Sense of Soul - Sacred Feminine Wisdom with Métis Andrea Menard

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Today on Sense of Soul podcast is Andrea Menard. She is an accomplished Métis singer/songwriter, actor, speaker, wellness trainer, and the founder of the Sacred Feminine Learning Lodge. She is one of the co-stars of the new hit CTV/CW series, Sullivan’s Crossing, and was recently honoured with the “Metis Artist of the Year” award at the Summer Solstice Indigenous Music Awards. As seen in USA Today, Andrea is an influencer in Feminine leadership and was named one of  WXN Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award Winner in 2020. An advocate for rematriation and reconciliation, Andrea trains women to “Lead Like a Goddess” and helps all-gendered people to reclaim and embody the qualities of the Sacred Feminine. She is also the author of the Seeds from the Sacred Feminine Wisdom Cards (Mango Publishing) which contains 52 gentle, land-based teachings and beautiful paintings by Metis painter, Leah Dorion. Learn more and get your beautiful deck at the link below or on Amazon! https://andreamenard.com Check out Sense of Soul Network of Lightworkers Affiliate Shaun Randall, use SENSEOFSOUL50 at checkout for his program The Manifestation Method. https://www.shaun-randall.com/themanifestationmethod or visit www.mysenseofsoul.com to check out all of the new affiliates. Also consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member.  Don’t forget to rate this episode five stars and leave a review! Thank you!

Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thank you so much for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. Enlightening conversations with like-minded souls from around the world, sharing their journey of finding their light within, turning pain into purpose, and awakening to their true sense of soul. If you like what you hear, show me some love and rate, like, and subscribe. And consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member, where you will get ad-free episodes, monthly circles, and much more. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, we have Andrea Menard. She is an accomplished Métis singer, songwriter, actor, speaker, wellness trainer, and the founder of the Sacred Feminine Learning Lodge.

She is one of the co-stars of the new hit series, Sullivan's Crossing, and was recently honored as the Métis Artist of the Year Award at the Summer Solstice Indigenous Music Awards. As seen in USA Today, Andrea is an influencer in feminine leadership and was named one of WXN Canada's Most Powerful Women. She's joining us today to tell us about her newest project called Seeds from the Sacred Feminine Wisdom Cards, 52 Gentle Land-Based Teachings with Beautiful Paintings by Métis Painter Leah Dorian. Andrea is here to lead women like a goddess, but helping all gendered people reclaim and embody the qualities of the sacred feminine. So welcome, Andrea. Hello, everyone. My name is Andrea Menard. I'm a proud Métis woman from Treaty One territory in the homeland of the Métis, currently living in the unceded traditional territory of the Squamish, the Tsleil-Waututh, and the Musqueam people who are Coast Salish, also known as

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Wow. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. Thanks so much for joining me. Yeah, I'm glad you have me. It's hard to fit you in. I do have some, I don't know if you

knew that. So I have some Cajun genes from New Orleans and I've done a lot of ancestry work over the past five, six years. I felt like my ancestors were lining up one by one for me to hear their stories and to tell them. And it just never seemed like it was going to end and that it did but then it moved into the cosmology of humankind it became like a worldly ancestral journey going all the way back and so I've been studying the Gnostic Gospels, specifically Sophia. And I keep saying to myself, when is that going to end? However, this morning, it still kept going. So I've been getting called to learn more about Helen of Troy. And I have to show you, this is the weirdest thing in the world. So I'm curling my hair this morning and I find this tag. And at the bottom, it says

the model number and then just helen troy for no reason no reason okay that's funny i'm not done yet to me that sounds like you haven't even begun it was like a hair product really i know does that happen to you sometimes oh all the time and you're like good one like didn't see that coming didn't see that coming good one yeah oh yeah i call them my grandmothers so you're gonna hear you know this deck of cards is sort of my baby that i'm releasing to the world, which is why I've been

on podcasts these days. But as a Métis woman, you know, I work with the grandmothers and the artist who's a Métis sister of mine. She works with the grandmothers through the medium of art, painting, and I use it through song and writing. And so, oh, yeah, the grandmothers are bossy. They're obvious. It's like pull over. Okay, I'm pulling over. What? What? What am I supposed to look at? Oh, gotcha.

Pull over. As soon as I saw the connection between the divine feminine and First Nation, which I'm sure you also have First Nation connection through the Métis lines. You know, Métis means wisdom in Greek. Did you know that? No. In the Métis language or in the French language, it's like a mixed person, Métis.

Métis. Wow. Isn't that strange? When I learned that, I was like, oh, because that's what Sophia means. I know. So my connection is to the three rivers or 12 Riviera. The story that hits my soul the hardest is about Etienne Picaroche. He was one of my ancestors. He would have been, I think, my 11th great, great, great, great grandfather.

And he was known as the medicine man who was converted to Christianity. The Jesuits wrote when they would return to his tribe, he'd still be doing what was called tent shaking. And they'd be like, what are you doing? You can't do this. Like now you are Christian. Repent. You're forgiven. But don't do it again. You know, or you won't be protected.

And they'd go back. And there he was again shaking his tent then he goes missing and nothing more is said about him hmm when you're at that level you honor other people's spiritual beliefs but I'm like oh the poor Christians didn't have a sniff who they were dealing with the medicine man he said shake intent no you don't go back from that dude he was next level so bless their hearts for thinking they could i mean i'm sure he knew what was coming and he did his best to help prepare his people to find ways to make peace i can't imagine i can't imagine what

this is in 1600s late 1600s yeah that's that's like close to first contact what's very interesting is I am very close with several of his descendants who also have done work and you know two of them are in Canada one's a man and one's a woman and we're also like in like our connection it was in the lineage yeah it's like they waited for this generation to come through someone open enough and had a voice to be able to tell their stories yeah that's wild but not even that it's like the lineage has been strong like shaking tent exists today it's not gone by any means like it's part of the land all across the plains like it's not gone at all he chose to let it go and that lineage maybe but not other folks from around turtle island still there well my lineage

actually was then deported or you know relocated yeah to Louisiana and there's the Cajun line there we go yeah that's how you know I am connected well hello sister and I am so happy to know this about myself give me a power from within within my bones I felt so you come from the acadian so in canada we're acadian but down there it's cajun right but it was the acadian folks that were treated very badly in the eastern part of canada yeah and then the metis is the mixed people of the plains so the acadian were definitely east coast and had were treated terribly and the metis who had the last war in canada against the metis people and our leader was hanged so yeah mixed blood people we have

the gifts of both cultures and you know a dance to do in balancing those two cultures so somewhere in that lineage of yours there's been work colonization versus indigenous. Like, how do they dance together? How do I walk in a way that is uplifting creation? Yes, yes. And, you know, I'm also French Creole. So what that means is mixed race. That means that, in fact, I do have a grandmother that had no name. She was slave of the grandfather.

Wow. You know, I never, ever considered how our ancestors were so important. The healing, a timeless healing, because it was past, present, and future. I feel like here in America, ancestry is not an importance to most of us. You know what, I feel like when consciousness shifts, all of a sudden, there is an interest everywhere in their ancestry. And I'm not sure what that's about. I think it's finally the realization of racial injustice, and recognizing white privilege and all of these things that you know, some people have never heard of, which is very sad. But during the pandemic, all of a sudden, the consciousness

shifted where things were in our face that we couldn't ignore. George Floyd, the children from the residential schools in Canada being found, like so constant awakening, Asian racism, all of this stuff, Asian hate. Yeah. I honestly think all of a sudden, either people are trying to escape the fact, oh my gosh, do I come from white supremacy? Like, what is my ancestry? What is it? And people are finally being brave enough to look. I don't know where you're sitting, but I'm finding the people that I'm coming into contact with, people are truly saying yes to finding out and it could be to escape the fact that they were you know have white privilege or

the fact that they're being called to heal that lineage because it stops with me it's stopping right here I think you're so right I think that now that you can take a DNA test and find out like I have the most colorful wheel I'm like a part of so many things. Tell me how your journey started, though. I mean, did you grow up knowing who your ancestors were? Yeah, but no, you know, I mean, as a kid, you don't really care. You don't care. You don't. You know, you're like meh. And both of my mom and my father, both the youngest in their family. So they kind of like, they were left out of sort

of the family stories in many ways. The youngest, they're like, well, they were told already. And in a way, my dad's parents, my dad's mother stopped speaking Michif, which is a version, a French version of Michif, which is compatible with French, stopped speaking that when my dad was born. They said, no, we're going to make them speak English. So he missed out on the language. So if any stories were being told in the language, he missed out because they didn't speak to him that way. So I've always known who I am.

I'm a Metis woman from the plains. The homeland of the Metis takes up, you know, Treaty 1, Treaty 5, Treaty 6, up to 6, 7, 8 across the plains, the Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta in Canada. And of course, some of it crossed the border, which didn't exist at the time, part of Turtle Island, we were in Montana and South and North Dakota as well. So I've known who I am. But like I said, I think there is a quickening happening on the planet. There is a need to start listening to ancestors. And I don't know how it started. I don't know what helped feed that shift, but I think there's a deepening of interest. And because there's a

deepening of interest, there's a deepening of responsibility of the lineages they come from and healing those lineages. To me, that's the work, some of the work that I do is helping people just recognize that they can heal those lineages. They have the capacity to, and they can listen to their wisdom of their ancestors. They can feel the pain of the ancestors. They can wash it through their body and they might be affecting it right now in their life. For me, I had a quickening as well, where I started to look at where my mom was from. You know, my mom is English, Irish, and Icelandic. She's Islander people. And I'm like, oh, that's

a totally different lineage. And here you are landlocked. Like, what does that do to a soul, you know? And to recognize that both of my mom's grandmothers were from Ireland and Iceland. So I went, oh, wow, that wasn't very long on these shores. So I'm definitely connected to certain land-based teachings. You know, when you recognize who your ancestors are, when you start to communicate with them and you go to the land that actually they come from, that land sings to you, just like the ceremonial places that sing to me here in Turtle Island in the homeland of the Métis. Land sings in my blood. Memories come through the waters, through the land, through the trees. And I found that shockingly when I went to Ireland and France and Scotland

and in England. And I haven't been to Iceland yet but I went oh my isn't that interesting I had no idea that would happen I can relate I cry when I get to New Orleans because I know I'll leave yeah and most people look at the muddy Mississippi and think oh but my parents met on the Mississippi River they worked worked on a riverboat. And so I always said I owe my life to Money Mississippi. Beautiful. It is true, the land. Yeah, that's sort of the work that has tried to come out of me these days. You know, I'm a singer and an actor by trade and a writer.

But when pandemic hit and the spiritual calling got loud because so many people were struggling, it's like I came out of the spiritual closet and sort of started helping people online. And I guess what people are called to when it comes to me or my deck of cards is like land-based work, listening to the grandmothers, listening to the ancestors, opening up the channel to receive wisdom from that receptive state which is the feminine state as opposed to the masculine world we live in a masculine dominated world where all the systems are created to satisfy that masculine drive action doing being you know not being and so when we don't temper those systems with the feminine wisdom the feminine stillness nurturing

receptively listening then we get really out of balance and guess where we're at out of balance so I guess the indigenous way of life the way of looking at life the perception the ways of knowing are very feminine in nature so that's why my deck of cards is called the Seeds from the Sacred Feminine, because we are trying to bring balance back to the whole. Land-based teachings are pretty much part of the balance. Mother Earth is the source of all that wellness. So we've been devaluing her and dishonoring her. And that's a good place to start is to start with the land. So true. You know, for myself, I've had to work through my religion. I grew up Catholic. In the Gnostic Gospels,

it's still very much Christian. I mean, they're the Gospels of the disciples, most of them. But yet there's this different teacher. So I've come to know a new Jesus and I've adopted that as more of what I align with. What's interesting is that in the Gnostic Gospels, there's more feminine. I mean, there's Mary Magdalene, you have Martha, Salome were a part of these Gospels. Did you have to shed any religion or beliefs through your family? Or did you actually grow up with the seed of feminine energy? I would say no, I grew into the feminine energy. But my father, a lot of Métis people are Catholic as well. Because Métis people in Canada, there are three indigenous peoples. There's First Nations Nations which are the people who were here in the land first Inuit folks who are from the far north and then the Métis who were the first mixed right the

Métis people there are established and indigenous peoples of Canada so that's the umbrella but there's three peoples and so Métis people we have our. We were left alone long enough to have our own language, the Michif language, which was a bit of a traveling language. We were the translators and we followed the buffalo. So we had our own culture of governance as well. So Métis people, we collect the best of both worlds in many ways. And we have the drum and the fiddle. we have Catholicism, as well as a sense of land-based understanding, you know, so we have traditional, and it's not always like that in every family. Sometimes the Christian has demonized the traditional work, just, you know, the church did its job. But, you know, in some families, it's still alive and well. So, yeah, so for me, my father was Catholic, and had all the baggage around that.

And he married a white Protestant woman. And he thought for sure he was excommunicated. I have to say, I thank this one priest, who was going to be their counselor before they got married. And he was so awful to my mom. He spoke to my father as though she wasn't there and saying, are you sure you want to marry her? Like, like right in front of my mother. And you know, my mom's a laid back woman. So the fact that she was so insulted, that at that moment, mom was willing to convert everything. And because of that priest, I was not raised in the Catholic religion. I wasn't really raised in any strong religion. So I was left alone for my soul to seek where it needed to seek. And

it went everywhere. It went everywhere. And of course, landed in traditional teachings, landed with Mary Magdalene and Jeshua, you know, in a way that was different it was the esteem the mysteries of Catholicism so it's like I followed back in those roads but they went through a different path like not through the dogmatic path the one that spoke to truth in my heart I have a very strong sense of truth and I would go seeking truth wherever I found it and wherever and I found it everywhere you know truth rings like a bell in your soul and in your cells and I would go find it and wherever and I found it everywhere. You know, truth rings like a bell in your soul and in your cells, and I would go find it and go, oh, and then just keep digging more. And then I

would find myself back here and back over there and back in a shaking tent. And, you know, yeah, seeking truth leads you where you need to go. I love that. And I feel like in that space, your truth becomes your experience. You probably took a little bit of this from that faith and from this one and that became your truth I love that you know that's you're lucky I still get angry because of all the darkness yeah it requires major grieving it's a it's a big one my dad I feel sorry for my dad because he just turned his back and his heart is broken over it the whole thing so yeah it's a big thing it's a massive load so in a way you have to unpack that and that's part of the lineage of because

there's been a lot of fear leading the way like smothering up all the beautiful teachings you know so yeah there's stuff that has to be unraveled. I honor you. That's a big one. Good for you. It is, you know, and I feel like sharing and talking about it and having people on from different faiths. I tell you what, rabbis have actually been my greatest teachers when it comes to Christianity. I'm like, I've learned more from them than I did the majority of my life, you know, going to church. So it's very interesting. But you know, we forget Jesus was Jewish. Exactly. No, you can't forget. Yeah. One of the things that bothers me the most is how women have been repressed.

Yeah. You know, and I mean, from the beginning of the Bible to the very end. Well, they've been left out, Like they've been literally rewritten out. And that is the saddest part because women are so powerful. Every single one of us has feminine and masculine qualities. That's a fact of life. We are all on a spectrum. Life itself is on a spectrum of feminine and masculine.

Where we sit and where we live on it doesn't matter, you know. But if your masculine aspects are active, they are action-based, driven, conquering, competing, focus, all these beautiful aspects that are great on their own. And same with the feminine. When the feminine aspect is receiving, listening, stillness, nurturing, feeling. And women in that receptive state, you know, are wisdom keepers. But it's not an active one. It's more magnetic. It's more like it changes a room. Whereas an act, you know, when we act and do things before our soul ignites us or before we get a nudge to go in a certain direction, if we act before we listen, if we do before we be, then we can get out of balance. We ourselves as human beings can get out of balance. Women get

out of balance. In order for us to survive and thrive in the systems that exist to raise our children, to feed our families, we use our masculine aspects to thrive and survive. So it's like, according to my elders, many people in the 90s and early 2000s were coming out of ceremony with messages saying, I was told that it's the time of woman, women are going to be leading the next era, or it's the time of the circle returning to the circle, or it's a time of Mother Earth. But it wasn't until I heard a gathering of elders took place in 2012 in Sagan First Nation and the Turtle Lodge, and they came with a set of teachings they wanted to share with the rest of the world. And one of the things that became instrumental in my life was a message saying, we're in the time of the rise of the sacred feminine. It's like all of those other things I've been hearing over the years finally made sense,

is that we're all coming home to this time. We're all coming home to this beautiful reckoning in many ways and we need to find balance again so it's all the things that have been left out of the systems are coming home to the circle because these square like box systems aren't actually the truth of who we are we are circular in nature and all of the voices that have been left out are coming home so that's what you see right now you're seeing the voice of women rising the voice of indigenous people rising the black voices people of color people with disabilities people who are trans two-spirited non-binary

all of these voices the voice of mother earth the voice of nurturing men, the voice of the animals, all these things that have been brutalized in the creation of the systems and the perpetuation of the systems. It's all shifting. So we're in this rise of change where we're starting to ask more about, was that a good religion I was in? Was that serving me? Was it serving my family? You know, we start asking really hard questions. And were women really not visible and absent from this entire text? Like, were they saints or sluts?

Like, is that it? That's all we are? Or mothers? Like, that's all we've got? And so when we start asking these questions, the truth starts to ring our bells, right? Yeah. Yes.

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You can also go to my senseofsoul.com and in the menu, look for the network of light workers. Now back to our amazing guest. I know that for myself, being a podcaster and interviewing people, you know, twice a week all over the world, I've attracted these different powerful embodiments of the divine feminine from all over the world in different cultures. And I was so excited to have you from the Métis culture to be able to express this divine feminine. I mean, it was just like, you gotta be kidding me. I felt like this is one that I really wanted to honor that I hadn't yet. I can't believe that you too within that culture had heard that the divine feminine was rising.

And because you hear it, you know, age of Aquarius, this is what it is. You hear it from all around the world that this is the time of the divine feminine. So it's like a collective knowing. Yeah.

It is in our consciousness. And it is apparent that wisdom is always associated with the divine feminine. Like when I think about Sophia, Sophia is just one aspect of the divine feminine. Is there a Métis feminine goddess that you guys have? Or is it just Mother Earth? That's funny you say that because I think, you know, a lot of Métis people wouldn't necessarily say that they are, the sacred feminine is, seem to be my way of expressing what i know and about land-based teachings you know to me they are similar but for not everyone can say oh i'm an indigenous person

so they can go over those teachings are over there but every single person has a sacred feminine aspect to them so to me it was more inclusive of being able to include everyone you know and I wanted to make something that was inclusive for all beings who were called to this work and so for me the Mother Earth is the source of everything but you'll see in my teachings that I do I tend to use the symbol of the medicine wheel not that I planned on it but it's just it's such a great tool to help express the indigenous way of looking at the world you know a holistic circle with four equal quadrants so we talk about honoring the four sacred directions the four sacred bodies the four sacred elements you know it's just such a great for sacred medicines

it goes on and on and on so for me I work with the elements in a big way but to me that's also earth-based earth fire water air those are deeply essential to my work that is also the source of who we really are those are what make you and me relatives is that we're all made of the earth we're made of the four sacred elements that makes us the same and if we go back far enough it's like those four sacred elements are the original ancestors like go way back and all of a sudden you can take faces you can take colors off you can take you know religions off you can take all of that away and to go how were we created we were created by the earth we are created by earth fire water and air the original ancestors are those beings

and to me that's where i got led I got led so far back that I could forgive all that came forth. I had to find my way back far enough where I could go, oh yeah, colonization has been brutal, but all beings have been colonized. And colonization destroys the soul of the colonizer almost more than the ones who've been colonized because they don't know they are being manipulated and controlled. So to me, recognizing that if we go far enough back in our lineage, in our creation story, we are deeply connected as human beings and we have a lot of work to do in finding our way back to that understanding. So the cards, the seeds from the sacred feminine deal with land-based teachings,

honoring the elements in different ways, finding ways to engage with the elements, listen to the elements. And that's just my way of helping people. I don't say they're your ancestors in this necessarily, but I'm helping people move back far enough to recognize they are us they are a part of everything the celestial world and the terrestrial world we're all connected yeah I always think about whenever I think about Canada and the possibility of extraterrestrial I think about the mountain that has some sort of design in the mountain do you know what i'm talking about no i don't i like rocky mountains god i think i thought it was like near alberta it's yeah that's rocky mountains aerial like alien looking i'm gonna have to send it to you

it's like crazy it's an aerial shot straight up looks like this being of some sort, even looks like it has like a headphone in. It's very interesting. Interesting. Okay. Yes. I got it. Forget the name of it. Yeah, I've never heard of it.

Well, you'd only be able to see it from an aerial view. They only discovered it not too long ago, but it is very interesting. So I'm going to have to send it to you. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I find that to be fascinating because it seems like a lot of the hieroglyphs and in the Grand Canyon, they have stuff that's written in the caves that looks very much like Egyptian. I mean, like what? There's been a, it seems, a connection to above us. I mean, I've always kind of thought reading the Bible without having anyone, you know, sharing their commentary, that angels seemed a lot like aliens to me.

You know, both being above, off, right? Yeah, people. know both being or yeah yeah people and to me what's missing in the understanding is the vibrational frequency of beings to us to our linear way of looking at the world and according to my elders is that they've always been in contact you know people but we are the ones who have to rise to the vibration they are and sometimes they can bring their energy down but and I'm sure they have but it's not easy you know we don't want to bring our energy down to communicate with somebody right we like being in our vibration so it's like our work as humans to remember who we are and we do the work of cleaning ourselves cleaning the emotional pain and density from ourselves and from our lineages we become

lighter as a human species and so to me that's the work is that they're here right now i think our relatives are here right now able to be accessed at any time it's up to us which is why ceremony is such a huge thing to indigenous people and to people all over the world. Ceremony, the purpose was to help us move into different states of consciousness so we could communicate with our elders, our ancestors, our teachers, our guides, our angels, whatever you want to call them. This is a practice that has happened all over the planet, and we all have ways to sort of shed our density. And that's not eating or drinking there's dancing there's ecstatic dance there's spinning there's uh you know whatever but the natural way is to shed emotional and physical density and we've done it all over the planet it's just and people are remembering too so when i first learned of my ancestor the shaman my best friend

had bought me a two-hour session with this shaman psychic medium and she said you need to go and meet him and i was like well he's dead and he's from canada but okay this is years ago and she said no you need to learn how he communicated with his ancestors. You know, in which manner did he do that? And you need to learn how to do that. So she said, here's a number. This is who taught me. And I took the shaman classes to learn how to journey to meet this Etienne.

It was the most unbelievable experience and quick. It was a lot easier than I ever thought it would be. But these practices are core around the world. You know, drumming, going into trance, the circles. There's many core practices. And yet we shifted into going to college for however many years. And that became, you you know our medicine and now i feel in our consciousness is now our ancestors and we are now learning to go back and trust into

the healing powers of ourself and of mother earth again yeah well I think it's also from necessity and and this this great lack of fulfillment yeah humanity went so you know when when logic when the because the systems are created with the masculine mind it's it's the logical analytical brain you know it's all that without the the compassion the heart the the meaningfulness that comes there's delight in illumination and great ideas but the feeling body like is not allowed in you know and all of that wisdom that's waiting all that meaning all of that sense of fulfillment is in the body, is in the heart, in the feeling centers. So there's a vast disease of hopelessness, of lack of fulfillment

in humanity's hearts. And that is because the wisdom of the heart, the wisdom of ceremony, the wisdom of the inner worlds is not valued. And so people are finding, desperately taking us back to those things. And to me, I think Mother Earth and celestial helpers and our ancestors are helping us by, you know, this little bug called COVID, you know, no matter how it was created, or how it came came to be it became one of our greatest teachers and it is asking us it has asked us to to face that primal fear which is one of the feelings that of course make people run the other direction but and during this time it's like we couldn't escape fear fear spread through our cells like like a virus and

really to me that was the real virus was the fear and all of a sudden for the first time people couldn't not face it it came up and smacked them in the face and a lot of people walked through that fear which is why there's this lighter whoa a realization of meaning and fulfillment and ceremony and desire to live a fulfilled life because they kind of walked through some stuff and we're a little lighter than we were when we started so not everybody did but i think if you got through covid the pandemics got free something will take you out at the knees, something, doesn't matter what it is, but something will, you will be given the gift. So to me, Mother Earth, and our own consciousness, our own desire for change has brought about this incredible

opportunity. And it looks ugly from the surface, it looks ugly from what we're looking at, but fear is ugly. Fear is terrifying, as we know. And so if it's coming through and people are speaking up for the first time and saying the truth and being themselves, this is what's going to lead us towards our soul to ceremony, to new ways of being. My God, isn't that beautiful? Like fear ends up being one of the greatest teachers. Yeah, totally. And in that situation, you're so right. There was no running from it.

No one could. No, no. Yeah. Yeah. We had to find peace with whatever you had going on in front of you. Yeah. And if you did have a great isolation time well as soon as isolation ended something happened like oh a death or I lost my job or my baby something happened right it just it's leaving no one unscathed right no one but then it was also such a shift collectively. This was collective. It was like the entire planet stopped. Everyone was in awareness. I wonder if that's ever happened before. how do we know who like this planet is much vaster than we've been taught so my ancestors

have stories about and elders talk about that we've been on this land for you know 20 000 years so there's old stories of living through water floods you know there's floods on this side of this you know stories so we've i'm sure if globally if we all went through flood I'm sure that's in our it's in our lineages too wow you know my partner actually said that I have to give him that he said at the beginning of COVID he's like this is like a flood this is like the natural disaster yeah yeah and there's been times of fire too which means there were meteors you know so those have been collective catastrophes that i think are somewhere i think that's where the fear began in us and i think but it's unexpressed fear because according to my elders you know and the

teachers of we're in the fourth age something like that so water fire we've been taken out we've been taken out and ice you know all those things so if collectively we've gone through it as a human species again you know to me the work I do is all about expressing you know getting cleaner as a human species as a human being one person one person at a time, dealing with their pain, dealing with their lineage, dealing with the stuff that they can shift. And when we do that collectively, wow, we are going to, whew, we are going to transform. We're going to start, compassion will grow. We will start treating our planet and each other with respect and love and honor fear and pain which seem to be two major things that hold people back yeah however can be our greatest teachers if we actually embrace them

love them with compassion right bringing the feminine healer into the pain and the fear rather than mind is bigger than yours right that kind of reaction right the ego taking care of fear and pain or i don't feel anything i'm not going to express my emotions that holding in, which eventually bursts. So that feminine energy of like the mother, the healer, compassion. I think of like, how would a mother handle her child's fear or pain? Yeah. The father might say, suck it up. You know, it only hurts until the pain goes away. That's what my dad used to say that one.

You know, do you want me to give you a reason to cry right where mother might put her healing hands on you yes love the pain allow you to cry into her yeah yeah and and that is what we all have to find our own inner mother. Yes. You know, the feminine aspect of us is that we may not have been parented very well. And our men are suffering because they're not allowed to have any feeling except anger and lust. Like how, what a limited black and white little world, like, you know and so our boys we got to help our boys and our girls to recognize what power there is in the systems that exist we don't look like we're valued at all girls right but it's changing when we start to honor our own feelings and our own softer natures and then we encourage our men to do the same and to be honored for their softer natures we are transforming humanity and the boys and girls and the non-binary kids coming up are going to be in as much safer world because we are not safe if we're not if we're not safe

with our own feelings we're not safe with other people's and it can be brutally we can pass on the pain to others so that's part of the work you know again in my deck of cards like that's also part of the work is you know honoring those four sacred bodies learning how to listen and honor that's the teachings of the grandmother's they're like listen my grandchild listen feel and there's story in the indigenous cultures passing down stories of the ancestors were part of their circle and tradition well it's not past tense it still is i mean i keep talking yeah it's not past tense it. It's present. Oral history is a lot more complex than people think. There is a vibration in story.

When something is taken from the one-on-one transmission and put it down on a page, it can lack the mystery. It can lack the actual vibrational healing and teaching that came with those words. So there's the word, which is one level, and then there's the soul to soul, and then there's a vibrational heart to heart, or beyond. So in a way, the written word is so less than it you know to me it's like Oh oral history it's a nice story no it's it's a wisdom passing its lineage knowledge given to someone in the same room with them so to me like our answers looked at the written word and went you're missing half of like three quarters of what we're all saying you're missing it's a it's a step down from understanding the world and the life around you which is

what the Western colonization way of looking at the world would never know that it's like this little piece of paper is superior to go oh dear no it isn't it really really isn't you? And so for the little souls that came thinking they were superior and had so much to teach, those savages that lived here, it was like, oh dear, that little way of thinking that, and I keep saying little, that little, it's like the little backwards mind came here and couldn't see. saw a lack of structure so they thought oh this is uncivilized what they didn't see was this civilization has been here for 20,000 years and they have not destroyed this continent hmm that's wisdom huh Wow and there were

governance systems that were in place but but they were gentle, they were land-based, they were not obstructive or destructive. They were very different. So it depends on the eye that sees. If the ear and the eye are telling a story on a little piece of paper, it's capturing zero of the true essence of a people, a knowledge of a wisdom that comes from the land comes from language and comes from oral history true oral history and all peoples come from oral history but so much has been lost which is why colonization which destroys languages destroys a people's a connection to land it destroys destroys connection with children. Colonization is a dangerous disease on this planet. Dangerous. And it is the very thing that human beings need to heal because every culture on the planet has been colonized to some level. And there is trauma in having to be

absorbed into the larger culture, their own languages to be destroyed, to be made unsexy, undervalued. To me, all of those cultures that got left behind, all of those colonization practices that destroyed those things, destroyed that oral wisdom that was given. Oh God, that breaks my heart too, Andrea. But another thing I was thinking about is the art in these cultures. And I keep looking at your deck behind you, and you had mentioned that the art was specific. What was your artist name? Lea Dorian. She is a goddess.

The paintings are stunning in this deck. Yeah. How important was that for you? Because art, right, does speak to the soul. Oh, yeah. Well, as I said earlier, Leah Dorian works with the grandmothers through her medium of art. And for me, I worked with the grandmothers through medium of song and story. But when I approached her, I said, Leah, I love your paintings. Can I have, you know, maybe one of your paintings? Can I license one to use for my deck? She goes, well, how many teachings do you have? I go, well,

would you believe the grandmothers gave me 52, like four 13s, of course. I'm like, that's an actual deck. I had no idea anyway. And she goes, well, how about 52? She goes, send over your teachings. And she kind of pulled ideas for each one and the cards and the teachings went like this. I'm putting my fingers together like a glove, like hand in glove, like they fit. You would think that the paintings were created because of the teachings. No, they came together because we both work with the grandmothers. We both do that work. And the messages that the grandmothers want to convey through us are visible within this deck that is divine yeah 52 i know i know 13 there we go of course we're dealing with the feminine

oh my gosh well she has a lot to say she's kept quiet for a long time. Yeah, she sure does. I love that. If somebody wants to get this deck, is it available now? Yeah, they are available at andreaminard.com forward slash cards. I tried to make it easy. andreaminard.com forward slash cards. I want to share more of these sort of messages with my listeners. Because it's real. And the fact that you corrected me several times saying, no, it's not in the past, it's present. This is something I've talked about with other people before. Sometimes when we're talking about Native Americans, we're talking about like they were. And that's heartbreaking. Now, that's what you've been taught

and that is the work that non-indigenous people have to do is to like unravel to recognize that all of the every single aspect of how they view indigenous people in their own land is been taught through a colonial lens and it's brutal and it's incorrect the indigenous people of turtle island are the invisible people in our own land there's some work to be done that there's some work to be done so yeah thank you for being receptive to that understanding that oh yeah i said were well why were you saying were because you were taught that we killed the indian right that's the you know the colonial mindset is that we got rid of them so that we could be here and the fact is we're not gone away you tried to

push us aside but we're not we're not gone we're here and we are we have many many many things to help teach the collective about their own selves about themselves and about about wisdom and connecting with land there's so much that the system that was created in white supremacy needs to unravel and look at itself it's a big journey so thank you so much for being open to receiving that information because you have that in your lineage right thank you you know i also my dad's family i found, I have a lot of Jewish in me. I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't tell you all the healing. But do you see that all of those lineages somewhere along the line turn their back forcibly or out of safety to be you today, to be as white as we possibly can, right?

Because it's safer. It it's there's a reason why and though those who cannot turn their back because of the color of their skin or their accent or their language or whatever it is they are the ones carrying the brunt and the burden of those who were able to turn their back you look at me I'm a light-skinned Metis person and somewhere in my lineage there's people who are turning their back left right and center to be safe but there are also relatives in my in my family who couldn't so at this time of life there's a reckoning happening where those with darker skin are needing the

floor they're needing the platforms they're needing to tell their stories and so it's like people like you creating space for these kind of teachings is a really, really great thing. We thank you, Shanna. Oh, thank you. I love your message. It's so important. And I'm honored to have you. You're a very powerful voice for the divine feminine and also for your people. And I always say, you know, I am. I'm the example, the result of white privilege. And that if anybody ever wants to argue that, give me a call. What a great place to start, though, right? Great place to start to go, OK, so how did that come to be?

What benefits did I get that somebody else doesn't get because of this you know it's just such a great great place to start especially you know someone who's looking at their ancestry and their lineage you're doing the work and well done Shana well done because that's a resume it's a I know it's not at all why do you think people don't do it it's painful it's messy it's full of shame and guilt. It's full of feelings that people would rather run from. But what is the rise of the sacred feminine? It's about walking, right? Allowing those feelings to surface through us, flow through us, so that we can become lighter.

We have work to do. It's the only game in town, man. It's the only thing to do. And I did feel very strongly, my grandmothers, very strongly. They had waited for someone like me. They waited for you and they're waiting for others right now to awaken and to be the voice for those before them who did not have a voice. And I am so glad that I'm getting my voice back, but it still is a little Stevie Nicks like, you know, that was very depressing. I'll be honest with you. I was really, really affected mentally, not being able to speak. Even this has been hard. This is like my first interview fully where I've kind of gotten my voice back and it's been a little hard but you know I could take it for granted I guess you have it what a great teaching hey to go hmm voicelessness what's that about yes

yeah definitely probably that I needed to listen more well wait that's a great one yep or the fear of speaking up all those things right yeah what energy is trying to shut me down or has been shut down in the lineages for sure yeah that's right well thank you so much you've been such a blessing we didn't get to talk about all the amazing things that you do you're an actress yes actually uh there's a new tv series i'm in called sullivan's crossing which will be available it just finished airing on ctv in canada but is about to air in the fall of 2023 on the cw in the u.s so you can see it this fall if you fans of virgin river which is on netflix it's the same writer su Sullivan's Crossing, Virgin River. Robin Carr

wrote a series of books called Virgin River and a series of books called Sullivan's Crossing. And this is sort of the same showrunner and yeah, great new cast. Yeah, it's really fun. So I'm part of that team, part of that story. And then I listened to some of your music. It hit my soul. What about your singing? I just released a new album called Anshkunamakyo Li Shansun. It is a giveaway album. It is an album that I wrote with seven different language keepers from the Métis communities all across the Métis homeland. And it's all in the language to help language learners learn the language of Michif, which is one of the endangered languages on the planet. So we're trying to make sure that it survives. So I created prayer songs

and water songs and fire songs and songs for Grandmother Moon and all these things. And they're a giveaway. So they're for anyone that feels called to learn them. According to my teachers, women are being asked to sing their water songs to help heal the planet. And so I've written some water songs that people can take with them. So there you go. Go off and andreaminard.com forward slash Mitchif album. I learned a long time ago that it's very powerful to chant outside of your native language. It has something to do with your brain, rejecting it, receiving it or something like that and i love to do that for whatever reason i always say i don't know what the hell i'm singing but my body does my soul does because i'm well there's some giveaway songs for you go learn them and

there's drum songs rattle songs well thank you so much for joining me it's been an honor talking to you shanna truly thanks for having me yeah i going to get on order my deck. Thank you. Yay. Yay. And thanks to Michelle for connecting us. Yeah. It's been wonderful. Thanks for listening to sense of soul podcast. And thanks to our special guests for joining me. If you want more of Sense of Soul, check out my website at www.mysenseofsoul.com where you can work with me one-on-one or help support Sense of Soul Podcast by donating to my coffee fund. Thanks for listening.