to fully believe in yourself at first you just have to take action and through action you gain momentum other people start believing

you and then you can fully believe in yourself is there anything that you haven't liked about this, like, that's been a challenge or adversity that you faced publishing your first book? The only thing I can think of is maybe being on social media, to get the word out. Everybody says stay off of social media, but even with the podcast, you can't stay off social media in order to get the word out. Yeah, so actually, back in March, when me and my partner, we started our decolonizing wellness documentary, on one of the episodes, we did a dopamine detox where we stayed off of social media, we didn't eat fast food, we didn't watch TV,

We didn't listen to like music and stuff like that. It was like a full on like extreme dopamine detox where we were just forced to just be, you know, really all we could do was meditate without like the mindfulness like meditation music and stuff like that. Be out in nature. We have to find ways to keep ourselves busy and like and then through that dopamine detox I really, I realized just how amazing I feel without social media. And that was around, that was three or four months after I published this. so then it started to become a little challenging with marketing and I was like well you know I really want to like a big part of me wants to like delete everything and not go on social media ever again but then I social media is such a tool that you can use for all of these things so it's like I had it was a challenge having to find the positives in social media how I can use it as a tool how it can bring me opportunities but also having the self um how do you say like the restriction to limit myself from falling back and to being on social media too much where it starts to become toxic for me. So the way I view social media now is it's almost like a job.

And sometimes it's not like, sometimes I don't like it too much having to like post and everything because there's that there's that fear that oh, I'm going to fall back into the social media rat race and everything or like the hedonic treadmill and everything. And then, you know, feeling so burnt out after scrolling on Instagram for like an hour and then like having these thoughts like I'm comparing myself to other people. But it's like, it's having to learn how to use social media as a tool to market. It's a challenge that I'm still learning how to master today.

Yeah, the only advice I can give is my partner and I have gotten very good at scheduling the posts. So, like, every day, I think two posts go up. I have no idea when. I don't pay attention to it. But like Facebook does give the option to like schedule all your posts. Oh, really? And so now, and you can do up to, I think, three or four months of scheduled posts. And so obviously with some things you can't plan ahead and schedule it because maybe there's an

interview dropping that you didn't get to choose when it releases. But for the most part, like, I'll take the podcast, turn it into clips, schedule all the clips on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and they just go up when they go up and I don't have to connect with that because that was a trap I was falling into is I talk so much smack about social media. And then I'm on there trying to get the word out and be like, got to like get the comments out. And it's like, if you can just schedule it, then you have like less of a connect.

And maybe it doesn't do as well if you're sitting there, like trying to get the word out. But at the end of the day, they're going to like it or they're not. But that's the only kind of trick I found is kind of disconnecting myself with when it's going live. Because then there's like that, like, how is it doing now every five minutes? But when you don't know when it's releasing, there's kind of like, oh, people will be like, oh, you just posted. And I'm like, I'm just sitting here talking to you. So, yeah. Wow, I didn't know that you can schedule your posts.

I'm going to have to ask about that after this podcast. How you guys do that? Because that would help me a lot with marketing and everything. because for me I find it, like, troubling when I log on Facebook or Instagram. I'm like, okay, I got to make this post. And then, like, while I'm writing it, I'm like, I'll come back to this later and, like, scroll and everything like that. But, yeah, that's a very handy tool. Absolutely.

So I'm interested to know what, when does your other book come out? Like, what is your plan in regards to that? So I have, if everything goes according to plan, I should be done editing it by the end of this month. because I follow like the schedule where I like you know I crunch and everything I do a little bit at a time one chapter a day two chapters a day and then going through it and then like once I'm done this round of edits I want to I want to not publish it I want to submit it to a publishing company because I want them to do the hard work for me this time because this one was like a lot of lessons came up with self publishing this one and marketing for myself so I wanted to go to a publishing company

and there is one specific publishing company that I have had my eye out since I was like still in the first phase of writing this book and I really like I've been like manifesting it since day one that they pick up my book and thank God they have like a little thing where they accept manuscripts from indigenous people

without going through a process they just like it's just a button like they usually go through like a process with other books manuscripts and everything where you have to like go through like these stages and everything before you can submit it but for indigenous people you can just submit your manuscript directly to them and then they'll like get back to you within a few months

So I really want to put my book there because... Tell us about the publisher so we can get the word out. Indian... They published Indian Horse. Okay. So by Richard Wagamese. And I believe they published Medicine Walk by Richard Wagnerys. You know, a lot of Wagamese's work, which, by the way, like, just like a quick tribute to

Richard Wagamese, he's inspired me so much in my writing journey. And rest and peace, he actually lived just in Camloops over here. Wow, I did not know that. Yeah, so he's inspired me so much in my writing. And I just wanted to really, he was the trailblazer for me, and he paved that path. So I feel, he, reading Indian Horse, it really, like, that was the book I read around the time that I started writing again, like, fiction, like, fiction terms and everything. And so I just, like, really want to, like, follow his footsteps and everything, because he really, he really blazed that trail for me. So it's the same publishing company, random Penguin House, they published Indian Horse.

And I really, I'm planning on submitting my book there. but I have also applied for this Audible Indigenous Writers Circle. Have you ever heard of it? No. So Amazon, you know, Audible and everything. They have this like program for indigenous writers. And they have these authors, mentor, indigenous writers. And I applied for it.

And I should know by the end of this month, if I got accepted into it or not. And they have Richard Van Camp, who is, he's going to be one of the mentors in this. And he's going to, so if I get accepted and everything, everything I would love to be mentored by authors like him and, you know, really see if what their opinion is and like see where they can critique my work, where they can like, um, where they can like see if they can like make my manuscript 10 times better than it is. So I do have that. It's in the air right now. I don't know if I'm going to get accepted into it or not, but if I get accepted into it, then I'm going to hold on to my manuscript a little bit more and that's going to be my

goal in the indigenous race circle is to work on it to use that as my main piece. And then get this advice from all these different indigenous authors, like mentoring me and helping me bringing it into like a masterpiece. So we'll see where it goes. What is this one about how would it compare in terms of writing style? Because it's quite a bit longer, I'm guessing. It's a, yeah, it's a fiction novel. So I tried to make it about 50,000 words, which is like the average length of like a fiction novel. But it is about this girl named Mimi Kwas, which means butterfly and crete. And she heals from intergenerational trauma from running. And we really valuing her physical activity. So it's a there's a without spoiling too much there is a lot of um it's it's like

kind of um how do you say it there is intergenerational trauma in there there is sensitive topics in there but um it also shows her journey of how she overcomes every single month through healing. Yeah that is the message I think that we're working on right now because I know a lot of people who just are now learning about residential schools and what's going on, and they want to help, but from their perspective, it's like, how do I get involved in reconciliation? Like, how do I make a positive difference? And my perspective has been consistently, grab your book. I don't know if you've heard of Stand Like a Cedar, but that's like a Stolo-based book with

Carrie Lynn Victor and Nicola Campbell, who wrote about like Standing Strong. And we have a story about our Cedar Tree that a generous man was turned into a cedar tree and that it gives back to the community. And so you want to live your life and be strong and stand like that. like a cedar and so to look at people like that i don't know if you've heard of raven reads um but uh Nicole McLaren i think i have her name right uh she's created these subscription boxes so you can hear from indigenous authors like yourself you can uh get interesting uh decor and stuff from her subscription boxes and i think the powwow box is available now um which they were just talking about

but that there are avenues to connect with the culture in a beautiful way because i think that that's the hard part is if you just learn about uh like I come from a criminology background, so I learned a lot about our over-representation in the criminal justice system. Our low education rates, all these terrible statistics that make it really dreary if those are your four facts on indigenous people. It makes it seem like we're really not on the right track. But then there's people like yourself inspiring a different message, which is, yeah, Indian residential schools, the 60 scoop colonization. These were horrible atrocities and really taint Canada in a negative way and have made Canada look horrible on the global stage. But the beautiful story is how strong the people who attended were, how strong their children are, how strong their grandchildren are, and how we're not down and out, we're not done, this isn't the end, we're going to turn this around, we're going to bring back and we're going to fix, it seems like, a lot of, like, Canada's problems when it comes to energy, when it comes to taking care of the environment, when it comes to these things, we are the trendsetters that I think others will eventually follow.

And so I think that that's hopefully the message people think of when they think of indigenous people now, not that we're down and out, that we're on the rise and look at us, turn all of this around because we are so resilient, because we are so strong. Yeah, there's a couple of quotes that I've seen before. The first one is as much as we carry like our ancestors pain, we also carry their resilience and their strength and their love and their ability to laugh during hard times. And another one is as much as we teach people about, you know, the, like, the horrible traumas that indigenous people have endured, we should also be putting light on the successes and, like, you know, what we're doing today to, like, really heal from that stuff. We need as much indigenous success stories as we do, you know, really shedding light on all the terrible things that are happening. There needs to be a balance at least. Absolutely. So for the documentary, when is that hoping to release or what is the plans?

in regards to that. Okay, so I do not know the exact date, but I know it's either mid, I'm going to say mid-July to be safe. Oh, so it's coming up really soon. Really soon, yeah. The first few episodes, we finish four episodes so far, and those ones are going to start being scheduled to be aired in July, and you can access it through Talis Optic. And so, yeah, so those will start in mid-July, and then they're going to, we have 10 episodes, and they're just going to be carrying out after July. I think they'll all be aired by September, I believe. Is there going to be accessible on YouTube or anything like how are people going to get it if they don't have tel-

um so we're um i my partner knows more about that stuff but right now i'm going to say that yes you can access it on youtube because at the very end of each of our um our episodes we were doing a little podcast with each other and those are going to be aired on our youtube but like uh you know i don't i believe that like you can still access it you can still watch it without tellus optic like there'll be a link for people to watch it on the website right that's going to be amazing uh how how many episodes and how is that sort of set up so we have a 10 episodes and each one is about 10 to 20 minutes long i believe the longest one is around like the 25 minute mark right so yeah and so they each

touch how and sorry how many episodes did you say 10 10 okay so um and it's going to cover a different topic each one yep yep they're all gonna like they're gonna cover different topics so we try to like we had so many different um we have actually have a model and everything and we we're talking about nutrition we're talking about like physical activity we're talking about like arts and like creativeness we're talking about um you know our spirituality kinship um there is you know like our connection with like um you know animals and plants and stuff and um yeah i believe right off the top of my head I believe that that is the that is our web and everything we are going to be showing the web on like the intro video but um so we're covering a bunch of

different topics about wellness but they all overlap with each other they all like play a big part in like balancing each other out so you'll see like a lot of things crossing over throughout the whole thing right and so was was like videographers brought in or how did you guys set all of this my partner is actually a videographer and a photographer he's an amazing one he's been doing he's been doing freelance work since i believe 2018 i don't know it was like but when we he's been doing freelance for years and so he has like a lot of years under his belt with photography and videography so he was doing that for like different companies out here before that and then so we didn't have to really think I'd hire any videographers and like it's really it's only been me and

my partner really organizing everything I'm like I'm the script writer and everything and we both have our brains together so I'm writing everything down and he's shooting everything and he's also teaching me how to like use the gimbal and stuff and so yeah we've it's all creatively me and him just like you know you do this and i do that and then like we're teaching each other things and like we're just working together as like as partners that's got to be so cool to be able to like work together and not have to have a meeting in a boardroom and like other people have like a different vision that you guys are able to just collaborate all day long yeah it's great us being able to really like be as creative as possible and because we me and him we have like so much similarities and how

we are creative and everything and when we're not where we don't have similarities we're like you know really supporting each other in that way so it's it's really been great to see what happens when two highly creative people can come together and then just create this together absolutely can you tell people what maybe uh because this will be airing shortly uh into national indigenous people's day can you tell people what reconciliation means to you yeah um uh rebecca actually asked me this earlier today when you were setting up and I told her you know right off the top of my head reconciliation is creating these safe spaces for indigenous people to creatively express themselves freely and just making those spaces like you know how random penguin house has an option where

indigenous writers can just submit directly to them instead of going through all of these things it's just really it's really recognizing you know the extra challenges that indigenous people's face and you know making much more things accessible much more resources for them so they can, you know, get that helping hand up and like succeeding in this world. Amazing. What do you hope people take away from your story? What do you hope perhaps there's a young person and they're struggling in school or something? What do you hope they take away from your story? Wow. You know, I think that really viewing, you know, every idea that you have, viewing it as a gift from the creator because it really, it's to get to where I am today,

I've had this belief that this is my purpose and life that it's bigger than me. You're going to impact so many different people on this walk of life. So it's really, you know, seeing those gifts, seeing those ideas in your head. You might think, oh, they're a little bit silly. But when you start seeing them as gifts from the creator given to you because you are capable of bringing them to life and impacting people, it totally changes the narrative. And it shifts it from, oh, maybe I can do this one day to I have to do this. have to impact these people it was given to me from the creator so I can bring it to life you know and share that medicine and there is this um I was listening to motivational videos this

one day and you know I believe his name is Denzel Washington I don't know his name do yeah Denzel Washington he was a famous black actor yeah yeah and he's like has motivational videos and stuff okay so he had this exercise and it completely just changed the narrative for me it's like you know you close your eyes and you think of like imagine you're on your deathbed and you're you know you're about to die and around you are all of these ideas that you had all these ideas of like business ideas you know and anything really and like they were given to you because you were supposed to bring them to life all these goals and dreams and aspirations but you didn't bring them to life because you were too scared to fail and now they're going to the grave with

you and they're so just like they're looking down you and they're like disappointed it's like you were supposed to bring me to life and so I can impact on change all these people's lives but you were too afraid you couldn't overcome your fear so now i'm dying with you and you know it's a it's a little harsh to think about it but you know it really it really goes hand in hand with me really viewing those gifts those ideas as gifts from the creator yeah that's incredible because uh as i said i listened to david guggins and he wrote a book um i think it's a won't break i'm got i'm gonna mess up the name but he wrote a book about how uh he was abused as a child by his dad not really loved by his mother just he was super overweight he wanted to become a Navy

CEO he faced a bunch of adversity and as I said now he runs like 500 mile races but one of his kind of anecdotes was that he goes up to the pearly gates and there's a guy there and he's saying what you were supposed to do in your life in order to get into heaven and he want his dream was to get there and have them say you were supposed to do that yeah you did that yeah you did that oh we didn't expect you to do this oh, you weren't supposed to run 240 miles. Oh, you weren't supposed to, we didn't expect you to do this. And to have that whatever list of the end of your life

to surpass whatever anybody's expectations were for you, that you could do that. That's conceivable that you could surpass even what, like, anyone expects of you. And that that would be a really good thing to see how far you could push yourself. Just like when you're facing adversity and you're out in the cold and minus 40 and you're like, I never thought I could do this. But you do these things and you go like, wow, I'm capable of more than I ever anticipated. And I think that that's such a motivational message to leave for people.

Can you tell people how they can get your book, how they'll be able to, I know you just said it, but how people can get access to the documentary and how they can connect with you on social media. Yeah. So to get the way creator sees you, you can access it on Amazon. You search up the way creator sees you. You can order it on there. It is also available. And if you select Indigo stores right now,

in Kelowna, Vernon, Edmonton, and Winnipeg. But this is kind of like my little announcement is in the works right now, I'm working with a guy at Indigo on getting my book on a Canada-wide distribution. So it can be in every single indigo store in Canada. So it's in the works right now where, you know, we're trying to get, we're trying to tick all the boxes. So I am hoping that we can get it in every single indigo. So it's more accessible for people.

But as of now, it is available on Amazon. on. And my social media, I'm mostly active on Instagram, so it's Shayla.Rain. And I do have a Facebook author page that I like to update after every single reading that I do, you know, things that I'm up to. So yeah, that's how to access me. And if you also purchase my book, I do have an email, a work email on here that I use. Awesome. Well, Shayla, I'm so grateful that we were able to sit down. Can you tell people where we are right now? Yeah. So we're on the Okanagan Indian Band, which is unseated silk territory. And we are right beside the north end of the Okanagan Lake and we are also beside us this is technically

Kamasket Beach and beside us is the Palau Arbor and yeah we're just overlooking this beautiful lake right now I'm actually really glad that we were able to that you agreed to come to a spot because once you told me that you're coming you guys were gonna do an outdoor podcast I was like I know two amazing spots but I'm glad that we got this one yes I couldn't agree more it's been beautiful to have the birds in the background I really appreciate you sharing the journey that it took to become an author, your courage to make decisions that were maybe intimidating at the time because I think that our community, anybody who reads your book, anybody who hears this,

is lucky that you made those decisions because it makes an impact and it makes people think maybe I can do that. Maybe I can learn from somebody else's story and grow as a consequence. And I think that that is, we're so lucky when people like yourself are willing to do that. So I truly appreciate you being willing to take the time to come out here on this beautiful day and share your story. And thank you so much for coming out here. It was, I'm sure it was like an anxiety-filled, like, journey just to get here and everything,

all the, all the, like, bumps that we've hit on the road. I'm glad that we were finally able to come here and sit down and talk. And although we weren't able to do the full-time that we wanted, I believe it's quantity over-quality, no, sorry, it's quality over quantity, too. And I'm really glad that you guys, I'm really thankful that you guys were able to make it out here. Absolutely. And if we can support you in any way, your documentary, share the word, get the message out. hopefully there will be future episodes of this where we talk about your new book and what's going on there because I think that we need more voices like yours so thank you thank you so much for

having me and we just did yeah like two and a half hour something oh that's awesome