Nuanced. - 64. Á’a:líya Warbus: Sharing Indigenous Culture Through Art

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

Á'a:Líya Warbus is a writer, director, actress, hip hop artist, mother, paddler, pow-wow dancer, activist and business owner. She owns Salish Legends Media, an Indigenous film and media team. In this conversation, Aaron Pete and Á’a:líya talk about Indigenous values and how to share them through mediums like music, film and podcasts. The two also discuss the importance of identity, finding your passion, lifting up your community and the benefits of canoe races. Á’a:líya Warbus is a First Nations filmmaker from the Stó:lō Nation and a graduate of the University of British Columbia Film Production Program. Á’a:líya is a very active member in her culture and community, balanced by a healthy lifestyle in sports and fitness. She is an loving wife and mother of 3.Learn more about Salish Legends Media: https://www.salishlegendsmedia.com/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. At Alia Tiliski, to homilisque to Stalination, to Alis, Kesta, Samath, Musqueam and I live in Skokale. So my name is Alia Warbis. I was born Trisa Alexis Point and through a number of different channels and funnels arrived to the identity that I claim today. One being that I got married and so we live in a patriarchy and you take your husband's last name legally. And I was actually

totally okay with that because the point name comes with a lot of connotations and sort of a pre-packaged identity. And it's not that I'm not proud of that identity, but I've always wanted to make my own way in the world and not be bogged down by a name. So anyways, I happily took my husband's last name. That's totally fine. And then I also just recently came into the realization that my Hwemok identity is so important to me that I want to wear it. and decolonize myself a little bit in terms of not carrying an English-based name. So the name, Teresa, Alexis, which I was born with, it's wonderful, but I feel more closely connected and rooted in Aalya, because that was a name I was born with.

It's an identity I carry from a past life, and it's just really important for me in all of these, you know, you could call them westernized or colonial spaces, however you or anybody wants to identify. We live in Canada, British Columbia, the town of Chiluac. The real name is Chilquic. But for me,

you know, having A Aaliyah on my Starbucks or on my Facebook or like as my name when I go on stage as a hip-hop artist or, you know, a film by A Aaliyah Warbis, to me that's really empowering.

And so I've recently started using my traditional name everywhere that I possibly can. And I feel like I'm decolonizing one tongue at a time when people have to learn how to say it, right? And I actually feel it more when people call me by that name. It's like I don't even hear if they're trying to address me like trees or tree or all these different kind of nicknames I've gotten over the years. But I hear at Allie and I know that's me. You know, something in my body actually responds to that.

And so, yeah, it's been really important step in my life to really. take in on a cellular level who I am. And that's my identity and my name and my whole brand today. That's amazing because I think what's really interesting about being able to connect your name is that one of the problems that Cindy McKelsey kind of highlighted was that having a name or a last name, it creates division in certain ways that indigenous people didn't really have previously. And I think that he did a good job of kind of pointing out that when you have a last name, it creates a sense of like us versus them. And I know that at least

with my community, we run into that sometimes that somehow your last name influences how you're going to vote on something or trying to act in your family's best interest rather than acting in the community's best interest. And so kind of adopting a name that doesn't come with maybe that baggage, something that you can be proud of, make such a difference. Can you tell us what your name means and what that journey was like maybe in your earlier years of trying to kind of find your identity? Oh, that's such a good question. It's loaded. So Aaliyah, it speaks to the root part of Aalya is that alia, which refers to a dream. That's the word in our language. But when you put it into a name, it actually more closely translate to the person who has a vision or a dream or the

person who can talk to babies. Before babies forget who they are, before they become fully conscious in this realm, they actually carry the memories of their previous lives. And they believed, our elders believed, that there was a certain person in each community who could hold a baby, talk to a baby, and say, who are you? And that baby would tell them, you know, this is who I am, this is who I was in my previous life, or at least tell them their homoach identity, their homoch to squee. And so that's what happened with me when I was, you know, I'm told around two years old, someone asked me, what's your name? And we ask all the babies that just to see if they're going to say something. And I spoke the name at Alia. So clearly

that they almost dismissed it because they thought, oh, that's just a coincidence or a fluke. But they asked me again with a lot of people around. And in particular, there was elders around. What's your name? And I said, at Alia. And so the elders, when they heard that, said, give her that name that's who she is and um i guess over time what happens is in our society anyways when you grow to a certain age you get your formal name which for me is hochtini and that speaks to my matrilineal lineage through my mother um but alia as i said before always felt very close to who I am and it was felt like it fit. And so since then I've carried that name in a lot of different informal ways, I guess you could say, right? Because in the longhouse, I would be addressed as

Hokotini, because that's the one that shows who you are. So I guess the other piece about that is like this whole idea of like the colonial identity, right? We're born and we're required to have a first, a middle, and a last name. And the last name, like I said, is so tied to the patriarchy that we've inherited, where the husband is the head of the household. They are, and traditionally have been the breadwinners, and we even had to take on the legal systems attached to that patriarchy, which stated that women went and lived with their husbands when traditionally that was not the case. Husbands went and lived with their wives, right? And so this whole matriarchy that we come from was flipped on its head when the Europeans arrived here because

the men were upstanding citizens in their culture, the ones who made the decisions, who sat around in council and decided what directions their communities were going to go. They were the ones who went out and make money, all these kinds of things. Their children all carry their name. It's very important. They have sons, completely opposite in our communities. It's very important you have daughters. All of the major gifts and anything of value is carried by the women. It's passed on from mother to daughter to daughter to daughter to oldest daughter. And so if you're the oldest daughter of an oldest daughter, you're in a very highly respected and privileged position. Completely opposite, right? So for me, the first time I ran into sort of

what you might call an identity question was when I was first starting out in hip hop and you're supposed to have like a nickname or a name that you come up with that speaks to who you are as sort of a stage presence or persona it would be very boring I felt anyways at the time if I went and said hey I'm Teresa point it just didn't feel like there was anything different different enough about getting onto stage and just going under my predetermined given name that my mom named me when I was a baby. And so way back then, I had to kind of sit down and ask myself, who am I? And what do I represent? Because lots of different rappers, if you ever watch a documentary or you were there, you know, you kind of there for the 80s and 90s when hip hop was born, essentially, their names come from

a nickname-based background, right? Like, that's what they were called in the hood. That was, like, what their auntie called them, or that was, like, who they were on the street. We didn't have that. You know, I didn't grow up in East Compton. And as much as we loved hip-hop and we identified with hip-hop

because of the oppression and the struggle that black people went through, we didn't have the same sort of street structure that most of them grew up in, right? And so it was up to me to bestow upon myself a name, a handle that I thought fit for who I was at the time. And back then, it was apt-exact. And I basically, in an acronym, no, what is that called when you take letters and you rearrange them? It will come to me. So I took the letters of my name, my initials, T-A-P, rearrange them to make apt. because I felt like I had aptitude.

And then I just added exact because it rhymes. Like, I just wanted something catchy. And that stuck for a long time. And a lot of people, even who knew me in my early hip-hop days, still refer to me as apt. Like, hey, where's apt? They just remember that's who I was when I first started doing hip-hop. And then you grow when you get closer, you feel to who you are

and who you want to be and how you want to represent. And I actually adopted the name Kalea, which was based on my traditional name. But I felt bringing my traditional name into a hip-hop realm and on stage wasn't appropriate. And I'm not quite sure why I felt that, but I just felt like I didn't want to, I don't know, taint it and mix things in that way. And so I adopted the name Kalea. like just purely as a stage name. But as I grew as an artist, I'm like, hey, I do spoken word. I'm a host. I host different cultural events. I'm a powwow dancer. I'm, you know, I'm also doing

hip-hop. I sing. I play guitar. I'm a filmmaker now. So how is Kalia going to translate into this? How does Teresa Warbis fit into all of this? And I just felt like the whole thing was really messy. And without sounding to corporate, I just said to myself, I need a rebrand. I need to catch up kind of with who I am, who I really feel I can connect to. And it's not that these names are who I am. They're literally just a label that you put on yourself so other people can identify who you are. In the social media realm, it's a handle. It's a place people can type, hey, I'm going to go there to see this person's work. For me, I grew into being indigenous, and I feel like even just recently, more so than ever before.

And I felt like, so what if Alia is a weird hip-hop name? So what if people can't say it? So what if they don't usually accept colones in a social media space? I'm going to unapologetically cut through this unknown, territory for myself to be one identity that I've been since I was born in all the spaces I go to and I'm actually in the process now of legalizing my name and it's annoying because it's the silly thing where you have to go and get like fingerprints and most of all of that was shut down for COVID. So it's kind of a silly process where I have to actually go through the paperwork and

the legalities of changing my name officially, but it's going to say that on my ID. And so it doesn't matter at the end of the day because I am who I am and most people just know me for the work that I do or for their connection to me in the community anyways. And people still call me every name under the sun. Trisa, Tree, I won't tell you my other nicknames. At Alia, you know, and slowly people and my family are accepting and actually getting comfortable with calling me at Alia. But it's so refreshing to go into spaces like I just did a presentation for my film Slally at KPU. And she's like, oh, how do you say your name?

I said, at Alia. And she goes, okay, at Alia. She got it right away. And today we're representing at Alia Warbis. And it was just so refreshing. It just felt right for her to say my name and to say it properly and to, introduce me in that way. And so I feel like I've finally landed. And man, I wish I could share with more people and especially with young people. Like, don't be worried if it takes you a while.

Don't be scared of changing your identity, even in your late 30s like me. Because no matter when or how or where you land, it's just important that you give yourself the permission to land. Because no one else can do it but you. No one else can feel into being comfortable about who you are and where you come from, but you. And so for me, people can comment all day long, oh, like, look how many times she changed her name or like it's so confusing. I can't find her Spotify, this and that. It's like, no, this was my journey to be on. And regardless, if I went back and forth, upwards, downwards, sideways, I still arrived at who I am and I feel so comfortable with it now that I'm really glad I took that final leap to just, like I said, call it a rebrand. That's like such a westernized term. But for me, it's all landed where it's supposed to be. That is brilliant. And there's a lot to take apart there. The first I'd like to go through is the value of children and this idea that the hesitation, I think, is like the idea that somebody comes from a different life because we've all got our different ideas of where people come from or how that process sort of

works. But I think it's absolutely true that from the get-go of a child being born, there is a uniqueness about them. There is an energy, there is a personality, there is a genuineness, a character that is separate from the parents, that there's obviously partly their influence, but there's also, they're just a distinct individual. And that develops over time. And I loved hearing from Eddie Gardner, because he talks about how the role of the elder is often to try and pull that out, to try and figure out who that person is, to try and inspire them to reach whatever their potential is. And it seems like that is the challenge we face right now, is seeing the potential. Maybe it's easier for us to see it when they're very young,

but as people get older, we start to lose faith in people. We start to kind of view them as they're stuck in their ways. We're never going to be able to change them. People are flawed. And we kind of lose this hope that people could reach their full potential or that they could make a difference beyond themselves or that they have a role to play in their community. And Eddie Gardner did a good job of saying, like, you can start to see where somebody's going to be like a good healer or a good speaker or a good leader or a good role model or a good hunter or a good fisherman. Like, you're going to start to see these characteristics if you pay attention. And he kind of said, parents struggle with this because they're working or they're busy or they're trying to make sure the house is taking care of

So they maybe miss out on those little glimpses, that little shining light that says who this person could be one day. And the elders, since they're often able to take more time, they're able to sit with the person and listen and really hear those comments. And I think that we need more of that because my frustration, as I've said before, with how we look at homeless people or people struggling with poverty, is that we start of go, they need treatment, they need counseling, they need X, Y, and Z. but we forget to say, why the heck would they want to do something like that? What is the end result for their own meaning in their life that would have them go to AA on a day where they didn't get a good night's sleep and they kind of just want to hang at home and be on their phone? What's going to motivate them?

Well, the idea that they could go on and become a doctor or a dentist or something that's going to be like, you know what, it's worth it for me to go because I've got this bigger goal that's going to make a positive difference and I've always wanted to be a doctor or whatever it is and I'm going to keep going because there's this bigger, more meaningful kind of element to my life. What has that been like for you? Have you had, you mentioned you're part of the point family.

Who's influenced you in that way during your younger years? Because you do so many different things. And I'd like to talk about the hip-hop particularly, but you've done so many things. Were there people always saying that you could be more, do better, succeed, make a difference? Was that always a part of your life? Or were there particular people who kind of inspired that within you? I feel like I had so many different inspirations throughout my life. And at the same time, so much unresolved trauma that I had really no idea that I was dealing with.

It was like being in a position where, well, my life wasn't bad enough compared to everybody else around me that I could, ever really complain without being made fun of. But my life wasn't, you know, so good. And I had the same opportunities that other people around me had in mainstream school and society where I would say there was like less barriers to my success, if that makes sense. So it was like a very, I lived in a very interesting sort of middle lane where it was really hard to be fully indigenous and embrace who I was in my culture in school because it was mainly white people that I went to school with. There was hardly any minorities, if any, and indigenous people were still very much seen as dirty Indians, you know, people who were like drinking downtown and, you know,

like my white friends weren't allowed to come over to my house and I didn't really understand why. Like, I was never really seen as like your typical pretty eligible girl because all of the girls with like blonde hair and big boobs were the ones that people seen as like, you know, more eligible to be popular or like, ask. out, like, there was all these, like, really small things, and, like, I like to think of them almost, like, paper cuts over the years that tainted who I seen myself as, like, my identity. And there was so much covert racism in Chilliwack growing up that I didn't even know was

going on, but was actively affecting me. And then at the same time, in my family, there was so much jealousy towards my parents' success and what they were doing, you know, being sober leaders in our community that I always sort of had like a thick layer of shame no matter where I went. I was like too good for the natives and too clean cut and had too much privilege. And so I was always sort of made fun of or taken down a notch. Like people felt I had to be like knocked off some pedestal. And so I always felt like I had to like, you know, be dim.

and be less than and act less smart than I was around my family because I didn't want to fend them or have them make fun of me more. My community, same thing. It was like, if you're shining, you know, you better cut that shit out because people don't like that. You know, and that's just going to put a bigger target on your back. And then mainstream community was like, oh, well, you're just an Indian. Like, what are you ever going to accomplish? Like, clearly all these other people are, you know, more.

have more aptitude. They can speak better than you can. They're prettier than you are. Like, you know, I just always felt like it, like, undercut no matter what I did. And so in my mind, it was just better to be mediocre. Like, I felt like that was my lane of being, like, just good enough, like, not, you know, I don't want to, like, seem to have ambition because people just make fun of that. Like, you know, I want to kind of just be cool, like that. Like, that. kind of seemed like the only thing that could really gain me friends or, or popularity. And so I was like so confused as a young person. And I can only really start to unravel that now. And it was, it's always been very uncomfortable for me to talk about. But that being said, I did grow up

in an affluent community. Scale Cale is one of the communities still that has the most educated, university-educated people per capita. We have people with masters and PhDs, you know, so many in our family, you can't even count. And all of the young people, even today, right now, my nieces and nephews that are going to UBC to achieve higher education is very high. And so I did have people, namely my parents, Stephen and Gwen, who they lit that path. They were doing things. you know, late years ahead of other people in terms of, you know, my mom changing the education system for indigenous people. My dad making a huge influence as an indigenous lawyer, you know,

back in the 90s and doing lots of activism work that other people weren't doing, you know, being a chief at a young age. Yeah, the influence was right there in front of me in my very own home. I had great row models. But for some reason, it just, it didn't sink in for me. I never had any belief in myself. I didn't have any confidence. I didn't think I had anything to offer the world. And I didn't care. I just was concerned with self-preservation. Because, like I said, to me, being successful came with all of these arrows in your back and trying to be successful over here felt impossible. And when I say over here, I mean like, you know, competing with all of these people who I thought were prettier than me, more talented than me, you know,

better than me, more athletic than me. I never found what my thing was until later, you know, and it took getting out of high school and getting out of kind of all that toxic competition and comparison, dating and drinking and all that kind of stuff. It took me getting out of that world in order for me to find a little bit more of my voice. And once I did that, that was where it really started to turn the tides for me in terms of feeling like I had something to offer the world. I had something to offer the world in my worldview was actually important, that my story was important that my things that I had to say made sense and could have an impact on things.

And for me, it came through a lot of pain and suffering that I had to endure that was really self-inflicted, you know, from my own choices came this pain and this suffering that actually brought about a lot of growth and change. And being involved in my culture more deeply, you know, I was very resistant to that because I felt like, It held me down rather than lifted me up. If I became, you know, a part of the winter ceremonies, which are very sacred in our communities, then it was always tied to home. I always had to be at the long house then. I didn't have a life.

I didn't have a choice. I didn't see it as something that was uplifting. I seen it as something that was going to tie me down. I want to be out there in the world. I want to be free. And it's really close to the story. of the Yellowbrick Road, right? Like, what does she want?

She wants to go out into the world, and she thinks that freedom and discovery is out there, and, you know, I need to figure out who I am and get away from these people that are tying me down. And that is why that story is so tried, tested, and true. It's because as you get older, you figure out you've had it all along. Your family is the most important thing.

Your culture is the most important thing. your territory your homelands the the land that you come from that you put on your face that's the most important thing it's not out there it's always been in here and that's what she discovers at the end of that movie the wizard of Oz that's the whole thing it's like oh it you know everything i've ever wanted it's always been here with you auntiem and you know like the whole the whole thing right and so for me figuring that out has been very cyclical and in I believe the spirit brought me back home from the, you know, the times when I tried to run as far and as hard as I could away from this place because I thought, it's this place that's holding me back. It's these people that I can't distinguish myself from. Like, I need to get away, and maybe I did. Maybe there was lots that I needed to go and collect from out there, like in Vancouver.

and I moved to Alberta briefly for school and, you know, I had this huge expedition in Thailand that ended very badly, but that actually was a catalyst for me becoming an artist. And once I found who I was like in my writing and that my writing was actually a very big part of who I am and how I expressed myself, that was when everything started to turn for me. and to answer your question, that was when I could actually see my role models for who they were. They're not trying to make me into something. They're not trying to force me into, you know, being a certain role in my community. All they're trying to do is help me find out who I am so that I can flourish, so that I can grow,

so that I can be like them and contributing to give back to my community. that's what we're all supposed to be doing is that we are supposed to be taking our gifts, bestowing them upon our community, helping everyone else so that they can in turn use their gifts to help us. That's the whole kit and caboodle. And for some reason as young people, we put ourselves through all this pain and this angst and this identity crisis and this, you know, up and down, anxiety, depression, in order to arrive to that, that whole. journey of the yellow brick road to come back to the end and say, oh, it's been here all along. It's been inside me. It's in my heart. It's in my blood. It's in my skin. It's in my,

it's in my backyard. It's in the longhouse. It's at the river. It's in this canoe. You know, you find that internal power. And so, yeah, my role models were right there in my own home. My parents, you know, I did look up to different artists. They were few and far between like Buffy St. Marie and the people who were doing movies like Adam Beach and Jennifer Podemsky and, you know, these few little sprinklets of people that I had seen in media who really inspired me then. They're still heroes to me today in thinking about, you know, can I create my own television series? Well, heck, yeah, I can if I put the work in any. but it can do anything that they really want to.

Can I create my own feature film that's going to play around the world? Yeah, I absolutely can. It's just going to take the time and the work. And it was those people that I've seen, like I said, few and far between who inspired me. Just to know that I could do more and I could do anything that I put my mind to. Right now, I'm really into being an athlete. Like, that's just what drives me for now. But as you know, I'm sort of a jack-walled trades, and I do many different things.

And so I just keep chasing what feeds me at the end of the day. That makes sense. But what you said about having parents that play that role is really profound because I totally see what you're saying. I had peers when I was going to school that would work very hard to highlight that they had some connection to Stephen Point. that would say, oh, he's like my, my, my, like, dad's brother or something. Like, they would try and make connections to that because there was something inspiring about him. So I can't imagine what it would be like for people to sort of look at you and go, aren't you

lucky? Aren't you, like, the lucky one in life that you've got this advantage and that, like, so many people that I knew wish that they were closer to him or would kind of look at him like he was a celebrity of saying, like, oh, like I actually saw him at the dinner once and like would pull on that and so when they get to see you and they're like that's your dad well you just must be blessed and you're like well like i'm sorry like i'm just i'm this person and this is my circumstance that there's a sort of weight that goes onto your shoulders that's always having people go well you're going to go be this person right because you need to go

follow in the footsteps or you need to go fit these categories for for him and to kind of follow through. And so it's not something we think about because we think of people with successful parents as the lucky ones. And it can be far more complicated because there is a weight of you need to go and follow through and do X, Y, and Z to make them proud or you're more in a position to do those things. So go do it. And we don't often kind of reflect on like each person is their own individual. And while they may have good influences, they're still going to have challenges within their family or their community or stresses that maybe we that aren't on our radar like the challenges of being a female growing up which I think we often underestimate the challenges

of growing up I think are large in general but having comparison be commonplace and I think Instagram is starting to make us overtly aware of that because there's so much comparison there's so much scrolling that people do on these apps that make them go oh I must not be enough or I'm not doing interesting things like these people where often the photos are like marked and you have a certain position and you're getting the proper lighting and there's so much of going on

that isn't real, that isn't genuine and natural. And so we start to forget about that. What came first? Was it Thailand or was it hip-hop? It was actually Thailand and then hip-hop. As I said, Thailand was a catalyst. And so this could be the short version of the story. I'll try to keep it tight.

Basically, I was into really bad stuff when I was a young person. There was this whole rebel streak in me where I think you've actually made it more clear for me. Being in a position with so much expectation on your shoulders almost makes you want to, say, F you to the kind of institution. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not going to be what you expect me to be. I'm going to be, you know, my own person. and I'm going to fly free. And for some reason, the expectation to be, you know, sober and straight A and successful

and you'll probably go to law school and do all these things. Like having an expected path laid out in front of you makes you want to completely go in the opposite direction. And so I like to party. When I was a young person, that was my whole thing and my whole identity. And it was like, for some reason, I just didn't have control of myself in that area. And so I had to get away from Chilliwack. There was a lot of things that were sort of dragging me down an even more sort of dangerous path, I felt.

And I thought in my mind, young person, that if I left Chilliwack behind, could leave all of that behind. I could reinvent myself. I could become a good student. I could, you know, I could do the things that I thought that I needed to do in order to be the person that would make my parents proud, my community proud, blah, blah, blah. So I moved away. I removed myself from this party scene that I felt like was kind of swallowing me up and was only a matter of time. You know, I did really good in my first semester. I was always in the library. I was always ahead of the readings. I was, you know, there was no doubt I was smart enough to do these things. It's a discipline thing. And so I got a job and I was working at Boston Pizza and I started

skateboarding and soon I met all of the skateboarders in town and what do they like to do? They like to party. What does everyone at Boston Pizza like to do on the weekends? They like to party. And so my past caught up to me pretty quickly and I was sort of doing okay in school. It was way lower on the priority list and I was more about my social life again. I got an offer from a friend. Let's go to Thailand. Why not? This has always been a part of my dream is to travel the world, do the backpacking thing. I'm like 18 years old, of course, right? So I took all the money I had earned from work and whatnot. And I went on the six-week trip to Thailand. And it was going totally fine. It was really fun. And we were doing a lot of exploring, backpacking. You know,

the friend I went with was 10 years older than me. So she had done this whole trip before she knew a lot of the lay of the land and was sort of my guide, right? But Thailand is kind of a sketchy place and you have to be a little bit more street smart than the average person. And that's where my guards were very low. I was such a trusting, young person. I was so free-spirited and I just thought that people, if they say they're going to do something or they say they are who they are, that that's the truth of the matter. I don't know why I was like that. It was just so naive. And in the midst of all of that fun, I remember taking mushrooms, which is psilocybin. And, you know, it's interesting now because I have a different

relationship with the plant and actually use it as a medicine now. But back then, I was just party, party, party. And I was taking these mushroom drinks, which actually caused my brain chemistry to change because I took too much. And then took a party drug at the full moon party in collaboration with the mushrooms caused me to go into a drug-induced psychosis. And I'm actually lucky to be alive and to be here talking to you today because if it weren't for my parents affluence and money, I would absolutely have been swallowed up by probably either like the sex trade or drug trade in Thailand, like easily. Because I wasn't with it. Like I didn't really know what was going on around me. And I had a small pocket of friends that I had made who got me to the

hospital when I collapsed from having a seizure. But it was like by God's grace that my parents actually found me in this tiny little hospital in Fouquet. Actually, Copenhagen was where I was. Fouquet is a bigger place. That's a boat right away. So Coppignan is even smaller. And the hospital is like literally like you would see in the movies. It's just like this row of beds in this tiny little room. It's like if you can even call that a hospital. By the grace of God, because they had connected with a friend through the rotary, they probably would tell the story better than me, who had another connection to a different rotary club in Thailand who had a connection to like a priest or something like that, who by word of mouth had heard what had happened to me

and brought them to where I was. It was just kind of like a string of random communications and connections. And my mom, my dad, my aunt, who has since passed, and my brother all jumped on a plane expedited their journey, got their shots, like within a day, their passports, everything organized and like flew out there to retrieve me and bring me home. But I was still actively experienced this drug-induced psychosis. And the story goes on, you know, I got home. I was in Chilawak Hospital. They released me. I said, I'm going to go back to Lethbridge. I start school in a few weeks. I got myself into trouble there, like, because the psychosis wasn't completely gone yet and landed in a mental institution, there's probably a better name for it now, but

basically the mental ward of Lathbridge Hospital, and in Alberta, this is something interesting that actually would make a whole podcast all of its own, I feel like, the episode. In Alberta, the legislation around mental health is different than BC because that premier at that time had a son, a child who had gone through a mental crisis. And they let the child go. Something really bad happened. And they changed the law so that if you are going through a mental crisis, the mental health care system, the doctor becomes your ward. And they're responsible for you and can actually sign papers to say, no, this person needs to stay here for this amount of time under my care.

They don't need, like, their signature or parent signature or anything. And that's the only reason I got better. If I had stayed under the care of the doctors in Chilliwack or in BC, they basically just kept letting me go. And so I wasn't getting better. They actually weren't healing my brain. but because I basically forced my parents' hand, I was an adult legally, and said, no, I'm going to Alberta.

Because I was treated in Alberta, that is the only reason I got better. That doctor put me under a 30-day order to be in his care, and I would only be allowed to go if I was actually free of the psychosis. And he got me to a place where I was actually, he healed my brain, he fixed my brain. he fixed my brain because the chemicals were so jarred from that mix of drugs that I had taken that it took like him adjusting these medications and like playing with them and figuring out in order to balance my chemicals out again. I could have literally been permanently damaged if I'd been under the care of the BC health system. But because I'd gotten to myself to Alberta

by chance, like I still lived there, that is what actually got me better. And I remember specifically now, even when they released me, I had enough faculties to kind of push away the things that made me sound crazy and act more within the way that they needed me to. But that actually in itself proves that I was better, that I was able to do that before I wasn't able to. separate like the crazy talk with what's normal day to day, right? And so I remember not being like 100%, like still kind of believing some of the like things about like demons and like it's really intense. If I were to go into detail about what it's like to have psychosis, it's really, really intense. But I was well enough to know, oh, don't say those things because everyone's

going to think you're nuts. Like, right? But I started. I started. writing my first ever hip-hop song in the hospital. That was sort of like my thing, like my escape. It was like, I don't have anything else to do. I'm locked up here. And so I started journaling. And a lot of my stuff came out as raps, you know, like poems slash raps. And so, yeah, I wrote my first ever hip-hop track while I was in the hospital and performed that track at an open mic thing for an indigenous theater. Now, what was that called? That was so long ago.

Aboriginal youth in, no. Oh, I can't remember anyways. It had some kind of acronym. It was an indigenous theater group. I performed that as my audition, and I got into that theater group, and that was like the whole start of my art career way back in 2004, five.

In Vancouver, yeah, that's where it all started for me. So one of the mistakes I think people make, because that's a really amazing story, is that we think role models are people who have never experienced life. I think that that is one of the big errors that I see, or that we don't have, like, experiences. Like, not a huge fan of Mr. Trudeau and how he's approached things. He hasn't experienced life outside of the fame that his name has brought him. and I think that that's one of the things that makes him hard to relate.

Like how Jody Wilson-Raibold, in my opinion, has experienced the challenges life can bring and she's overcome a lot of adversity. So she had principles when she was in the position, and he was not able to persuade those principles, in my opinion. He couldn't negotiate his conversation to kind of sway her one way or the other. She stuck to her understanding, and she had experiences that allowed her to kind of stay to her principles. But one of the errors, again, I think people make is that we think role models are people who are just good, they've never experienced anything bad, and they're

just happy people. The beauty of your story is that, again, it sort of shows, some people don't believe that there's a god, some people are atheists, but this sort of shows that we can call them random chance connections, and we can say that it was just a coincidence that you were in Alberta, but you have to admit that everything happened just so that there was something going on there. There was some sort of the odds that there was that connection with your father and that there were the flights worked out just so and the fact that the shots worked out just so. Like, there could have been barrier after barrier after barrier and there wasn't. Part of that is love. Like, I'm sure your parents were trying to say, hey, we need to get there. Like, you don't understand

the situation. Like, we care about our. daughter she's in danger and we have to get there and so there's a certain element of love and kindness from those people who heard that call and said hey you know what we'll flex this we'll push this through i'll ask my manager so there's there's so many different pieces of humanity in that story and the doctor saying hey you know what we're going to slow this down and we're going to make sure we do this right because a this person's under my care but b who knows what this person's one day going to become and again i think that's the mistake we may make around people struggling today is we look at them and we go, well, they're just going to go

do drugs again. So why do we even bother? And why, like, the complaint around naloxone is why do we keep trying to save these people? They keep, and it's like, what a horrible way to view people, because you might be right. But why, what fruit does that bear to believe that people couldn't improve? What, like, that stales your view of humanity. But the other piece I find so interesting, particularly with, as you said, indigenous people and black hip hop is that there's something unique about that genre for me personally because I had a lot of teachers say that you're not going to do this and you're probably not going to graduate and you're not going to go to university and you're probably going to join a gang and you're not setting yourself up for success.

And there was something about the M&Ms, the Big Shons, certain rappers, the Dr. Dres that said everybody's going to count you out. everybody's going to bet against you and when you overcome all of that you get to have a smile on your face and know that they were all wrong and that I'm not sure what inspires people more the feeling that they get to prove the naysayers wrong

that's certainly a part of it for me was believing like you watch me go prove you wrong was a huge motivator so it's not clear that we can have no naysayers and have amazing people because they sort of shape us but the other is feeling like we need to carve our own path and that's the maybe motivational element and the stick is sort of having people say you're not going to do these things and you couldn't and stay in your lane do a nine to five job and never go do anything that's a risk and so

I love rap and it is my by far my preferred genre because there's always that inspirational message of these were the people who hated on me I made it here so fuck you I don't did it and that feeling of like wow like that person said it exactly how they see it is something i don't we need that we need that energy we need that fuel and that motivation to go and disprove people like everyone believed m&m couldn't do what he did and then he went and did it and now he's kind of like he sets an example for so many other people and i've heard so many people say that that was their inspiration to get clean get a job go succeed go get their education and so i know that there's a big conservative group of people who hate what he does and who think that he is just a middle

finger to the establishment. But there's there's like a recipe in what he did that inspires people to believe that they could be beyond their trauma, that they could go and reach potentials that they didn't imagine when they were at the lowest of their lows. And it's a message that's tough to hear from like a priest. Like someone who lives a very clean, a very healthy, a very normal life. It's not going to make you think I could do that because I went to Catholic school. And these people were like, oh, you don't have to live that life. And it's like, how would you even know that? How could you even understand the crime that goes on in my building or the crime that goes on my road? Like, you don't get it. But this guy over here, he does. And while I don't think he,

all his messages are correct, there are songs that tell you that you can be more than you are and that He believed that and he is now the successful individual. And so I'm interested, when did that come on to you? When did hip-hop become a genre that interested you? And how did that influence you? So hip-hop came into my life. I remember the day and I always tell this story. And my brother, it's so funny because I don't even think he remembers.

But for me, I mean, I put it down to the day, but it was probably on either side of this. But the big moment for me was the first time my big brother put headphones over my ears. And we're getting off the school bus. And he's like, listen to this. Like, okay. So I put the headphones on. It's like, California love. And I'm like, what?

Like, it changed my life. Totally changed my life. And it's, you know, Tupac is epic, obviously. But I remember somewhere in that arena of like bone thugs, crossroads, the movie Dangerous Minds, like Tupac, that whole era for me, Biggie Smalls. I've just recently learned, obviously I knew he was a misogynist, but I just recently learned even more terrible things about what he did. But in the light of like you say, you can't just look at someone for, you know, one man. message they have that may be wrong or that you disagree with. But in the lane of activism and using your voice as a marginalized person and talking about having success, regardless of what your

teachers say, you know, all that angst I related to. And so I must have been, oh God, like that was the mid-90s and so I was like 10, 10, 11, 12, 13, like, you know, edging on to being a teenager when I really got into Biggie and Tupac were my first big loves for hip-hop and then, you know, Lauren Hill and even a little bit. I was not as drawn to female emcees. It just, it wasn't a thing for me back then. But when I look back, I feel like it was really inspiring to hear people like Little Kim. I've never been a fan of her music. It's just not for me. But just to know that a woman could come and blow punches just as hard as any guy and talk about things that's liberating for them. Like, you know, whether you agree or not, that's liberating for her to talk

about her body and her sexuality or whatever. So that was, I was always into hip hop from like middle school beyond. And I got in, I got into punk music. to and metal. So I had my little eclectic thing like flax, like you'll even hear me listen to country sometimes, and I belt it, like I don't care. But then there was that moment where I started writing rap music.

And the difficult thing about that was being an indigenous woman in a rap culture was there was lots of people telling me I didn't belong. The other native rappers that were men didn't want me there. you know there was lots of people who felt like they were more tuned to the culture they grew up with the culture they remember rap back to like rappers delight and run DMC and you don't know

the culture so what are you even doing here you know there was so many people that didn't want me in that space and there was lots of people in indigenous community like that's black music you should be singing our our music like you're you're not being true to who you are like there was just so many people that felt like it was either wrong or not a fit or that I could be doing anything but hip-hop music but I continued I love hip-hop music I feel like music is a free expression and I don't think anybody owns anything like if you draw the roots of any kind of musical genre where does all of it come from well it comes from drumming and chanting right like the oldest form of expression, which we all own, all indigenous people all over the world,

own that expression of music. And so if you really want to say anything about any kind of music, the deep drum lines and hip hop, you know, blues or jazz, all of that is actually influenced by the original music of the original people of the world, which are indigenous people. So, fuck you. Like, you know, so yeah, I started writing hip hop. and performing hip-hop that year that I, um, that I got entangled with that indigenous youth theater group. And then that is actually when I met Carrie Lynn. She was at an open mic night on this side of like literally a curtain. And I was at this, um, I guess you would call it an audition. And so we heard each other perform. We had a brief conversation and then like weeks later performed

our first song down to ride. Yeah, like, it was just all by chance, like you said, but like, is that chance, really? You know, and once we became a group, and she kind of had already connected to people in Vancouver and did our first show at the media club in Vancouver, it was like, boom, from there. Like, we were booked all the time in all the places for many years after that. And I carved a lot of my strength and voice from that partnership. I learned so much from Carrie Lynn. And back then, we were numinous and T-Melody until I went to Aptexact. But yeah, that that was my whole sort of start into hip-hip was through rapturizing. And then I continued making music. Carrie Lynn sort of like veered in the direction of her art. You know,

even tried briefly for a while when we both first moved back to Chilowack to get the gears greased up, but it just wasn't like it felt like we were tugging against the tide or something. And I continued making music on my own because it's easier. Like the play beat whenever I have time, my kids are sleeping or I'm in between tasks, right? But admittedly, I've only made maybe 10 to 12 tracks in the past like six or eight years. Like I haven't really worked on music. I've just sort of dabbled here and there and I just started turning beats on again and picking up the pen again and actually kind of playing around. I don't even have pro tools anymore. I have to like figure out how to re-upload it in the new age of subscriptions because you used to buy it in a box and that like then you

owned it. But now it's like this whole thing of like you need a subscription and a key. But yeah, I just recently started kind of looking at my art again. So it's been a really long journey of like when I think back now, I'm like, wow, I've been doing hip-hop music for close to 20 years. And it's just crazy to me because I remember being like that scared young indigenous girl who was like, oh, I have no right to be here. I suck. Like, I don't know all the names of all the rappers since 1981.

Like, you know what I mean? Like people will do the craziest things to like push you out of spaces. And that sense of belonging is really hard to find, you know? And I found it for myself in different ways in different places. But that was probably one of the harder spaces to get comfortable in. And now I'm just on, I'm unapologetic about who I am. Like, I don't care. I'm going to rap and sing and put together music anyway, which way I feel works for me.

Because you can't tell me at this age that something artistically, I'm doing is wrong. Art is, there is no right or wrong. That's the whole point of it. And like, the fact that I let anyone sway me differently annoys me now, but that's, that's what it took for me to learn, right? Yeah. I think what has happened in the Fraser Valley just in terms of you, Carrie Lynn,

Inez, having different people be creators, it's like most people don't realize that we have this rich culture of creators here. Inez wrote a song and I want to make sure that I get this right. She wrote one of her favorite songs or one of the most impactful songs that she made was about kind of the separation between living on reserve and living off reserve and kind of the generational differences between people who've been to Indian residential school and their children and grandchildren not understanding what they went through. What were some of your songs about and is there any that stand out to you that you are

really proud of or that mean a great deal to you personally. One of the ones that comes right away to mind is the song about my kids. And it's actually not out yet. I'm going to put it out under my new Spotify, which I'm like having all this trouble because of my name and the colon. Anyways, the song is about becoming a mother and how my kids changed me. Like the day that they were born and the day that, you know, they, you carry them that whole time, you're pregnant, you feel the growth, but you still feel like you're just you with this

big belly, right? Like, it's weird. But then as soon as that baby is given to you by the doctors, it's like something changes inside of you so deeply. It's indescribable. And I wrote a song about that. moment with both my kids. And my daughter always bugs me now because she's like, what about Starling? Because I since had a third child. I'm a mother of three now. But that song for me is

really important because I talk about there's no one like you. You're like, you're the only one. You're the only one that is who you are, who's going to bring to this world, what you're bringing. It's only you. And I talk about the influence. have on me as a person and how I've grown because of them and the lessons I've learned because I have children. That's a really important song to me. Um, very touching, you know, and a lot of people, they hear it and they're like, oh my gosh, I have kids. Obviously, it's so different. It's such a launch from traditional hip hop that's like angsty and about like movement and fuck the police and, you know, very like in your face. It's more attached.

to that like kind of backpack hip hop feel or like that like it's used to be underground but underground people grew up we all had we became parents and we became citizens of the world and and now we're sort of more talking about like you know becoming sober and like deweeting our gardens and you know disassembling our ideas that we grew up with and so that's a really important song to me. Take Us is another really important song to me. That's about my activism. That's about like, you know, take us, like young people, take us to the next level, take us to the place that we're all united, where everyone is a part of this circle and everyone's important and we don't leave anyone behind, you know, like open up my wings because I'm ready to fly. I can remember

every moment if I really try. I put my lyrics to the test. tell me what's next, breathing deeper in the moment, get it all of my chest. You know, it's very, like, poetic. And, yeah, and I mean, lots of my songs, there's runaway as, like, a song that's reflective of my childhood and how I felt as a teenager, as an indigenous teen, you know, and looking at my own mistakes and trying to, like, run away from them. It's, like, reflective of that time in Thailand of, like, I thought if I could, could get halfway across the world, like, yo, I outran my problems, man, like, they're not

going to follow me here. Guess what? They were there waiting for me. My need for, like, speed and addiction and fun and party was, like, all there waiting for me, package ready to go, right? And runaway is about that. Like, runaway is about, like, it's about all those, those girls on the highway of tears. It's all those women that are on the streets. You know, those are our sisters, those are aunties, and some people, that's their mom. And Runaway is about that. It's about, like, you know, like, run away, I want to, run away, yeah, yeah, run away, I want to run away, thinking about the future and what's in store, you know, like it's really

like a thought kind of piece. All of those are on my Spotify under Kahlia, K-E-L, I-Y-A right now, they're going to come down and come underneath my new brand, right? It's this whole thing that I've been Googling for weeks. But yeah, songs like that that are like poetic. It's like I really feel like if they're going to put my art into a category like a lane, it's like it's poetry more than anything. That is incredible.

I think one area that you sort of touched on was the idea that demons follow you. that horror movies do a good job of illustrating this because you could say a horror movie is just a movie that is scary and it's meant to scare you but there's a idea within a lot of horror movies that the demons they're not linked to the house they're linked to you yeah and I think that that's so true because uh you could call alcohol a demon and it follows you it's not linked to your home and you can move wherever you like it's going to follow you um traumas that you've experienced they're going to follow you and you can't just move it from your house to think that you're going to flee that. And I think that, again, I think there's something to the horror movies that

kind of speak to that, that kind of tell you that no matter where you go, it's a weight on you. And for a lot of horror movies, like Get Out was one, there's truth to what they're saying. There's symbology to the idea that you don't always feel like you're the driver of your own life, that that scene my partner always brings it up because it's one that terrifies her and it's the scene where he's sitting on like a couch in the back of his mind watching his life operate

and watching somebody else control his life and my goodness is that ever true to so many people's lives where they don't feel like they're in the driver's seat a couple more years and then I'm hoping to be able to go do this and ah if things go well here and it's just a few more months of bills being like this

and then I'll go take over And one of my favorite quotes is that most people live lives of quiet desperation. That they're sitting there waiting for the day where they're going to go on that trip. That they're going to go have this experience. That they're going to one day they're going to make that song. And so to have the bravery, to take the steps forward, to know that you're on Spotify. I'm wondering just what that journey has been like to not just have a hope, not just have writings in a book that you hold close, but to start to share that with the world,

what was that transition like? Was that intimidating and what thoughts would you have for people who are saying that one day they're going to become an artist and they're just not, just a few more months and then they'll get their bills in order, then they'll go take the step. What thoughts do you have on that? Today is the only day there is.

If it's not today, then you might as well just take it off your list. You know what I mean? Like, for me, I had a partner, you know, I had Carrie Lynn, who in my world felt like so experienced and she'd done this before and she had put a couple, you know, tracks down and I heard her on CD already. So I just felt like I had someone leading me. I was very lucky. And, you know, to navigate and figure that out myself, I had no clue, no idea. I have young people ask me all the time.

how do I do this or that or what you're doing? I'm like, in today's world, like, you basically just record it and put it online. Like, that's as simple as it is, literally. And it's about your own drive in this, in this climate and these algorithms, right? Like, you can become famous off TikTok if you really, really wanted to, tried, studied, put the time and the effort in. Like, if that was your dream, you know? But for me, I don't think I felt the intimidation of it simply because I'm very orange in that way. I sort of leap and then like look back afterwards.

I'm like, oh, look what I did. That's crazy. I'll try anything once. I'm pretty open and adventurous. You know, even though I say I don't have confidence, like somehow, somewhere along the line that kicks in. and I just think, whatever, hey, it's going to be what it's going to be. Now, I think with age and maturity, like, I am a little bit more thoughtful. I'm more thoughtful about my lyrics.

I won't just write it because it fits. I think a little bit more about what do I really want to say. Like, this is my time and my energy. This is my breath. This is my brand. This is my image, right? And so I just don't want to be singing or rapping about nonsense. You know, but to answer your question,

I don't give it so much thought that I'm going to be held back by the process of thinking. I'm more of a doer, and then I'll kind of figure out after, like, was that right or was that wrong? Or do I want to make adjustments from there? You know, for people that want to do something, like, today is your day, man. Go and at least get it started. Go and put the skeleton work down. You'll be surprised by what you can come up with or accomplish in a day towards your goals. But I feel like if you don't start today, you're never going to do it.

You don't know what tomorrow brings. And time is now. Like, what better than the energy that you have and the thoughts and the, you know, sort of like breath and life of right now to kind of go out and do something that is going to not only inspire you as a person and fulfill you as a person, but that fulfillment is what you're giving to other people. When you are doing and invoking what is really truly your path and your purpose, like you are living it wholeheartedly, you are a gift to anyone and everything that crosses your path because then other people are going to want to do the same thing.

But what it is for them, that doesn't mean like you're, listening to this and now you have to go and write music because that's what I did. No, you have to go find your form of music. It might be growing organic vegetables. It might be designing cool t-shirts. It might be programming apps. But whatever it is, it gets you, like, juiced and you know that feeling, that's an undeniable feeling, people can't not know that feeling, it's natural, it's primal, that's when you know you're on the right path. That's when you know you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, what you've been brought to this earth to do. And the second it doesn't feel good, that's kind of when you have to say, like, I'm going to shift, I'm going to shift

course here and figure out, like, and to do a little bit more of what I'm really driven by. That's one of my questions for you as well, is at least with like physical, artists who maybe create a painting or create a drawing or do something like that, the fear that I've heard from them is that it becomes a job. And there's some sort of, like with the writers, they have a term writer's block. And there's this feeling that when it becomes too business, when there is an inspiration driving it, that it's like, I've written three books now, now I need to write a fourth book, that there's something not inspirational about it anymore. When you're creating artwork and somebody said i'd love to have like mount she am and i'd like to have this and

that and then you go okay i'll get to work that there's not there you're lacking the inspiration behind it and so there's always this challenge of like balancing between the two and like talking to kerry lynn one of her challenges is being able to make the pieces of work she she freaks me out and in the best way and she says she has visions in her sleep or in the daytime of whole art pieces that come to her and she doesn't know where and going back to kind of the we don't know where these things come from i i don't know where that's come from but i don't have that i have no idea what it's like for an inspiration and a whole image to come into your mind and then trying to figure out and she was like one of the problems is taking that and

turning it into a two d medium where it's like it's in the world now so it's like it's perfect in my mind but bringing it and putting it down is one of the challenges and she was explaining that having the space to focus on that is difficult and having people want those pieces in comparison to having their own vision of like I want you to do elk mountain and I want it to be like this and I want it to do so like she gets pulled away from the things that inspire her or um that creative element where I don't know where that comes from in Harry Potter it's the idea of the golden snitch that that's what pulls you forward and there's this glimmering light that pulls you forward and inspires you and motivates you and it's your job to chase that and so I don't

know where that comes from but there's always this underlying fear that whatever you enjoy is a hobby once it becomes a job there's something that like the soul is lost from it how do you navigate that because you're able to kind you're as you said a jack of all traits how do you navigate making sure that the things you love don't become just jobs and responsibilities and duties that you don't enjoy doing anymore you check in with yourself you become aware of that feeling of being alive and knowing when it's dwindling when it's kind of like you know it's it's almost like being aware of when you're bored and giving that feeling that feeling weight and giving that feeling voice and activism in your own life, I guess you could say,

not just saying like, oh, I'm just being apathetic. Well, well, like, I'll keep pushing on, no, no, no, no, no, you know, and pushing through a feeling that's very apparent. But I can't say that I can always just be a slave to my whims, though, right? because there is the almighty dollar, there is, you know, like you have to sort of be responsible and find that balance. But I listen to podcasts just like you. And one of my favorite ones is around inspiration and feeling inspired. And this woman, she talks about when she first started doing her podcast, how it would just be like a feeling. And she would like quickly run to the microphone

and just start pouring out what was going. It was, It's like a stream that was going through her, like a download, she calls it. And then she started finding processes for that. So she didn't always have to quickly be running to record a podcast. She would just, like, put it in her voice and audio notes and, like, put the skeleton down so that she could record it at a later time. And then she started having processes around these funnels. She calls them where people, they might come in for the podcast,

but then she has these funnels where, you know, there's an offshoot to one of her workshops. or there's an offshoot to like a masterclass or there's different ways in that are pre-baked and pre-built. And I think when you start building in those mechanisms that work for you so that it's not just you that's creating your income. It's about, oh, I have all these structures that work for me so that if I'm not there or I'm feeling off or I'm not feeling inspired that day, hey, I've got all these funnels and these other things set up that are kind of making me money still or putting food on my table however you want to see it, right? So I think that's one thing. And then the other thing for me is that is why I do lots of different types of art. If I'm not feeling inspired by music, if I'm not like creating new music, I'm not practicing, I'm not actively

you know, living and working as a musician, I have film and I can take on contracts for film to help other people's ideas come alive. I can be a technician. I can take photos. I can, you know, create little community film projects for people. I host. I do a number of different things that are online or in person. I'm hosting the Indigenous Hip Hop Awards this year in Winnipeg. So at the end of August, I'll be flying out there to host that. I act. So I'm constantly like auditioning for different films and television commercial projects. I just recently started. This is so funny actually, because this is like creators way, I swear. I stumbled into voice acting. And so now I have an agent who sends me auditions and I just auditioned for two different books.

to read them. So it would be like me and audible being like, and then she walked through the doorway and saw her father for the first time and felt an immense sense of satisfaction. Like, that would be me if I get these roles. And so it's just like, I just take life as it comes. I don't say no unless I really feel no inside my body. I'm very open to new experiences. And, I work for my community, you know, I work for SXG. You've seen the comic book that I help create and make a reality. I do active reporting and designing for our magazine called The Stello Signal. I host Light the Fire Chats once a month online with my dad.

I'm going to be starting my own podcast in the fall. That's going to be, it's really meant to be about, indigenous entrepreneurship but I feel like there's so much more like even I'm just like so inspired by you and like you have been able to take all these different indigenous voices that we normally would never hear in stories and put them into a podcast so I feel like you're already doing such a good job of filling that lane so I want to look at something that's me like that again like my brand of like who am I and what do I have to bring to the sort of like podcast talk radio world, right? And my connections and that kind of thing. And so it's, it's like indigenous entrepreneurship, but also like kind of more entertainment, like an entertainment swing. Um, so yeah, I just keep myself busy by like different threads and I don't want to get stuck in one thing because I know

I get bored easy. I'm like totally ADHD. I'll be like, no, not feeling it. You know, and like I'll work on music. But if I don't catch that wave, it dies down. And I can't. And I can't. can't stay focused. And I'm like confused. Like, I don't know if I'm doing the hook or the verse here. I'm like, and I'll just leave it. And then I also am very active in sports. And so I do CrossFit. And we were supposed to be in a competition, but it's like conflicting with one of our races. And I run a competitive ladies paddling team. And so we're going to England in August to compete in the Vaja International World Sprint Championships and representing Canada. So I'll be in England from August 1st to the 19th, competing in the world sprints this year.

Oh, my gosh. That is so much to be going on. What was sort of the next step from hip hop for you? Like, what has the journey been like up until now? What was the kind of next iteration moving away, not moving away, but moving from hip hop onto something else? What was that next step for you? I went to theater school for two years. Yeah.

So coming off of that theater group and kind of getting. hip-hop like bookings here and there and semi-working on an EP with Carrie Lynn. A friend of mine, a good friend of mine actually lives in Toronto now, big in the theater scene, Archer Pachowas, came and said, hey look, Margo Cain is opening her own theater school. It's called Full Circle Ensemble Program. You should apply. And those are like the magic words of my whole entire life. It's like people coming to me and saying, here's your next opera.

And I'm just, okay. That's, like, literally been my whole life since my 20s. So, okay, Archer, all apply. So I applied. I went to theater school for two years, completed that. Really felt like theater wasn't my calling. Like, that wasn't my main love. Like, I didn't feel like I needed to, like, hit the stage. You know, I did one small production. It wasn't a great experience. And theater doesn't really pay all that well. I mean, if you love it, You love it, right? You'll do that because that's in your body. And then soon after that Aboriginal youth internship program, the very, very first of its kind came apart, like came around. And Carrilyn and I actually applied for that and we got into that

together. We went to theater school together and then we went to the Aboriginal youth internship program together. I worked for the Ministry of Children and Family Development, Vancouver Coastal. She worked for something in like forestry or something and she's always working like with the land. Like I don't quite understand her technical job. I never have. Um, but anyways, we worked in different ministries. She was on the island. I was in Vancouver. And then from there, I created a whole bunch of Aboriginal youth councils that advocated for Aboriginal youth and care for them to have a right and a voice in their own care plans and in creating policy and structure within the Ministry of Children and Family Development. I helped to create Aboriginal

voice in that lane of like government work. And I could have continued on. Like I definitely could have had a very illustrious career working for the Ministry of Children and Family Development, like moving up the ranks and creating, you know, national bodies. of youth voice and but you know me like I was like I got bored so in between I worked for knowledgeable Aboriginal youth association doing some policies for them doing some cultural outreach programming for them and then I worked for urban native youth association I created their music arts and culture program which still runs to this day a free art night free guitar lessons free electric guitar lessons a free cultural night where you create, you know, cultural art,

a free photography night where kids can come and they get cameras put in their hands and they learn how to be photographers. So I created a whole rotating program of arts and culture and music that's free for Aboriginal youth on the downtown east side. And I would have stayed and I loved the work that I did for Anya, but I was pregnant with my son. And so it was sort of calling for me to move home. and be close with family, and then at the same time, housing opened up.

My name went to the top of the list and it kind of all felt meant to be, like this was around 2010. So it was sort of my time to leave, I think, the music arts and cultural scene in Vancouver, and all throughout that time, when I had a day job working with Aboriginal youth was mostly my lane. I did hip-hop. I was in the recording studio. I was doing shows all over Canada. you know, I was traveling and doing festivals and our group was growing and popularity

and we had quite a following. And this was before online. So we still press CDs and we still sold CDs at our show. This is how long ago this was. From there, I had to, I went on maternity leave from Anya because I thought I was going back to Vancouver. I never wanted to move home. Even when I had my son, it was no desire for me to ever.

live in Chilliwack again. I didn't feel connected to home. I didn't feel connected to my family. My family has a lot of politics and like drama at times. And I just, I liked being that outsider who was in and everyone loves you and like, oh, you're home, ha ha ha, and then bye. You know, I never wanted to be entangled or like dragged down by any of that. Um, but that changed. As I matured, as my son grew, as I started to invest more in my community at home, that changed for me. So I started working for SXTA. Back then was Stala Hohoho-Kha Treaty Association. And it was a job, like it was a job that fit.

I was a scale-kale member outreach. Sure, why not, right? It was just, again, someone said, hey, you should apply. So I did that. Wasn't happy there. Didn't feel like I was really making an impact. Moved on to work for Hiauthmeath, started creating their youth programming with their indigenous youth so they would have a voice within services.

you know, created a few structures that weren't there before that helped Aboriginal youth have more of a voice with their social workers and whatnot, what have you. So I always kind of got brought back into being a youth engagement specialist. Like that's one of the talents I think that I have, but that I shy away from because it feels more of an imposition than me fulfilling what makes me happy. And then, oh, it feels like such a long story, but I remember I remember sitting in my car one day and reflecting on what I was doing in my career and feeling like, where am I going? Because I, everywhere I go, I tend to kind of create these positions for myself because youth engagement is so important to me. That's what I was mentored in.

That's what I believe in. I believe youth need to have a voice. So I was always that person in these different institutions ensuring that young people had a voice. And I remember thinking, like, but what is my vision, like, for what am I going to do? How am I going to make this a career into the future? Like, who am I? Kind of, it's like this existential thing of your, like, late 20s or you're approaching 30. Like, oh, my God, you know, I'd been through so much trauma with my marriage, with my husband,

with, ugh, just a lot of personal stuff that had had. happened that was really, really awful and hard. And I was with my new partner. I, you know, I had my young son and I was just kind of like in a weird lull. Like it had been since the Thailand thing that I had been in college in school, so a good eight years. And I still didn't really know what would I even go back for? And then this flyer came across my email or my desk. It might have been email. And it was the lens of empowerment program. A program offered for UF.E focusing on photography and film to explore indigenous voices in a community-based approach. And I was like, bam. I knew it. It hit me in the gut. I applied that day. And I got in.

and I remember the moment I picked up a camera that that was it for me. We did theater, we did poetry, like it was such a cool program. The classes that were required for you to finish the program were like the coolest classes. And obviously I'm saying that because I'm a photographer, I'm a filmmaker, I'm a writer, I'm an actor, it all fit. Like there was nothing on that syllabus where I was like, me, nah, they were all like exciting to me. And the teachers, like Michelle LaFlemm, Dr. Michelle LaFlemm was like from back in my theater days, you know, her and Archer were once a couple, and so there was a connection there. You know, Winona was one of the teachers, and she's one of the community people I always looked

up to and loved, and I thought, oh, my God, like, this is so cool. And so I was in the Lens of Empowerment Program, and I remember my partner and I had a huge fight. and people think like oh man you know fighting so negative and conflict and blah blah right but i think it's really constructive because every time we seem to be like not jiving together it's like if we're in a canoe and we're paddling like opposite times or something it's an indication that our path needs to change and we only figured this out afterwards right but that was what had happened we were in like high volatile conflict with one another and got into this huge fight, like the biggest we'd ever had. And I was like going to school and playing hockey and like running in and out of the house.

And like the house was a mess. And like I, it was almost like I was split in so many directions trying to make myself happy and feel satisfied and fulfilled that I had no fulfillment. I didn't have any focus on my kids. I didn't have time management skills. I didn't have time management skills. I didn't have, like, time carved out to do my homework. I was just running from one thing to the next, desperately trying to feel something when it was just, like, I hit a wall, and that wall was actually my husband. And he's like, what are we doing?

What's going on? You're always just, like, running from one thing to the next. And, like, I can't even remember specifically what the fight was about, but I remember that both of us were not happy. And it caused me to look, inside myself deeply to say, like, where did all of this come from? And also, he's right. Like, what am I doing? Am I just want to have sort of like a mediocre safe life and work at Salonation and clock in and out every day and play hockey with my friends on Friday? Or am I, like,

trying to do something here with this lens of empowerment and is this leading me somewhere? and I immediately went online, I started looking for film programs, and one of the first ones that popped up was UBC, and I thought, no, like, that's impossible. I'm not a UBC, like, candidate, they would never accept me, like, I'm not even a filmmaker, I'm not good enough, like, who am I to think that I, like, all the bad, like, the negative tapes, all the reasons why not, and I can't move to UBC. like I think by then we had two kids and it was like no sorry really quickly is that a common thing you've experienced because as you said when people push the you should apply you've always said yes

I'm just wondering was that one of the main bigger ones where you were like maybe I can't do this and maybe this is beyond the reach because it sounds like for the most part you haven't approached things that way yeah this was one of the times where I thought like lady you're crazy and And what's interesting is it was self-imposed, like a self-search. I went and reached for this opportunity. It wasn't someone handing it to me and saying, hey, you can do this. When someone else is telling me I can do it and it seems like they think that I should, I'm all for it.

I trust their intuition and I trust their guidance for my life. But when it's me, I'm like, nope, no, I don't think so. I'm not this cat, blah, blah, you know what? This is actually a really important epiphany that I'm having right now. Because why would I trust other people more than I trust myself? I know myself better than anyone. So if something's coming from me, it's more authentic and true than ever, but it's the most scary. So when I looked at that application for UBC, I blew past all those negative

tapes and those stop signs and, you know, warnings and whatever. And I just applied. It took like an hour and a half maybe and it was kind of late and the kids were sleeping and I was really tired. But I just thought the deadlines in a couple days, I have to apply it's now or never. So I leapt before really thinking and I freaking got in. Like I was so shocked. I, I, I, honestly thought that I would apply and get rejected and just kind of try to figure something else out, something lesser or, you know, not so big in my mind. And I got in, like I told my teacher who was one of the, Stephanie Gold, who was one of the teachers for the lens of empowerment. She helped me choose, you know, I had the film that I'd worked on at UFV as my submission and blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah. She had wrote me a letter, like I was lucky. I had someone who could recommend me and um got in and the crazy thing is is I I got in the program no problem they wanted me they only choose 20 students there's usually 100 150 applicants like it fluxes there's sometimes more or less but I got rejected by the school UBC because I had been on academic probation remember my crazy hey days of university in Lathbridge Alberta when I was just like yeah like yeah like Like, I didn't care. I was failing out of school then. And because if you have any academic probation, doesn't matter how long ago it was, UBC flags that as like, you can't come to our school. We're an Ivy League institution. I had to write a special letter of basically begging. Like, it's like a grievance letter you write and you're like, I'm sorry, but this and that and this is what the circumstances were and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And actually a. appeal, and my appeal had to be good enough for the school to say, oh, you're in this different place now and you're actually going to pull up your socks and be a good student.

I got A's the entire time I was at UBC. The only, I think B I got was in one essay writing class and one biology class. And I hated both of those. But I got A's, like straight A's. I got like so many recognitions and achievement awards and everything. Like I'm not joking. I'm not tooting my own horn. I'm just saying like I knew what I was doing there. I knew what how important my goals and my voice were for this work for becoming a filmmaker. It meant everything to me. So I gave 150%. Of course I did well. Like I loved what I was doing. I knew what I was doing for once in my life. And ever since I became a filmmaker, that's been sort of like the only thing I want to do. And one of the only reasons I haven't dropped music to become full-time film is because I still think there's an importance for me to be there. It's like, what would the music industry be if I weren't at least contributing

some of my narrative to that space? And like, I still get booked for shows. I still, you know, I still think it's fun. And so it's sort of like my second love, but it's definitely taken a backseat to be in a filmmaker. And that's literally the whole, like, journey leading up to me, even, I guess, stumbling into the profession I have now. What do you see in filmmaking that's somewhat different? Because poetry and hip-hop, they have a narrative element. There's something really fascinating about word use in music that seems like it would

be likely different in filmmaking. So, like, you can write a verse, but then you can start to. to figure out how can I make this sharper? How can I make this hit harder? What word could I use as a synonym that's going to make it rhyme with the previous sentence? Where maybe you're taking a more larger view with a film of what is the overall story. And not that one word doesn't matter, but that you're kind of viewing it as a more a holistic experience of like, in this three minutes, what do I hope people pull away from this?

where there are certain rappers I listen to and I will not like most of the song but that one sentence that they did is so incredible to me that I will listen to the whole song for that verse where I'm like, I don't know there's like a conservation of words of having a point that's so poignant

that it means something different to me that's worth that song having maybe nonsense in the beginning or the middle or the end or the chorus not being good or the background beat not being good but it's like you said something and I do believe this I believe that most rappers

at least the ones that I listen to that are not very popular on the mainstream are like profits they're telling you where the culture is at and what the problems people are facing are and they're saying the thing you might feel in your head

that nobody's saying like I think one of the big ones is we are too crowded in a lot of our lives we are too we're too bombarded whether you live in Vancouver and you have other people influencing you at all times. You don't get to think about who the heck am I? And like that we're talking about meditation and we're talking about exercise and mindfulness and reflections and we've got apps for it.

The broad thing that basically culture is saying is you are being influenced by too many things that you're not able to figure out who you are in this circumstance. And so we're learning yoga and we're trying to go for more walks and hikes and connect with nature because we're realizing there's a disconnect. and so I think that rappers do a good job and as well as comedians they kind of highlight those things that aren't on our radar and they point out like I think it's Kevin James he was kind of pointing out how there's like the vegan needs to tell you that they're a vegan or the or the no soy people or the no GMO people they need you to know and so he does a good comedy skid of like saying like oh oh oh are we going to go to that pizza shop because you know me I can't have my gluten and he does a good job of kind of highlighting that that has. has become a huge part of our culture now, which is people have dietary restrictions. And I think to zoom that out, people have dietary restrictions because we're eating crap. We're eating terrible things.

You can't live off of McDonald's and think you're going to have a robust immune system that's going to give you all the tools where you don't have to restrict your diet. If you're eating Cheetos and Pop and these things, they're not giving you a strong immune system. So you're going to have dietary restrictions. The way we lived a thousand years ago, we didn't have the same type of diet. restrictions because it was natural. It was from the land. It was meant for our bodies.

And I love the origin story because it's a reminder that the environment around us views us as weak, that we are not strong, independent people, the way we like to think. We are reliant on the plants and the animals and the environment around us to live and that they humbly give themselves to us to live. And that's why often Christians say prayers and we have ceremony. and we have salmon ceremonies to say prayers to thank the environment around us for feeding us and for making sure that we're well

and we've basically decided we're going to take a new path and it's going to be nonsense chemicals that you're consuming like what is pop? What is the main ingredient? I don't even know. Like it's not anything that would have existed a thousand years ago and so these aren't giving us the tools to thrive. And so what stands out to you about filmmaking?

What is, what do you see in the medium of communication that stands out to you that makes you enjoy communicating through that that medium film is a story brought to life you know you can hear a story someone can tell you a story you'll come up with the images in your mind you can read that story you'll imagine what the characters look like you can imagine the conflict but But film does all of that for you. It's someone's vision, whether it be the director, like, you know, the director, director of photography working together, the director of the editor, it's collaborative.

And I love that aspect as well. But to me, it is the one single medium where you can get immersed into a world of disbelief, of fantasy, of reality, of documentary, you know. Like you said horror. I love what you brought up about horror. I'd never thought about it in that way. Like that idea that demons follow you. I started coming up with a script in the moment. I'm like, okay, that's actually really good. I want to sit down and write about that now. But it's the one medium where I feel like you can sit with this story and be a witness. And it evokes emotions inside you in the moment. Like a song's not always going to make you cry. If you're feeling sad that day, it might. If it reminds you of a certain person you lost, it might. If you're going through a breakup, it might. Like, sure.

But a film, if it's done right, and if the actors are on that day, if the costuming is believable, if the lighting matches the mood, if the camera's at the right angle and all these, you know, nuanced pieces come together perfectly, you are going to impact the person watching it, and you are going to evoke that emotion in them. And that's what I love about it. I love watching a movie and being like, totally, they get it. I've been in that situation. Like, man, am I right? You know, like, you feel heard. You feel understood. You feel validated. You feel celebrated. I love that I can have a hard day and cry and be stressed out and literally just want to like hide like tuck away under the covers my comfort is sitting and watching

a comedy that I've watched 150 or 200 times already but like still laughing at all the stupid parts of it like knowing that like I know the plot I know what's going to happen I know what's going to end up in cheesy like they're going to be together at the end whatever but that's comforting to me I like providing that to people. I like being the curator of that story and creating something that's timeless. You know, that's like, I don't know, what's like a comfort movie for people, the breakfast club or, you know, like even Wayne's World or, you know, like for me, ones that are sort of like space balls, like classic kind of goofball comedies that I grew up with.

that are so comforting to me that I know are there. They're just kind of like my friends that I can pick up and turn on at any time. I love being able to be a part of that process. One, two, offer to people that same solace, but with indigenous stories, indigenous worldview, indigenous actors and indigenous humor that I'm creating something for our community that's never really been done well before or very much or at all like you have your few and far between Mohawk girls reservation dogs um north of 60 like there's not much right in terms of like we don't have our own network surely you know we What cult classics are there for indigenous films?

Smoke signals, people always say that. Dance Me Outside, that's another one. That's, like, pretty obvious. But there's not much. And I want to be a part of that new wave and emergence of indigenous cinema, shaping it and curating it and offering more spaces that we can take up and sort of rising out of the margins and creating that narrative of we are indigenous people. we occupied these lands originally.

We were crucified and almost completely wiped out. We rose up from all of that oppression, and this is our story. And I want to be able to tell it in like different time periods, in different genres, in different ways, in different lengths on different platforms. And I just think it's so endless the opportunity, that's there, and I'm just excited to be a part of it. That sounds amazing. I think one of the interesting pieces that you talked about was that you feel it in the moment, and I'm a huge fan of this person. He's a neuroscientist. His name's Andrew Huberman. He does the Huberman,

Andrew Huberman podcast, and he takes neuroscience, which is very daunting to most people, and he makes it applicable. So he talks about how when you're on a walk, you view things in more of a landscape, gate mode in your mind, which means that time goes by faster. And then when you're reading a book, you're so honed in on each word, on each sentence, the time goes by slower. And so when you're sitting in the waiting room in a bland office, maybe the doctor's office, the reason that that seems like it takes forever when it's only been 10 minutes is because time has slowed down because you're catching every detail.

You're rereading that sign again and again, whether it's like the please do not smoke here or whatever sign, you keep reading the same sign and you're like, is this ever going to end? And it's because you're in a focused mode in an environment that's going to make it time feel like it goes by slower. And the contrast is true. Like an hour run for me feels like it's been 10 minutes. And often that's the goal when I'm interviewing people is to get into that feeling of landscape mode because we'll hit that three hour mark and I'll often tell the guests like, hey, we just did three hours. And they'll be like, oh my gosh, I thought this was 20 minutes. And that's an important indication to me is the hope.

to see whether or not I did my job, because if it feels like it was three hours, then that's a boring conversation, not only to that person, but to the listener, they're going to be like, I can't listen to this. Often people have given me grief of like, it's too long, and those are not my ideal listeners. I want people who are interested in a person's story, who are going to follow along and, like, this thing that impacted them 20 years ago, like, Carrie Lynn talked about how, like, she broke her arm and she wasn't able to do the same stencilings type of work she was doing. And so she took the cast that she was wearing.

She stuck a paintbrush in it and she just figured it out. And she just started doing it that way. And you have to follow the whole story to see that now she's a muralist. And she's taking that whole art form that she switched to and she's turned it into a way of impacting people from all over the world and being able to share an art piece that everybody's going to see and it's not in a private collection that's locked away somewhere. you have to follow the whole story to see the beauty of it with your art creation

Andrew Heberman talks about how when we watch a movie we're in actually a hypnotic state and we kind of have a bad vibe when we hear hypnosis because we think medallion being hung in front of you and you're going to feel very sleepy now but a hypnotic state is often when you react to something and it's not conscious and so when there's an event that happens like the hero dies or or get stabbed and you feel your stomach drop and you're like oh my gosh um that feeling you're in a hypnotic state because you're not consciously controlling your body you are connected with that character and you are um and this is what's interesting about people we're all the characters in the movie

we see ourselves in uh for the avengers we see ourselves in the loki we see ourselves in the thor we see ourselves in the tony stars we see the best of ourselves and the worst of ourselves in each character and we're not one of them we're all of them we're experiencing my gosh what would like satan have to go to to be that terrible person and my goodness how am i terrible in my own ways and so you're each one of those characters like you talked about the wizard of oz and that evil queen it's hard to relate to her until you realize that she wasn't loved the way maybe she wanted to be loved and when you start thinking about why are these characters the way they are and and my goodness there are so many lawyers who are not empathetic who want to have a heart but they're in a job where every day

it's their job basically not to have a heart and I work with really good lawyers who want to but there's like a switch they have to flick off when you're representing a criminal and you have to ask the other side like the the woman who's saying she was sexually abused by this person and you have to question her about what she went through and did you remember that right and did that happen? Like, that is a dark job. And so they have to turn a part of their humanity off in that moment. And then it's turning it off and on. And there's impacts that I think that has on people that we don't get to dive into. But storytelling gives us that opportunity to experience the good, the bad and the ugly of life in such an interesting way. So I'm just interested

on like creating stories. Do you, one of the challenges I think is, is making sure people get the story. And there's like a balance because some people will pull from their own life experience and see something they went through in the story. But then, as you kind of said, the Yellow Brook Road Story in the Wizard of Oz is very interesting because it's such a, it's an archetype of we all want to leave home. And then we realize that home is always where you needed to be. And there is no place like home.

And so that's part of the story. But some people, I'm sure, watch the movie again and again and again and again and never get it. and never see that point in the story. I think it's the same with biblical stories or indigenous stories that there's this question people ask of, is Jesus Christ a real person? My argument is it really doesn't matter whether or not he was a genuine person or not. The point is you should live your life based on the tendency he lived his life by it, which is don't lie, be honest, treat people fairly.

He was a carpenter and I think that that's interesting because we often think of you want to go be the lawyer, the doctor, or the judge. He was a regular person. He wasn't anything special. In indigenous cultures, Sani McKelsey talked about the generous man and how the generous man always gave back to his community. And then he was turned into a red cedar tree,

which is very generous to us and is used for so many different purposes. And so I'm just interested in your thoughts on the point of the story and how important that is because it seems like so many people can watch the Avengers and not understand the tale of the two brothers, which is the Thor and the Loki, which is the cane and the able.

So many people maybe miss the point of the story, maybe pull some things from their own lived experience, but what is that relationship like to tell a story, show it to people, and maybe they miss the point you were trying to share, maybe they get their own, but maybe you want them to see the original point as to why the whole thing was created.

What is that process like? So for me, I love how you brought up the thing about archetypes, right? Because for a storyteller, a person who's going to sit down and write a script, you have to look at those. We go to a class and, you know, it's called script writing 250, whatever, and they teach you about there. Here's the inciting incident. Here's the rise of action. Here's the climax.

Here's the denouement. Like, you have to learn the technical terms and the tools. for writing an effective hero's journey. And the hero's journey, as you said, is old as time. It's old as like the books in the Bible. Those were some of the first books ever published that was actually distributed around the world for people to read and to learn about this man's life

and what he did. And so for me, I'm in this interesting intersection of being a traditional storyteller, indigenous folklore, which is Shuo Kuiam. and then Squawquil, which is our own personal stories. And Squawakol, for me, is more like documentary. That's sort of like telling someone's personal story. But at the same time, there's the narrative version of somebody's squaw call.

There's the narrative version of the young indigenous girl who went to high school, who wasn't accepted by her peers, but, you know, still kind of felt like I'm different, but I want to be like you, I wish I could just take off this indigenous identity and be like everybody else and maybe that would make me like myself more. You know, that's that whole no place like home kind of journey, right? Like what hero's journey is that? Where does that fit? And so for me, when I first started to learn how to tell stories, I just thought, oh, it's an experience. You just take someone's experience that's interesting and something either good or bad happened and they ended up because of it, it's that simple. Well, you learn that it's not that simple. You have to have

interesting characters with motivations, with conflict that they're facing, that they overcome, that, you know, happens to have another sort of tail-end thing that comes out as a surprise and it's a twist, and then the resolve comes for that. And so what I'm interested to do is to look at indigenous folklore, which would be our Shwoquiams, Thelhoia, Chappé, the man you talked about, the generous man, even the bears that we talk about in the

comic books, you know, even Hechals and that journey to research those stories a little bit more and to create modern films that reflect that. but to find that medium between the effective story, the, you know, the chart, the plot that does the thing that it's supposed to do,

it goes up and then comes down, I'm interested to find the intersection between the two methods of telling stories in a traditional way that have, you know, a hero and a conflict and a protagonist, the antagonist, and the supporting characters, and there's a lesson there. and it's kind of like Hansel and Gretel or, you know, different, different old fairy tales. Like, I guess that's in our culture, you'd call them fairy tales, but to us, these things all did really happen.

This is stories passed from generation, generation to generation. But I love your point, too. Does it really matter? Like, is that question even relevant? Does it matter if Jesus Christ was real or not? Because the messages of those stories are what we're actually taking and applying in our life today. Be a good person. You know, little children come in before it's dark time because it's dangerous at nighttime. Like, that's when wild animals come out. That's when rapists and drug

addicts come out. That's when you can get robbed or young indigenous girls get stolen. Like, you know, and so that's how those things apply today. So I'm very interested for myself as a storyteller. I want to be able to tell the story in such an effective way that most people will get, at what I'm trying to say. And it's not for everybody. My audience probably won't be your average white male. And I'm okay with that. But I do want to tell stories that impact our communities,

that our communities can watch and be, you know, proud and be impacted and be like, I see myself in this story more clearly than I'm, you know, different strokes or family matters or fresh prince of bell air because that was our closest again black culture was our closest relation to something that felt like who we were it wasn't exactly you know we faced different kind of traumas and i think challenges and either rural reserves or reserves that are attached to small towns or you know that kind of a thing but at the same time we felt close to black people in their narratives because they have a similar, you know,

humor and family vibe and importance and, you know, that same lane of values, but I never did see my family on TV, you know? I never seen like our chief and council of politics on the news. I didn't see those things. And that's what I want to be a part of. I want to be a part of becoming a stream, whether it be digital or web-based or on TV, on your tablet and phone is more likely, that is actually giving Aboriginal people something to reflect them and where they're at today in 2022, not the 90s, not the 80s, not the 1800s, but today. In 2022, what does that narrative look like now? Like, I want to be a part of bringing that to light. I really love that because I think that there are certain things that we need to learn again, that we need to

reinvigorate. And when people say, a lot of people say the word decolonize, for me, I try and use that as like, what are flaws in our system today that could be informed with a new narrative, that could help improve our relationships, that could improve the health and the sense of representation among all people in things like the criminal justice system, in how we operate in our communities. And so I've highlighted this before, but I think how indigenous people treat elders is vastly different than how Western culture treats their senior populations. And I've said this before, but if you look at how Ontario treated their senior populations in care homes, it was atrocious. And they, many of my peers,

when going to public high school didn't look at their elders as a source of knowledge and wisdom and sage advice on how to live a meaningful life and so I try to make a comparison it doesn't perfectly overlap but there's an idea for culture like the priest is someone you go to

for sage advice and wisdom for us it's often the elder that you go to for that sage advice and you can go to them at any point and again a flaw within our counseling system as we've developed it is you need these credentials, which I totally understand, but there's like a goal that you wrap up your counseling in six months a year, two years, five years, that there's an end point. With an elder in your community, there's no end. There's when you fall back down,

you go and reach out to the people who can help lift you back up and make you see your future or make you see things differently or inspire you again, that you could be something more than you are. And so the elder, I think, is something that Western culture doesn't have a good relationship with. They don't, within Western culture, elders have experienced the Cold War. Well, we're sort of in another Cold War with what's going on in Ukraine and Russia right now. So we could ask them, how did you handle this? What were your experiences during this time and how should we approach this? We're in a time of significant inflation. Well, this isn't the first time. What did people do during the Great Recession, uh, 70 years ago now, that we could learn from.

Because I, um, my grandmother, uh, not my biological grandmother, uh, my non-biological grandmother, she was always very careful about how she spent her money. And she always used milk past the expiration date, ate cookies beyond the expiration date, but she was largely shaped by the Great Recession of knowing what it's like not to have a plan to be able to go shopping next week and to have, a budget and I think that many senior populations are very frugal with how they spend, very responsible on how they use every piece. Indigenous people have always been good at using the whole animal, of utilizing the full body, of trying to make sure that when I interviewed Shayla Rain, she was like, her first

hunt was like, I think, three years ago, and they're still finding uses for some of the parts. And she was like, we just made necklaces out of like the antlers of the bowl. and like we've we've continued to try and find ways to get the most out of that i think that's what we're likely going to have to do during this recession so there's knowledge in those experiences um indigenous people fought in world war two and i interviewed scott sheffield to find out why like so so much of our culture is now dominated by this idea that indigenous people and like western culture are really at odds with each other so why on earth would seven uh 70 years ago why why would indigenous people fight a war that they could absolutely argue wasn't their problem?

Well, there was this feeling that this problem was eventually going to end up in Canada. And as Scott Sheffield puts it, we were very close to losing Europe and having World War II take place in Canada, because we were going to lose Britain and France. And we were so close to that, but it never hit. And so we forget about those times and the problems that we faced. But I think that there's so much, like I think prayer, before dinner are very comparable to salmon ceremonies. And so there's like, there's relationships that we can build and we can reinvigorate this feeling within people that there is ways to

live a meaningful life. And I think that a lot of what we've lost over time is this sense of meaning that all you have to do is buy the next iPhone 14 and your life will be good. Or all you have to do is subscribe to this new, uh, Hulu and then you'll have the best show on TV and like that we're constantly chasing the next thing that we've sort of lost. why we're here and and what meaning actually looks like and i think that that's where indigenous perspectives can fill such a void in people's lives like there's a sense of emptiness the depression rates are incredibly high and we can say that SSRIs or or chemicals are going to be the solution i don't think that's the case as you see people start to want to do goat yoga and start

to want to do like be out in nature and and go exploring you're starting to see people realize that their life is not to be found in materialistic approaches. And I think people are having a really hard time with Christianity right now because of what happened with Indian residential schools, because there was a huge role that religious institutions played in the harms. And so for a lot of people, that meant burning down churches and condemning Catholicism or Christianity. My personal opinion, and I think it's similar to Keith Carlson's,

which is what happened there was flaws in human beings for the most part. Not all of it, but a lot of it was, as he described it, you set up a building and you say this is going to be a school for children and you're going to be alone and you're going to be alone with children and there's going to be no oversight and you're going to be alone with them for long periods of time. That attracts the worst type of human being. That does not invite good quality, well-rounded people.

And then obviously the federal government's goal with Indian residential schools was terrible. It was to remove the Indian from the child. And so now we kind of see it's time to learn about the culture in a meaningful way. And it's time to take the tools, the insights, the wisdom, and apply that to our culture, apply that to our criminal justice system, into our institutions. And with all the gaps that exist and all the services we provide, to believe that there is a belief system and values and stories that contribute and make us more meaningful. Because another example is like we all use Google Maps now. But one of the brilliant things about indigenous culture is you had stories around this mountain and this, this berry bush and how these mountains formed over time that not only gave you a sense of where you were on planet Earth, like how to get from A to B, but it also gave you a story of how to live a meaningful life and how important the trees were. And when Eddie Gardner described it and in the creation story or the origin story, there's this idea that you call them the ones that crawl, not bugs.

And there's something derogatory weirdly about the word bugs because there's something to remove from you, something to get rid of, yet they contribute to the health and well-being of birds and rabbits and animals. And so we've done a terrible job of valuing the life around us. And indigenous culture calls us back to see the beauty in everything. But I also love what Andrew Victor said, which is it's so easy for us to see the beauty in a sunset and a beauty in the mountain, a beauty in animals and life around us. And so easy for us to forget the value of people when they're later in life, when they cut us off on the road, when we're stuck in traffic, when we've had a bad day. It's so easy to think, I hate people. And like, I hate to say this, but like David Suzuki saying humans are cancer on the planet is, again, part of this idea that we don't matter. And it's a very discouraging message.

So I'm just interested, what do you think people can learn from indigenous culture? And what do you hope to take? And can you describe the business that you've actually formed? Okay, cool. So I think you led into that beautifully. And everything that you talked about hits the nail on the head in terms of what can. can indigenous people offer the world? I've often felt like we are that missing piece for the world to reach its next level

of evolution. Some people refer to it as like, basically like grades, that there's like this wave of indigo people, that the oras of these people being born, some of the first. sort of warrior indigo people were born in like the 1960s. We called them flower children. They were sort of there to usher in the new wave of consciousness of the indigo children that would later be born in the 80s and 90s, like myself, who were a little bit more gentle, had less of the warrior spirit, had to do like a less fighting than those original ones had to do. But regardless, Indigo children could still have been born in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Now, on the tail end of the Indigo movement of Indigo children like myself who have the blue, dark blue aura, who are very intuitive, very spiritually inclined artists, basically people who are more on the right brain sort of like vibe, right? On the tail end of the indigo movement would be the rainbow children. The rainbow children, and I think goes into crystal. But the rainbow children would be more sort of like their oras have the color of the rainbow. And what their purpose is is to usher in the transition of humanity for all acceptance, love, kindness. true reciprocity between people, the earth, the elements, responsibility for being a caretaker of the land that we come from,

all of those things. And so this shift in literal human consciousness, I feel, has always missed the indigenous voice and perspective because truly, if indigenous culture were to be the reigning culture for all of the world, if we were the ones to go out and to say to people, hey, you need to become part of our culture because, or else we'll kill you or will steal your children and put them in indigenous schools and teach them our language in our way of life, like literally if we were the ones to have done that, which we never would have, because it's not a part of who we are.

and it's not a part of our foundation of cultural teachings. I believe that the world would have a better standard of care for themselves, for their kids, for their elders, and for the earth, and for the environment. What are environmentalists really asking us to do? They're asking us to give a shit about what we take from the earth, what we put into the air, and how we take care of. of the water and the land that we're using. That's all.

That's all they're asking for us to do. And we're calling them like crazy wingnuts, you know, like Greenpeace tree huggers. And what they're asking us to do is so simple and responsible. And what does indigenous culture ask us to do? Respect the earth. Put back what you take. Take only as much as you need. you know, use all parts of the animal that you extract from the earth

and all of these very simple principles to act responsibly in harmony with the environment that we live in. And it's interesting because like we as a westernized society and I consider us to be colonized people, it's so hard. But then I need to drive to Vancouver. I have to fly to wherever I have to get the next, like you said, iPhone 14, I need, you know, all of these things. And so there's like this real hard balance to strike.

And I think COVID was a part of trying to like correct that for us. Like nature keeps trying to correct what we're doing and we're like, like give us back our concerts and our baseball games. Like, you know, because we're so stuck. in this stress nine to five make money rat wheel that we have to like feed our addiction to entertainment which relieves us from our responsibility to work that we're like in this cycle of like pacifying our work life with entertainment that costs us money which we need more money to entertain it's like this awful vicious cycle that we're in and i think indigenous culture says hold on. What about ceremony? What about prayer? What about kindness? What about the medicines and

the earth? What about the berries? What about the salmon? What about our families? What about the circle what about the sweat what about the eagle what about the deer you know like indigenous culture makes you stop and say what's really important and what is your connection to the creator and how are you feeding that and actively engaging in that and giving back to that curation of that connection. We have the long house, the sweat lodge, powwow, canoe, slahal, stick game, right? Song, dance, drum, all of these things. You don't need money. I mean, kind of nowadays you do, but you do and you don't. But it's not based on fame or wealth. Some parts of the culture have gone in that direction and that's okay. That's sort of its own problematic thing.

But for the most part, the real sacred parts, you can't pay anybody and like to be a part of that. You don't get paid to be a part of that. It's a feeling. It's a calling. It's a ceremony. And money can't taint that. Right? And there's not very many things and spaces around the world right now today that you can say that that's actually true.

There's not very many. Right? And so I think that indigenous people as indigenous voices and indigenous women, the reason why we've come into this time in the world and right now in our lives is because we are and we have been all along, we're being asked to teach and to share what we know. that attached to what we have to offer are going to be the ones who get onto that train with us to the next stop. And I think all the people that are not going to contribute to that and not going to be a part of that movement are starting to leave the earth. And we're seeing it happen in massive waves right now. A lot of people are dying and we're saying, why?

You know, why? Why are we experiencing so much grief and loss? and oh, that person went missing and they never came back or they got in a car accident, they overdosed, they, oh, sickness took them, what have you. It wasn't their plan to be a part of the next phase of what we're going into. It's going to be very hard.

There's going to be a lot of hardship. You're going to have to be strong. And I think a lot of people knew that they would not be a part of that. It was never their agreement with the creator, with themselves, with their life plan. And so they've decided to go. And I only say this because this is what I've heard prophesized by other people. This is what I've read.

This is what I've put together. This is what my own elders and teachers have shared to me with me about the kind of time that we are as humanity are going into next. And so, A, I think, yes, indigenous people, it's our time. This is clearly our time. My agent tells me this all the time. Indigenous actors, it's your time. Like, I'm like, okay, cool, I get it.

Like, it is our time to take the stage. And you could say that metaphorically or literally, however, but it's because we have something of substance and value to share. and the world for some and most parts are ready to listen and to actually apply what we have to teach hopefully to our coming practices because if we don't that's it like we don't have a plan we don't have another planet to go to we don't have other resources we can exploit we're coming to the bottom of the barrel here literally with gas and oil and and all the other stuff stuff that we've taken and extracted from the earth, that there's just not very much left.

And we're already seeing the wars and the perils of that, right? Of that desperation right now. Getting to the second part of your question, which is about my business, I feel like as an indigenous person, we're just becoming more self-sufficient and self-driven and self-procised. And for me, it was literally like a books thing. I was making a certain amount, dollar amount, through my shows, my jobs, my speaking engagements, that I had to have a formal structure within Canadian law to funnel all of that through.

That was sort of my basic intent was like, oh, I need a bin number, so I'll create a business. But it's become more than that. Salish Legends Media is really about, like, that vision and having a place where I can go into my office, sit down at my desk and say, okay, what is this container now that I have of photography and filmmaking? and how can I, as an indigenous storyteller, offer my services to communities, to, you know, production companies, to directors, to writers, whoever, to say, I'm here as, you know, a storyteller, I have many different skills that I can offer you to be able for you to tell your story, whatever that story may be that's important to you and your community in a way that is actually going to curated by somebody who's indigenous, who understands not only the best tools to use right now

today, but who understands what your story is about. I'm not going to bother you with a whole bunch of background questions and information that, like, you know, a non-indigenous person wouldn't know. I already know what you're probably aiming for, why you want to tell this story, or what's important to you about your culture, your community, or the protocols, because they're probably the same as my community, you know? And so I created my company because, A, I needed a bin number of blah, taxes, purposes, things like that. But B, because I want to be self-sufficient. I want to be able to say, I work for me. Like, I wake up in the morning and it's like, what's on my agenda? What's important for me to do today? Is it music? Is it writing a script? Is it applying for

a grant? You know, working on a documentary. You know, maybe I'm just fixing at my studio. today. Maybe we're coming up with the podcast ideas now. Like, what's next? Under Salish Legends Media, I have the freedom to do that. Working, say, for SXG, which I contract with them now. They're a wonderful organization. They do amazing work. But under that job title, within that set 35 hours a week, I'm just that job title. I'm just what can I produce for the organization. I'm as good as my work plan. under Salish Legends Media, I'm anything I friggin' want on Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday. You know what I mean?

And if I'm busy being a mom that week, I'm busy being a mom. Hey, I got checks and things coming next month. That's okay. I have the flexibility to kind of fit into the roles that are calling to me in that time. I can go and audition to be a book reader on audiobook. You know what I mean? Like it, to me, Salish Legends Media is my dream. It's my vision.

It's my flexibility. It's my name. It's Alia. You know, and I'm able to fit my husband into that as well because he's a photographer. And he's still kind of figuring out his footing. And I feel like a lot of that has to do with the fact that he's never given himself permission to say, who am I? Like, as an artist, what do I have to offer?

As a person, what am I doing? you know he's he's never had the luxury of that he's always had to be like hand to mouth like work in the oil thing like cleaning up the tanks or work for my community get like pay the bills give my mom money for rent like that sort of I think we all get stuck in that structure of like you need to just kind of like turn the wheel so that you're outputting the cheese so that you can eat that day right and I really hope for him anyways, that he is going to continue to lean into that vision of who he is and try to ask and answer those questions for himself. And we've recently been very lucky to participate in some of the psilocybin ceremonies that have been offered to us. And what I really feel like as a responsible user of this medicine, like to me it's not a drug, it's a medicine.

As a responsible user of this medicine, I only take it if I feel like it's going to yield some sort of benefit for me and that I need in that time to become realigned with who I am and what my purpose is. If I'm feeling lost or hopeless or, you know, kind of dreadful or that life is leading me, I'm not leading my life, kind of a thing, right? And I think it's kind of a dance you do. Again, as you mature, you realize I was never in control of any of this. This was all creator's plan and I was literally just strapped in for a ride. But you do want to feel some kind of autonomy, some points, right? And say, like, this isn't making me happy. This is. Or I don't like that color today. I like this color. You want to feel that as a human being. That's a part of the bliss of being an autonomous person, right? But yeah, for my partner, for my husband, I really, I hope and I pray for him all the time. that he finds that fulfillment, like not just being a father or being my partner and supporting my dreams, but really, like, for him, what's that ticket? And I don't know if he's quite,

and I can't answer and I won't speak for him, but I just feel like as his wife, that maybe he hasn't quite, like, crank that juice yet, you know, for himself. But I know he's finding it. He's a lot closer in his path to finding it that he ever was before. And our company, also allows for him to do that. Yeah, I really like a lot of what you said, particularly because I think there's a science to things that for some who are skeptical, it can fill like a void. So like, somebody might be like, what's the point of a sweat lodge? While scientifically, and Nina Zetkis would do a good job of breaking this down, it's proven

that when you sweat, you release heavy metals and unhealthy things from your body. And what else goes on in a sweat lodge? Well, you talk and there's an element of talk therapy there. So they maybe didn't write that down in a book for people to understand, but there was a logic to why Sweat Lodge's work. And there's a logic to why things like psilocybin work. Paul Stametz, who's a mycologist, who did a Netflix documentary Fantastic Fungi, which is available on Netflix, talks about how he had a stutter,

and he took psilocybin when he was young and he didn't know anything about it and there was not a lot of science on it and it ended up getting rid of his stutter for the rest of his life and he there's an element of prayer to what he did as well which he maybe might not call prayer but he kept saying stop stuttering stop stuttering and he said that for like an hour while he was on his trip and he never stuttered again and so there was psilocybin is able to let your mind open to new ideas to reconnect neural networks in a very scientific way. That's what John Hopkins has been doing. And I think it's a bitter pill to swallow

forbidding conservatives because it's still an unpopular word to say. Mushrooms, psilocybin. There was a huge campaign that many people went through of what I would call misinformation, of explaining to people that it was going to make you crazy, that it was going to make you an idiot. And there is a truth to the fact

that if you take it under the wrong conditions, you will have a bad trip. And even if you take it in the right conditions, but you're not willing to, as people often put it, do the work, you're not going to have a good trip because the experience is going to try and tell you things that you don't want to hear. And so the more you resist those things, the harder it's going to be in a way that alcohol doesn't. Alcohol just reduces some of the barriers you put in your own way. And so it just lets you do more and say more, take more risks with what you're saying.

Where psilocybin seems to, according to the literature, open your mind to things you didn't consider. And what they argue is expands your consciousness. So you're hitting a certain frequency every day. You're seeing things very similarly each day and things are very, you're in a rhythm. It takes you away from that. And I think artists do a lot of that work is. well because you might eat an apple every day and you never you don't see anything magical about that apple but an artist will try and highlight how special that apple is with the lighting with the

color with the richness uh with the flavors they'll try and do something so that apple removes itself from the background of your mind of like that's just another apple and make it stand out to you and good artists will show you like a bale of hay and you might say i don't care about bails of hay, but they'll paint it in such a way that you're reminded of how everything has to come together for that bail of hay to be in that farm that day, that there are people picking up the hay, putting it into a barrel and driving it over, and you'll just, you'll see something else in it. And I think psilocybin does very much the same thing, just like how musicians will tell you something about yourself, that you didn't know, and that's a very strange thing. And the other strange thing is that

often we have ideas and nobody can say where ideas come from. They just come to you. And that's a pretty poor answer for the scientific community, which is like, what inspired you to paint that? And it's like, I just had an idea. And it's like, well, where does that come from? We don't know. And so there's a certain realness to the fact that the more your mind is perhaps open

in certain tough times in your life, the more opportunities you have to see something differently. And the one struggle I think most people face is they see. challenges as not opportunities, as problems. And so perhaps changing or altering your state of consciousness has the potential to let you see many of the problems in your life as opportunities rather than this thing standing in your way because you might be working at Save On Foods and being like, well, I'm not doing anything meaningful with your life.

But wow, you have the opportunity in a country that basically says do whatever you like as long as it's legal to reach whatever potential you want. in a way that maybe someone in Uganda wouldn't be able to, that there aren't structures in place to say start your own business, to start to make your own decisions. I think we often look at our starting place, whether it is somewhere like Save On Foods, as like, look at how disadvantaged I am.

I'm at minimum wage job, but it's like, but maybe this is day one and day 700 is you're running a company. And so maybe this is the first day of the rest of your life. And we often forget that because we're like, well, I've got bills to pay. got this and I've got that and I think we do have a problem in our system where we set people up with student loan debt with the idea that they need to be in a stable position and we kind of and maybe those are like bumpers for people when they're bowling that like hey go get a stable job

and then you can imagine not having any bumpers on your lane but often people get stuck and live a life with the bumpers on yeah and miss out on the opportunities and miss out on their own potential and I think we as a community miss out when people don't reach their own potential because there's food that we could experience and that's where I think reconciliation involves indigenous people like yourself coming forward because the food you can experience the like people travel all around the world wanting to learn about different cultures well you've got one right in your backyard that would enrich your life if you were to learn about it and again I think that there's those similarities that can make you feel like wow we're so connected

and so much of the 20th century was about looking for those differences. Indigenous cultures like this and Christian cultures like this, and so they're not alike, and so we should get rid of this one for this one. And it's like maybe if we looked for how they were similar, we'd see that we're also, we're stronger together and we're more well off together than we are apart. And I think that that is what you're working on. But I'm also interested, and I have them here. Can you tell us about how SXG has sort of supported or helped you've developed.

you've developed comics, you have the Stolo Signal podcast, you've been involved in the creation of these things. My apologies, there's a little bit of water damage. We were flooded out of our place, but I managed to save them. But can you tell us about your work with SXG and how that sort of led into the steps to be independent? So with SXG, because I was in a position to do media as a media coordinator, they allowed for me to kind of to create what that would look like for them. And I love that because rather than saying this is what you should be doing and this is what we need, they brought me in as an expert in knowing my approach to things through film and photography. And my position and influence on

social media and said, let's apply that to the treaty work we're doing. And it's like, whoa. okay, me being a brand and a hip-hop artist is way different than trying to brand a treaty and sell that to people, right? And in simple terms, that's what you're doing when you work with this organization. But it's evolved into much more than that. Because rather than treaty being the sole purpose and goal, it's become an affect of the work of self-governance now. They've shifted their vision to, no, we're not waiting for a treaty or the government to say that we can be self-governing. We are going to become self-governing by our own right. And that's so inspiring to me to see six communities come together and

create and write a constitution. Sorry, could you tell us about what SSG is and those six communities for people who might not know? Yeah, sure. So, So Stalo-Huwalmuk Treaty Association, SXTA, started out as seven communities who came together to achieve a treaty. And negotiating a treaty is between an indigenous community, the provincial and federal government coming to agreement to say, we're going to allocate these lands and actually sign a document that says you're the sole owners and the sole owners and stewards of these lands. And what it's evolved to today is non-extinguishment. So in the treaties of the day, you know, back when like this goes all the way back to Douglas, but since treaties have been signed when they first started to now, the big worry has been non-extinguishment, right? And so

has been extinguishment, sorry. And extinguishment of, rights means that if I sign this treaty and you give me this chunk of land, I'm telling you that I'm giving up my rights to the rest of the land that you didn't give to me. So that's extinguishment model, right? What we've arrived to today, because we have indigenous lawyers like my dad, Stephen Point, and wonderful people who've done tons of work, all of the leaders that are involved in this process to say no, actually, we will not extinguish our rights and we want to do this treaty in a non-extinguishment model. So it means that you will give us these lands, rights and title exclusively. That means that we have to say that this is our going to be our land that we

absolutely own and have final say over the rest of the territory that does not get negotiated under the treaty, we still don't give our rights up on it. And that's the piece that lots of people don't understand. Um, the average community member doesn't understand. They just think, oh, you're selling out. You're, you're giving away our land. You're just giving up. No, actually under non-extinguishment model, we're not doing that. So seven communities started out. They had to create, you know, just like I did for my business, they had to have a little society number to be recognized as an organization

under the government, blah, blah, blah. They became SXTA. One community dropped out. There was lots of politics in and around why that community did not stay in the process. The six communities remaining did stay in the process, which is Achillet, Skowkele, Chieactin,

Skauluk, Yekoeus and am I missing one? I always end up missing one Skokale Le Camel Achelitz Le Camel

Skelukkiel Chiectin and Yecaquius that's SXTA They just recently, since getting four of the six communities signed on to the Constitution to ratify it become Stalo Hojelma government. They are not

now a self-governing body by their own right. And what that means is, is that they can begin to create the government structure that is coined by the Constitution that they wrote, that they signed onto with a truly indigenous governance model. That means a national government, and then they have the House of Elders, the House of Youth, the House of Justice, they have their ownmbudsman person. There's a whole structure that is, created for them by them that is going to carry these six communities into the next phase of what they would like to do with the land, how they would like to start stewarding the land, fisheries, children and families, health care, all the things that the government has

typically taken care of for us, because we're stewards of the government under the Indian Act, now our own government is going to take care of instead. And they're not waiting for anyone to say they can. They're just going to start doing it. So that's what SXG is now today in 2022. And they still are working on a treaty with the government. But it's sort of like I said, like it's a product of them becoming a governing body themselves. Through the growth of this organization, what they needed was a connection to the community.

Well, that's called the community outreach team. and I'm the media person on the community outreach team, and my job was to tell this narrative in an interesting way, and it's really hard to take legal, political, jargon, documents, journey, and put it into a narrative that's interesting. It's just hard. You understand most of what I said, all of it probably, and probably even better than I do, because you're a lawyer.

You know exactly what all of that means. the average indigenous community member does not. Do they care? No. For them, it's a bottom line thing. Well, what's coming in my pocket? What's going out? What does that mean for my community, gas in my tank, jobs, that kind of thing, right?

For them, it's like it has to be real world or it has to do with something they're already invested in. What are a lot of people in our communities invested in right now? Culture. People want to learn the language. People want to go to canoe races. They want to participate in the winter festivities, the dancing, the ceremonies. You know, they want to learn to harvest plants and go fishing.

We have more interest in our culture than we've ever had before, and it's not just by our own community members. It's by other people, too. We're sort of this exotic hot commodity right now. It's like cool to be indigenous. It's weird. It's fucking weird. But so with Queetsaluk, what we did was we took an idea that the youth council I had created, remember way back when I was a specialist in youth engagement, I created the first youth council for SXTA.

They were called Excite. Khojelmuk-Stalo Youth Treaty Eschelon. That was the acronym and that was the name they came up with. And they created this character called Kweetsluck. And this is sort of like a hero's journey, escape from residential school. We wanted to tell the story that was relatable about a part of our history that's very dark, about someone who turns into a hero, somebody who turns into an expert in policy and leadership and all things treaty.

And so the original character was actually an offshoot of this idea. But when I came back to the organization, they were working with a young person from Yekakwius, Jasmine, who was very creative, who had this whole story and world going on in her head, and she had no way to kind of capture it and bring it into reality. And I was that person. I helped her to, you know, take her character, make him a little bit more real world.

like put all that story structure stuff in place like what's his goal what are the things he's coming up against what's the conflict you know what's the journey look like and we started creating these comic books based on this young boy escaping from residential school and then you find out he's a transformer he can transform into a bear you find out you know this other grizzly bear is his dad and his dad is taking him on this journey now to to go find other leaders and all this kind of stuff, right? And so that's what the comic books were about. And what we wanted to do was sort of teach people in a roundabout way about treaty and about

what was going on in the communities with respect to self-governance. That was one sort of lane and avenue. My dad had an idea that we needed sort of like a social magazine, a place where people just like pick up something fun that talked about the canoe races and reflected everyday stahl life and had, you know, nice pictures and kind of some fun articles to read. And we coined the Stella Signal, which was based off of the Stello Signal brand for the podcast. And we thought, well, let's do print. Let's do video. Let's do podcasting. And the podcast is really about taking interesting Stalo people and their stories and sort of cultural nuances happening within

the community that are untold. and putting them into an audio format. So we started out just mostly talking in and around like treaty in the process of treaty, self-governance, style of communities. But this season, what we've done is we've taken a spin on saying, let's just talk about culture. Let's just talk about, you know, cultural practices or stories or, you know, people who are doing interesting things with weaving or, you know,

just taking stuff about stala life and bringing it to the people. like through this talk radio format. And so that's how the signal had evolved. And I'm the host of that. And, you know, we sit around and we talk and we talk shop about ideas and who could we talk to next. What's something kind of interesting that's going on? Like you would, like anybody would with any kind of entertainment thing, right? And so that's how these things develop.

They're all just ideas. And then I'm sort of the person that comes in and says, well, who can draw that? what does it look like on paper? What should the graphics look like? How many? I'm sort of like this technical doer, and it's like my dad could come up with the idea of a magazine, but he has a first thing about like,

how would you even create that in a digital workspace and how would you populate the pages? And I'm that person that comes in and says, this is actually what it takes to see this come into reality. This is how you put a podcast on the air. These are the tools that you need. It was actually really cool to come in and see that you bought these kind of microphone.

with these kind of stands because we bought tabletop ones and they don't work well because people when I'm interviewing them they sit like how I'm sitting and you can't point it towards their mouth because it sits on a tabletop and they would have to sit like this if they wanted to actually the whole time which isn't comfortable so I'm like okay you're actually doing it right like now we need to rethink how we're interviewing people but neither here nor there that is how I got into like all this media work with SXG they since hired a social media assistant for me who does all the posts now and she's way better at it honestly like it's totally her lane of posting beautiful social media things highlighting Pride Month or national indigenous or women's international

women's day or you know different things where we kind of poke our head into people's like holidays and events and say hey we're SXG and this is our take on it, you know, and it's just a way to get traffic to our channels. So people want to hear about the treaty or they want to hear about self-governance. We can get their opinion on, hey, this is the work we're doing. What do you think of it? It's really hard to get people to interact with government and government bodies or like social service sectors. It's really, really hard to get like test groups and focus groups and people together to give you their opinion on your work because they don't care about it as much as they do like relaxing at home or going to the pool or going

at the beach like you know you're asking them for their time and their attention and as you said we're bombarded today with social media with television shows with new music with radio with podcasts with books with our bills with going to school with our kids like here we are this little you know governance organization being like can i also have some of your time People are like, no, you know, so you have to kind of trick them and being like, hey, look at this cool comic or like, hey, read your horoscope and the stella signal. But plus, like, you know, like we're literally scratching, chomping at the bit to figure out clever ways to get into people's bandwidth because it's just so gem-packed with other stuff. Yeah, I love the Stolo Signal podcast because one of my loves for it is like we talk about how we come from an oral tradition. We talk about how communication was the way everything was done.

And I think being able to hear someone's voice is so assessable. Like the literacy rates for Canada, I think is like a C or a C plus, it's not high. And part of the reason for that is because we come from traits. Many people will choose to drop out of school at grade 10 or 11 to go work on the oil fields or to start fishing or to start working landscaping or whatever it is, and so they can have that extra revenue earlier on, but it means that they don't always go to university. And I think that's been a barrier that the book has carried. And I truly believe that podcasts and audio formats are a technological revolution that we haven't yet realized. It's starting, people are starting to become aware of it. You're starting to see

more people listen to podcasts than watch TV. You're starting to see it switch over, but it seems like most institutions haven't recognized that or they haven't kind of made the shift over yet or they're doing it somewhat reluctantly. There's a challenge with podcasts, which is it opens the door so much that maybe some nonsense gets in. It's so much more accessible. And I'm interested in your thoughts on that because I imagine when you started in the film industry, when you started learning about things, things were expensive. Buying equipment was really expensive. Now the price point on things are making it more accessible where it's not free but if you set a plan you can work towards buying all the equipment you need what has that kind of changeover been and what is it

like to communicate in different mediums like podcasts which are somewhat different than film that's a good question i feel like it's it's definitely more water down the pipe right so because way more people can make music than ever before because way more people can pick up a camera and call himself a filmmaker than ever before. Same thing with two microphones and two sets of headphones. Like a lot of people have access to these tools now, there's a lot more to choose from, right? We have way more options in front of us. For me, the cream always rises to the top.

And so if you're doing something that is quality, it's always going to find a place, right, in the grand scheme of things. And podcasting is completely different than making a film because a film is very tailored and planned and thought out and rehearsed. And you take the best take of those three. Like, you know, you're doing something that's crafted. It's not watching someone do a live piece. You know what I mean? And that's what I mean. And that's what podcasting is.

It's raw. It's in the moment. It's a bit about the topic, a bit about the person, a bit about their opinion, a bit about their, you know, spiritual and metaphysical beliefs. Like, it's sort of like a cool, messy ride that does get you somewhere somehow at the end the day you're like oh i got to vancouver and like that was a good waste of my time like you're not wasting it you know like otherwise you would just who knows what you would be doing on those long drives like you said like you lived off of these on those drives to and from vancouver i like to listen

to audio books like i'm listening to um green light by matthew mcconi i just listened to uh will Smith's will amazing amazing experience i couldn't stop listening to that even on short drives i was listening to that um hanging on his every word for his story but you know and podcasting is this whole other land where you can dive deep with people and have a conversation that like you never normally would have in what world would you and i sit down at a gathering or like some other public space and just commit to talking to each other for a long period of time. Never, ever, but because we have this format, like, you're learning about me and I'm learning about you, and it's, it's some kind of maybe gem for someone else to, to ingest at their leisure when they have time, when they're

driving somewhere. Like, it lives on forever, as long as your subscription lasts or whatever. And so I think that podcasting has sort of like its own power. It's its own kind of superpower to do deep dive into people's stories and lives that you can learn from. I couldn't agree more. Can you tell us about what it's like to do canoe races? Because the interesting thing I think about like powwow dancing and like those experiences is they're the best part of what a concert is supposed to be. There's something dark about what a concert is right now for most people, which is they seem to do very hard drugs, but I think it's a transcendent experience that they're looking for. I don't think they know that that's what they're looking for, but they're like they're not there in their

body when they're doing it. It's an experience. I assume that the people who, I've never done like MDMA or anything like that but they seem to take that drug go to a concert where the music is incredibly loud the lights are incredibly bright and they seem to go somewhere else they seem to have a collective experience that it's hard to put into words

for the people attending it that it's not like oh I had a fry and it was very salty like it's not like an experience people can seem to explain but they will pay a lot of money and they will go to these experiences and when you see maybe photos of it or see like they have their hands up and it's almost like they're having like a religious experience when they're there and I find that very interesting. I think that there are similarities in that when you're a part of a powwow dance or when you're dancing there is a flow state that you fall into

that is again hard to put into words but you're all connected and you're all all working together and there's this feeling that there's no exterior kind of world. You're not thinking about your bills or your taxes or what time you have to pick up the kids tomorrow or any, you're there in that moment and you're absolutely kind of enthralled in that. And I think what I would imagine is something similar happens when you're canoe racing because you're all working incredibly hard, I imagine. And then there's a team effort, there's a unity there. there's a passion there that someone just like I've seen it happen but I know that I'm not

getting the full experience because I'm I'm viewing it as a third party I'm not in that moment working hard um relying on other people to assist um with a with a broader goal like there's a team effort there I'm just interested in your thoughts on on what canoe racing is as an experience and and sort of what what got you started in it what you like about it. So it's definitely cathargic. Is that the right word?

Catharic, now I'm going to need to Google it. Sometimes I have words and they. They make sense in the sentence. They make sense to me, but I'm like, is that a real word? Anyways,

there is definitely a body, spirit, mind connection. Like if there was a way, that that could, you know, for sure, without outputting so much effort, connect the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, I think people would sign up for it.

Like you said, they would take that MDMA. They're going to take that MDMA. They're going to go to that concert, and they're going to try to capture that feeling because it's transcendent, it's, like, totally cool. and, like, good, and they're out of their body and all their worries are gone and away, you know, but, like, you have to pay for that. Like, you have to pay the ticket for the concert.

You've got to pay for the drugs. You have to do illicit drugs that you don't know where they've been and where they've coming from. And then you have to kind of deal with the aftermath of, like, the hangover from that. And it's all very synthetic and fake and I think forced. And I love what you said, though. people are more than likely looking for a transcendent experience, but they don't even know that's what they want. They just think, oh, it's cool.

I'm going to take MDMA and go to this concept. Like, A, like, I feel cool. B, other people think I'm cool. C, me and my friends are all going to do this together. We're going to, like, take this leap, and we're always going to talk about it. We're going to take photos. Like, you know, for them, it's this whole thing that they're buying into,

that I'm going to experience something unique. um this is how i'm going to choose to spend my time with canoe pulling with paddling you get that experience and you don't have to take drugs it doesn't i mean yeah it costs money you got to buy paddle gas money sure you can add up the expenses for it but it's it's essentially free and not only is it free but it's freeing you feel free and your mind is working to operate the body, put the paddle in, pull, take it out, put the paddle in, pull, take it out, keep the canoe straight, you know, switch one, two. So your mind's working. Your body and your mind are working together. Emotionally, you're keeping your nerves together,

you're staying focused, you're controlling your maybe anger or your frustration or your confusion, you're controlling that emotional state that you may have from the work that you're doing and the canoes that are around you and maybe someone's yelling at you or it's conflict or someone's swung at you. Spiritually, you're connecting to the spirit of that canoe and the water and the movement of that water. And essentially it's like it is transcended, but it's in the most natural and healthy way possible. It's a feeling you can't buy. You have to work and train for. You have to sacrifice for. If you want to be on a winning team or any team, you have to show up to practice. You have to be accountable to the team members, a coach. You know, you can't be

drinking and partying because you can't go on to the canoe hungover. Like, you just physically wouldn't be able to do it. One, and two, we don't condone that. that we don't want you coming like if you're not going to be in a healthy state of mind and body right you're not doing yourself any favors you're not doing us any favors and so it's typically a fairly you know sober practice like you have to be healthy and be taking care of yourself and eating right and drinking enough water and eating a balanced diet and all that kind of stuff right and so canoe pulling paddling for me is a journey of of both in the canoe and on the beach because as a team member and for me as a team leader I run most of the aspects

of Star Nation like there's so much but I could get into it for days but being a part of a team oh my God you have to get along with other people you have to deal with conflict you have to deal with people with strong personalities you have to deal with people who are quiet who don't speak up. You have to deal with people who thought they deserve something and really they don't or people who don't show up to practice and then still want to get on. You have to deal with people who are going through marriage crisis or death or grief or, oh, now they're dealing with something with their dad or, you know, and all these personalities come together. And my job as a coach a facilitator is to bring everybody's minds to one goal.

One goal, you know, just like when you're a mom and you're going to go into labor and they show you that 10 centimeter circle and you think, my God, how is my body going to achieve that? That's impossible. But they show it to you. They say, look, this is how big, this is how much you're going to have to stretch in order to get that baby's head through the. canal to bring your child into this world and they show it to you physically so that you can see like

okay that's what i'm going for that's my goal and paddling for the girls is this is our goal we're going to go out there we're going to paddle hard for 45 minutes we're going to stay in time everyone's going to slide on one two you're going to give it you're all for the whole time we're out there and we're going to go on that race and we're going to try our hardest and our goal is to just do it together you got to get everybody's mind on the same page so that everybody's going for the same goal every stroke every breath every race every season right and it's hard it's a really really really hard job to do. And it has taught me so much in the few years that I've been in this leadership position about people, about women, about conflict, about myself. I was just talking to

one of the paddlers on the way here about, my God, we've all hit this wall. We're so tired. We're so tired of practicing. We're so tired of working out. We're so tired of traveling, spending money. getting up early, we're so done. Like we're just physically like tapped and we still have three races left and this is the wall. You never know if it's going to come in the middle of the season. If it'll come before the first race, we kind of hit a wall before the first race this year.

But we always know that wall is going to come. But what do people do when they're faced with that wall, that barrier? What kind of person are you? Are you going to keep slamming into it and not know that you're hurting yourself? and bruising your head? Are you going to climb over it? Are you going to get around it? Are you going to stand there and look at it and be scared? Like, what are you going to do when you're faced with a wall? What does your body do? What does your mind do? What do your faculties tell you to do? How do you approach other people when you're faced with a wall? Like, do you come to

practice? Do you quit? Do you crawl in a hole and want to die? Everyone has a different response to a wall. And it's really interesting to sit back and watch what those responses are. It's interesting to watch what your own response is. Okay, now you know you're faced with a wall. Now it's my response, right? Me, I just put one foot in front of the other. I know I have to keep going. I know I can't escape this. I know I can't run in the other direction. I know that the races are going to come and we're going to have to go anyways. So, I'm a lot. So, I'm a I just put my head down and put one foot in front of the other. Okay.

Until this stops hurting, I'm just going to keep doing this as gently as I can. I used to be very, like, fight and, oh, it's got to be perfect. And, oh, I'm going to make it be fun, like, force it. And it's actually what movie did I watch? And I love how this, again, this is what movies do. You can watch them a thousand times, and it's like, That one time, that one line, actually makes a difference. And what does he say to him?

He says, it's called vacation friends, actually. It's on prime. It's really funny. And it's just a silly comedy about, like, they meet this couple on vacation, and they, like, give them cocaine. They didn't know they were doing cocaine. They have this insane night. And then they spend the rest of the movie trying to get away from these people

because they didn't intend to become friends with them. And he says to this guy, he says, how is it why is it everywhere you go chaos ensues things happen all around you fall apart things go south they go crazy and here you are in the middle of it and you're the calmest one and he said you know i did green beret training and you know what they do is they wake you up four in the morning they yell at you get out of bed, they take you, they put you on a boat, they drop you in the middle of the river and they say swim back. And I watched lots of guys struggle and fight and, you know, wear themselves out swimming against the tide and almost drown and have to get yanked out of there and saved

and he said, and I found it was just best to float. That was how I survived. It's a lot easier if you just float, man. And it was like, oh my God. I felt like something exploded in my brain because right now in my own life, I've got paddling, I've got kids, I've got SXG work, I've got auditions, I've got shows to prepare for, I've got scripts to write, I've got deadlines, I've got job offers, I have to think about decline, take on, I don't know, parents to take care of death happening in our communities. mountains of laundry cars are always dirty like it's endless if I had two assistants they would have full-time jobs like I'm telling you right now the amount of stuff backlog I haven't done my

business taxes like it's horrible but what am I going to do am I going to struggle fight drowned, scream, cry, fall apart, hide. All I can do is float. And it's going to be much easier for me if I do that. All these things are always going to be here. Taxes, accounting, receipts, they're always going to be there. Job offers come and go. Kids are going to grow up regardless.

They're going to keep growing whether I water them or not. You know what I mean? I don't know if my toddler ate to do. day, but she'll eat tomorrow. You know what I mean? Like, I need to figure out how to live life and still float. And that's sort of like my mantra right now is to be like, how do I become like water and become a little more soft and supple and a little bit more accepting of like, I don't want life to pass me by and think, oh yeah, I just stressed my way through the whole entire experience. I was like mad and angry and always wanting more money and I was feeling like,

The world owed me something. I didn't get enough recognition, X, Y, Z. I want to feel like I enjoyed it. I loved it. I was thankful. I was grateful. And when things got really, really hard, I just let go and float. And that's like all you really hope for when you get to where you're getting to.

And that's the other part is like, I don't always want to be in the journey of getting to somewhere. I want to be in the journey of being somewhere. somewhere. Like being here with you right now and doing this podcast is an experience. I don't want to think like, oh, I just can't wait until I get through it because that has been how I lived so much of my life and I'm working to actively shift that right now. That is incredibly, incredibly profound and very well said. And I think really good advice for so many people who fight the current, who fight sort of the direction the world is going. There's so many people who are mad. And Mr. Vladimir Putin, who think that it was a slight against them, that they're angry with

what happened in the last election or what will happen in the next election or whatever it is. And there's a certain element of you can only control what you can control and when think, like, and this is an interesting part of indigenous culture, which mixes in with Christianity, which is the story of the flood. What do you do when the flood happens? Does the flood need to be literal? or can it be like a flood indentating you with text messages that this has taken place or a flood of problems that have kind of arisen?

How you overcome that does, in my opinion, define you until the next flood. And so you have to be open to that and realize that you, as a person, have far more impact over the people around you than I think we ever give ourselves credit for. Because the moments where I've brought in like Crown Council, like a pack of donuts, have impacted them far more than you could be like, well, they're $12.95, so it doesn't matter because it's this price point. But the effect of the thought seems to have some sort of broader impact of like, wow, I was noticed. And in those moments where people are burnt out and exhausted and frustrated, the person who shines a light or reminds everyone that we've done this for so long

and we're such a strong team and that there's a beauty in the fact that we don't get recognition and that we are the people putting in the hard work when nobody else is like I love running along the vetter dyke and particularly when it's 40 degrees out because I love that because I look around and I go I'm the only one on this dyke there's I'm the only person wanting to do this right now and of course part of me wants to be at home watching TV but there's a part of me that goes this will strengthen you for when you're in real tough times that you're going to have a stronger mind and so many people look at running or exercise for the body benefits but knowing that you have control over your mind is something I think so many people lack when it comes

oh I haven't done grocery shopping in four weeks or I just eat at McDonald's every day like there's a discipline that you build through exercise and rigorous activity where when you're hiking up like Mount Tom or Shiam where you go I want to stop now I want to go home now I want to go back and watch TV and then you keep going and then you realize wow I'm the person who when things get tough I get to the top of the mountain and I don't break and if this doesn't break me then taxes won't break me then these other things won't impact me and I think that that that builds your character in such a way can you tell people how they can connect with you with your business with your social media with your Spotify can you tell people how they can best follow your journey

Sure. That's such a good idea. So just to make sure I'm actually giving people correct information, Salish Legends Media.com should bring you directly to, yep, my website, and you can follow, you know, what films we're working on, um any kind of information you might need about us or to contact me it's it's all there my my biography and and what have you the lovely headshot that my husband uh took of me so a little bit of a bio there um so that's one place salish legends media dot com and then you can also

find me on i don't know facebook is like sort of a place uh i i find it a little bit tough because again it's a branding thing being photographer filmmaker host musician it's like kind of tough to really make all this one and then have everything it you don't know if it's like does the media company come or this or that but i do have a musician page on Facebook so people can also go there and that is at alia just one word a a apostrophe a colon l i y a so at alia is uh the place that you can find me on facebook and instagram ticot is the same as well everything is branded under at alia so as long as you can put in A, apostrophe A, colon, L-I-Y-A, and then if you add my last name, even more stuff

comes up. So then you can kind of find everything from there. Brilliant. And that's the same for Spotify as well. So Spotify right now is under Kalea, but I would actually just prefer for people to stay tuned for Aaliyah, my artist page, to come out. I don't know if it's the colon. I don't know if it's the accent or what it is.

that's not working right now, but Spotify has not been able to create my artist page yet. It's coming. It will be there. But yeah, it's just, it's not there yet. So if people wanted to, you know, listen to the music for now, it's under Kahlia, K-E-L-I-Y-A, everything's going to switch under to one brand as soon as I figure out what the technical difficulties are. Maybe I need a lawyer. I don't know. Brilliant.

Alia, I am incredibly grateful that you were willing to come today. to share such inspirational messages on what the value of learning more about Indigenous culture are, really steelmanning the position and understanding the depths and the beauty of it that can actually enrich the social fabric that we're all a part of to help motivate people to reach their full potential and to recognize that people develop over time and can grow and make such a positive difference. And that that starting place, it differs for everyone. but where you can go from that starting place can be incredibly inspiring,

not only to yourself, but for the people that you impact in your life. It sounds like you've done that with your work with youth, inspiring them, and then utilizing their knowledge. It seems like we're very good at hearing from youth, but actually tangibly pulling that into the real world seems to be the bottleneck for so many people, but having the comics that are available interviewing people and highlighting their work I think really inspires people to think that they can contribute, and not only that they can, but that they should.

So I really appreciate you being willing to share such an incredible story today. Well, thank you so much. It was awesome. I, like all of your other guests, had no idea that we've been talking for so long. It's effortless, and you're a great host, and I look forward to checking out more of your podcasts. Brilliant, yes, because we did three hours and 13 minutes. Wow. Okay.

Perfect. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.