Aambe

patty krawec

A year of reading Indigneous literatures featuring panel discussions with authors, academics, activists, and readers. Each episode features several books within a theme. pattykrawec.substack.com

Episodes

  1. 24/05/2022

    Indigenous Comics

    Note: When we recorded this episode the panelist Myka used a different name. While the transcript has been updated to reflect their current name the audio recording reflects that history. Patty Krawec This is Ambe. And we're here for our conversation about comic books and graphic novels, or kind of whatever people want to call them. I was looking up for some good quotes on it. And I came across one where some somebody had said that the difference between graphic novels and comic books are the binding. This is part of a yearlong project of mine where we're talking about Indigenous literature's and it started with a book I read that Daniel Heath Justice had written. And as I was kind of going through the months, and kind of creating the different categories that occurred to me, this is a valid category of literature. But it doesn't often get, it doesn't often get a lot of attention, Neil pointed out that Daniel was a contributor in one of the Moonshot volumes. We've got Jay Odjick, who actually designed my avatar. If you see me on social media, and I look like a superhero Jay is why. That was a really interesting process that I had absolutely no idea. I was just like, make me look cool. And he's like, but I need to know this. And I need to know that. I was like, wow, that's, there's just so much information. I was like, I do, I jump into things all the time with no idea of what's actually required. So it was, it was an amazing process. And I really love her. And so we've got Neil, who is probably my most frequent flyer with this, because he's just so cool and into everything. Lee Francis, who was actually one of the very first guests on my Medicine for the Resistance podcast that I co-host with Kerry Goring. And we were talking about Indigenous futurism. And that was just such a neat conversation. And someday, I hope to get to Indigenous ComiCon because that looks really cool. And then we've got Myka Foubert who, who is my cousin, but also a really cool person. And likes, likes, comic books, graphic novels, all that, all that artistic literature stuff. So now what I'm gonna do, I'm just gonna kind of go around and ask each of you to give a better introduction than the one that I just gave a little bit about kind of how you connect with or do this, you know, this … kind of what it is about graphic novels and comic books. that got your attention and keeps you there. So we'll start with Jay Jay Odjick  So yeah, kwe-kwe, Jay Odjick n’dishnikaahz. Hello, my name is Jay Odjick . I'm an Anishinaaabe artist, writer, TV producer jack of all trades, master of absolutely none. And I've been reading comics since I was old enough to be able to read.  Even though I'm from the kidney got Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg community in Quebec, which was where my dad's from I was born in Rochester, New York. And because my dad, like a lot of guys from the rest, there wasn't a lot of work in the community. So a lot of guys left to work, construction, high steel jobs like that. So I was born in Rochester. And right off the street from where we lived was a comic book shop. And we didn't have a lot of money. But luckily for me, the comic shop had this kind of dubious practice of taking the comics that didn't sell and tearing off the covers and selling them for five cents. So as a kid without a lot of money, it was pretty great because you walk in with like 25 cents, walk out with a couple of comics, roll them up, stick them in your back pocket. Nowadays was a guy who makes comics for a living and I'm like, “How could you?” But at the time, it was absolutely awesome. So that's how I kind of got into it. And I fell in love with the idea I think of using pictures to tell stories. I really wanted to be able to tell stories, and that's what brought me to it and I fell in love with the medium in that way of doing it because it seemed like something we could do without needing, you know, a ton of camera and equipment, video equipment and things like that. So I've been working in comics for longer than I care to mention on camera. I'm actually a lot older than I look I'd like to say, and I'm best known I would think for my original graphic novel called Kagagi, the Raven. That led into an animated series I was the executive producer and showrunner on called Kagagi The Raven, which aired in Canada, the United States and Australia. I drew two books with a Canadian author Robert Munch called Black Flies and Bear for Breakfast. And both of those I think are important because they were they were very commercially successful, but they featured all Native cast of characters and they were both set in First Nations communities. And it was a real trip for me to be able to go into any bookstore anywhere in Canada and find books with heroic looking Native children. And in addition to that we had Bear, which was these were published by Scholastic Canada. And we had Bear For Breakfast published in Anishinaabemowin. And I think that was a really important thing too, because up until then, they just published the books in English and French. And I said, Why don't we consider doing that an Indigenous language? So that's something I'm going to try to push for and hope we can see more of is more books like that mainstream books published in Indigenous languages, I think Anishinaabemowin was just a start. And hopefully we can move into more in the future. And other than that, I've worked with Lee most recently, on his Kickstarter anthology project, edited by Beth Le Pensee called A Howl: Werewolf Anthology . And I've got a story in that that's really interesting. And we'll we'll talk about that more later. But yeah, that's me. And that's who I am. Neil Ellis Orts Ah, howdy. I'm Neil. I'm in Houston, Texas. I grew up reading comics. Archie was the gateway drug. The 1960s Batman TV series also a little bit. I am not Native, there's not a ounce of anything in my cells that is Native. So I'm the settler here who is just coming here to geek out about comics. Myka Foubert Hi!  I'm Myka. I grew up reading comic books, because they were easier for me to read, then those nasty paper books. As someone who is disabled, having something that was easier to read was great, because I read just as much as all the other kids did, if not more, I just read Calvin and Hobbes instead. Because that's, that's the comic book that was was my gateway drug. But that got me into superhero comics. Like that got me into Spider Man that got me into the X Men. I was a huge fan of the DC Comics for Bat Girl. I'm still a huge comic book and superhero nerd. But yeah, my interest in comics really stems from wanting to read as much as everybody else but not really having the ability to, and just the easiest form for me to consume literature was through graphic novels and stuff like that. And I still own graphic novels. I still read them as much as I can. Though, admittedly, being a university student, I have not really had the chance to read them, because I've been really busy with all the mandatory stuff that I have to read. But yeah, that's that's me. Lee Francis IV Hey, guw'aadzi! this is so exciting that we get to hang out again. So yeah, my name is Lea Francis, my family's from the Pueblo of Laguna on my dad's side. And the Pueblo of Missouri on my mom's side. So I was like to say that people get confused. They're like, there's a Pueblo of Missouri? And I was like, No, I'm just kidding. My mom's like, straight Anglo. Yeah, so my love of comics also stretches back to about as far back as I can read, my dad was a huge science fiction and fantasy fan. That's what our shelves were filled with. It got to the point where my dad literally had to look at the dates that things were published, because oftentimes, they would upgrade, you know, update the covers for like Science Fiction/Fantasy things. And if it was anytime before, he would like, he'd be like, it was anytime before like, 1986. He's like, I've read it. So that's how much like I come by my nerditry like it's genetic nerd, right, genetic, Indigenous nerd. So, but most of the time, I spent my my, my worlds leading up until I started native realities in education. And I think that was really formative. I mean, I'll make the joke that the other joke I like to make, which is I got a PhD in education so that I could open a comic shop. You know, but essentially, I, when I started working in schools, because I loved comic books, what I would see on the shelves for my kids and I worked at home, so I worked at my home Rez Laguna/Acoma high school. That's where I, you know, almost a decade of my career there. When I’d look at the shelves, what you would see is essentially you'd see like a whole bunch of kids books, like, you know, and a lot of them would be non Native writers within you know, the kid’s, early kids literature, and this is probably you know, 20 years ago when I started teaching, so you'd have the stack of kids books and stuff like Paul Goble. Maybe there'd be a storyteller to like a local storyteller too. But you know, not not really not a lot. And so and then and then on the same shelf, there would be just like this gap, because there was no YA. There certainly were, there was like maybe two comics that people could find out, and then would jump right into adult literature. And then you're reading Louise Erdrich. Right. And it was just like, Man, that's a huge thing to cover from reading a picture book, to jumping into Louise's work, right? And especially for me, because I didn't see any comics, and I think a lot of us have gotten into this as native creatives of like, you know, I didn't see anybody that looked like me. And even when there was a comic that came out or something, you know, at least in the mainstream, oftentimes, it would be, you know, my northern plains, brothers and sisters, right. So, head dress, horse riding, you know, just ripped. They're all jacked, they are, those guys are just yoked across the board

    1h 21m

  2. 25/02/2022

    Refusing Patriarchy

    Ambe Refusing Patriarchy I’m re-releasing this episode for a couple of reasons, the transcript is finally finished and the anti-trans directive in Texas has made parenting a trans child reportable. People have said that it is only the medical interventions that are reportable, but that’s not how mandated reporting works. Mandated reporting does not require you to know that abuse is taking place, it only requires a good faith belief or suspicion. And having framed medical interventions for trans children as child abuse, if the child you knew as Emma is now Ethan that’s all you need. And if you aren’t in Texas, you should consider how your state or province is watching this. How they define abuse and neglect in such malleable ways that allow for bigotry to result in reports to Child Welfare and to police. These reports, and the mandating of these reports, is violence. In this episode you will hear from Black, White, and Indigenous people. They are queer and straight, cis and trans. They are all talking about the various ways in which they refuse patriarchy and assert space, but also about the cost of that refusal. The violence, both emotional and physical, that happens and the concerns about how they are able to show up in places where they should feel safe. This is an important consideration for those of us who consider ourselves to be friends, allies, or accomplices. Are we willing to let them carry the entire burden of that cost just because it isn’t “our fight?” If they are our friends, it is our fight. You're listening to Aambe: a year of Indigenous Reading All right, so we are going to be talking about refusing the patriarchy today. Um, I started off thinking about Mother's Day, and thinking about mothers, and then thinking about, well, what does it mean to live in this world as a mother, when you don't necessarily fit that mold. Because lots of people take on mothering roles, right, without necessarily, you know, kind of being what we might think of as a conventional mother. You know, so lots of people taking on mothering roles, lots of people living outside of what we, you know, we would think of as a gender binary, you know, and so I'm, and we often talk that way about, you know, women and LGBTQ people, like we're all kind of lumped together into one group. And so then I started doing that, and I'm not sure that that's really okay, either. Then I started thinking, Okay, well, how are we all navigating the patriarchy, we're all kind of working our way through it. And then I didn't really like that, because that sounded too much like patriarchy is legitimately in charge of everything, and it really isn't. So, then I thought, okay, we're resisting the patriarchy. And still, that sounded wrong. That sounded like, they're still this big authority. And then I remembered a conversation I had with Brianna, Urena Revelo. We've had her on the pod a couple of times. And she talks about refusal and the politics of refusal. And that's how I landed on refusing the patriarchy. Because we are going to live our own lives, and our own terms, as mothers, as not mothers, as people who provide care in our communities. We're going to do that on our own terms, and the patriarchy can just do whatever it needs to do. So, yes, we’re smashing the patriarchy. Ernestine ended the Memoir conversation: “Decolonize and smash the patriarchy.” So I'm gonna kind of go around and have everybody introduce themselves, and we're gonna start with Jenssa because she's, gonna leave us shortly to manage a chat room, which will probably be quiet today, because I completely forgot that this was this week. I thought it was next week. Oops. Thanks, Nick. Nick sent me a message yesterday, saying, hey, so there a link. How's this gonna work? And I'm like, holy ** that’s tomorrow. But that's okay. It will live forever on twitch and be released as a podcast. Everybody had a chance to hear our genius. So Jenessa Jenessa: It's just gonna be me talking to myself in the chat room. That's great. So I am Jenessa. Hello. I feel like I should have like a fun fact. Every time I come on here, because I come on here. Every, every, every month. And I'm like, Hi, I'm Jenessa This is the book goodbye. I don't have a fun fact right now. But anyway. Oh, I met Patty on Twitter. Fun fact. I feel like a lot of you probably did, too. I read Tanya Tagaq book, Split Tooth. And it was it was really good. It was really hard to read. I remember I got it. And I was like, super pumped. And I told Patty, I got it. And she's like, Yeah, it'll be a heavy one. I was like, Okay. And it was it was really heavy. But it was it was really good. It was beautifully written. I'm really happy that I was able to read it. And some of the things that I was sort of, I guess, thinking about when I was reading it. Well, one thing is I feel like I need to reread it again to like fully like grasp. Like, I feel like there's some really deep themes in here that kind of maybe went over my head a little bit on the first read. But one of the things that I thought was like interesting was, well, there's two things. She has a poem in here that's written in her language. And I think it's really cool and powerful that she doesn't give, there's no translation for it. It's just there. And I'm like, that's, I was like, Oh, that's really neat. It's kind of like, I feel like when I read a book, I just want everything to be like, given to me, which is very selfish. Like I kind of center myself a little bit when I'm reading a book and I was like, oh, it's it's like, it's not about me. They're not giving me the translation. This is just here. It's beautiful. And, and then the main character in the book is, she becomes a mother. She's a girl who becomes a mother. And I remember I was reading through it and I actually went back and like reread, because I was like, who's the father? She never says who the father is. And I don't know why. But for some reason that was really unsettling for me. And I was like, why is why is this so why is this such a big deal for me? Why do I need to like know who the dad is? Like, it's like, Oh, yeah. Anyway, those are just two, two thoughts that I sort of had about the book. But I was like, I don't need to know everything. I don't need to know who the dad is, and why I don't even know why that's why that's such a big why why? Why is that important for me? Yeah, okay, I've talked enough. There's a lot of you here, and I'm sure you'll have many more cool and exciting things to say, here. Patty: Hey, Angela. Angela: Hi, this is new. I've never done anything like this before. But I've been on her show before. So I'm really, really pleased. I read everybody's bio. So I'm very excited about all of you. Getting to hear from all of you. The book that I have been reading, and it's called um How We Fight, White Supremacy. And I've been reading it on and off for a year. And be for two reasons. I've been reading a lot of other books, but I keep coming back to this book, because it's written from all Black writers from the United States. And they're just connecting points for me, and how I live my life and raising my son on my own who's Black Indigenous, and feeling isolated. And probably from my upbringing being raised in a white family to being here and not having a community. So I have felt in particularly this last year, that real need for community and this book has given me that. It there are there's points where I laugh, there's points where I cry. When this woman was describing her experience with a coach calling her Aunt Jemima, you know, I went back to my childhood and my white mother dressed me as Aunt Jemima for Halloween and just, you know, and feeling like, Okay, I'm not like the only one. And I think that with everything that's been going on this year and watching my son have some not great experiences with the police here in Vancouver. It's just allowed me to land in a place where a Black voice, it's Black art, like there's a really great comic strip in there, there's, you know, it talks about an all Black store that sells Black dolls, which I think and I had my first Black doll until I was like five or until I was 10 didn't even know they existed. And talking also about the connection of Black hair. From from an African standpoint where it was really you know, hair defined what tribe you came from, it defined status, it was a way a means of communication. And, you know, I held the inceptions of hair that I've had from you know, my Tina Turner look to, you know, now dreads and Grace Jones for a while and that I'm really dating myself, there. So, all of that. It really explored that idea of identity and then watching my son who's you know, had the big afro and has cornrows and trying to figure out his Black Indigenous identity through his hair and those connecting points. So I just keep going back to this book. For those reasons. I read it and keep reading it and keep reading it and it was just a lovely gift from somebody that really felt would be good for me and so I appreciate when people give you books because it's it really is an act of love. Patty: Well, gifts are the best gifts Sean Tansi everyone. [Cree introduction] So I'm Sean Kinsella. And I just introduced my clan, which is Migizi. I'm also you can't really see my hair, but I'm wearing little migizi earrings on tonight. And that's my adopted Ojibwe clan. Because I'm actually plains Cree and Soto and Metis. And we didn't necessarily have clans in the same way, although I hear whisperings that when we're speaking about the sort of refusing patriarchy that, you know, there's like some some oral histories there about clans we may or may not have had. But I've been on this territory, which is sort of around .. and I was born in Toronto, my whole life. And so over time, I've developed relationships with folks here and, and developed enough that that was honored with an adoption. So that's important, I t

    1h 36m

  3. 04/11/2021

    The Stories We Tell

    And they talk and laugh and have a great time. Back in the summer we talked about fiction and the stories we tell about our communities and ourselves. I was joined by Waubgeshig Rice, (an Anishinaabe storyteller and journalist) as well as Sonia Sulaiman (a keeper of Palestinian folktale) and Kesha Christie (an Afro-Caribbean storyteller). There’s just too much good fiction out there and it was hard to make a list of the books that people should read because there’s just so much that is excellent. And when I started thinking about Indigeneity as a global thing, well the amount of excellent fiction just exploded and then I had a thought. What if we talked about our stories, about recovering them and saving them and sharing them with others and so I gathered three storytellers and we shared our stories. We shared our stories of dislocation and trauma, our stories of Nakba and the Middle Passage and Residential Schools. We shared our stories of butts and babies that are little s***s and tricky spiders. We shared the stories that we saved from white anthropologists who had a single story about us. And it was magic.So please. listen and share widely. You can read the transcript here. And join us next month at www.twitch.tv/patty_wbk when we talk about Being Indigenous. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pattykrawec.substack.com

    1h 34m
  4. Ambe: All We Are is Story

    26/10/2021

    Ambe: All We Are is Story

    I encountered Richard Wagamese ba shortly after I found my father, which was in my late 20s.  My mother had moved us down south after they separated and I was raised with my maternal family, Ukranians who had come to Canada as refugees. They loved me, but I was the brown child in the white family. The fact that they loved me did not change the loss that I felt. I had no contact with my paternal family who lived, as I thought all Indians did, far away from me in the northwest.  I had no idea that there were several reserves within just a few hours of me including Anishnaabe reserves.  I thought I was all alone.  I was alone.  The first book I read was Keeper ‘n Me in which Garnet Raven is taken from his family at 3 years old and raised in foster care.  There is one scene in which Garnet is playing cowboys and Indians with the other children and they want him to be the Indian and he becomes distraught because he doesn’t know how.  I didn’t know how.   Richard ba also found his family in his mid 20s, just as I did, and began that journey to find place and home and belonging that is anything but linear. It goes back and forth between connection and loss, between hope and grief, between belonging and being a tourist in your own community. The things we learned about native people were the same things that everyone else learned, all those stereotypes that are probably flooding your brain right now. The difference being that when we looked in the mirror we saw those things like tattoos. We saw them inscribed in our features, marks that wouldn’t wash off.  His final books, Medicine Walk and Starlight, reveal a different man than his earlier works.  One who has accepted himself and his relationship with the world around him and I feel that too. I feel that knowing, not all the time .. it’s still elusive and transitory but it is there and if I quiet myself I can feel the threads that tie me here.  Whether you have read all of his books or just one, whether you know him only from the movie Indian Horse and wish you knew him better, I hope you enjoy this discussion.The panel:   Jenessa Galenkamp  is a citizen of the Métis Nation. Originally from Tiny, Ontario by the shores of Georgian Bay, She now lives and works in St. Catharines. She spends her 9-5 working as an executive administrative assistant, and her weekends in the summer are often spent photographing weddings. When not working, Jenessa loves hiking with her partner, playing cribbage, reading, chilling with their two cats, Eleanor Rigby and Penny Lane, or working out ways for her church community to become better relatives with the broader community and learning as she goes. Daniel Delgado is Quechua runa and Jewish. He is a writer with varied and overlapping interests in fantasy, journalism, deep ecology, and decolonization. Daniel was previously on the podcast I host, Medicine for the Resistance, where we talked about the Quechua and Jewish cosmologies and holding onto your histories while living in diaspora. One thing that stayed with me is the idea of multiple worlds and inevitable shifts in how the world is structured, these shifts are inevitable and it is our responsibility to be ready.Dalton Walker, Red Lake Anishinaabe, is an award-winning journalist based in Phoenix. He is the deputy managing editor at Indian Country Today. Before Indian Country Today, Dalton was the senior reporter at O’odham Action News in the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Arizona. Dalton has worked at The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Sioux Falls Argus Leader and Omaha World-Herald. Dalton is a speaker and presenter to various local academic institutions concerning journalism and Native youth empowerment.  He served on the Native American Journalists Association board of directors from 2013-2016. Follow him on Twitter @daltonwalker  Raven Sinclair is a member of Gordon First Nation of the Treaty #4 area of southern Saskatchewan. Raven has been with the faculty since July 2005. Raven was previously on faculty with the First Nations University of Canada, and has taught at Masckwacis Cultural College, and the access division of Calgary’s Faculty of Social Work. She is a founding editorial member of Indigenous Voices in Social Work (UHawaii), and a regional editor for AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples. Raven’s academic and research interests include Indigenous knowledge and research methodologies, the synthesis of traditional and contemporary healing theories and modalities, aboriginal cultural identity issues, adoption, colonial and decolonization theories, and mental health and wellness.  She particularly enjoys facilitating workshops in interpersonal communication based on an accountability model.Raven owns Resonance Counselling, Coaching, and Consulting in Saskatoon. Shelagh Rogers is a broadcaster for more than 40 years, Shelagh has won the John Drainie Award for Significant Contribution to Canadian Broadcasting. She has worked on programs such as Morningside, The Arts Tonight and This Morning. She has been an advocate for people with mental illness for more than a decade, often speaking about her own depression. The Centre for Addictions and Mental Health (CAMH) presented her a Transforming Lives Award in 2008. She was named a Champion of Mental Health in 2009. In 2010, she received the Hero Award from the Mood Disorders Association of Ontario and the 2010 Voices of Mental Health Award from CMHA BC. In 2016, she was the inaugural recipient of the Margaret Trudeau Award for Mental Health Advocacy. In 2011, she was named an Officer of the Order of Canada for promoting Canadian culture, for advocacy in mental health, truth and reconciliation, and adult literacy. That same year, she was inducted as an Honorary Witness for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a role she committed to for the rest of her life. Shelagh is a co-editor of the series of the Speaking My Truth books about truth, justice and reconciliation published by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. She has received the Achievement Award from Native Counselling Services of Alberta. She holds honorary doctorates from six universities, and is the Chancellor of the University of Victoria. Shelagh revels in stories and like Richard Wagamese, believes we can change the world, one story at a time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pattykrawec.substack.com

    1h 30m
  5. Ambe: Refusing Patriarchy

    26/10/2021

    Ambe: Refusing Patriarchy

    Refusing Patriarchy.  The theme for this month went through several iterations, originally I was thinking about Mother’s Day and the various ways that we mother that go far beyond a binary that is so comforting to some and so alienating for others.  Then I thought about the way that norms become so pervasive that we become defined by them, on one side are men and on the other women, 2SLGBTQIAA, and non binary people.  So I thought about Navigating Patriarchy.  But no, that wasn’t right.  I landed on Resisting Patriarchy, because that’s closer to what we do, we push back against it.   And then my brain latched onto Refusing Patriarchy. And that’s where it stayed because more than navigating or resisting, a politics of refusal simply refuses to engage. A politics of refusal turns it’s back on patriarchy and just goes on building something new, something different, something closer to what we had before.  A politics of refusal does not seek inclusion because if what are we seeking inclusion into?  The people on this panel have all refused: refused to let Patriarchy define the boundaries or decide when we have transgressed them. Refused to be defined and in that way have defined refusal.   For racially marginalized people patriarchy is not always the final boss that needs to be dismantled, our men don’t benefit from it the same way that cis white men do, they don’t even benefit from it the same way that cis white women do.  And Homonormativity means that queer white men often benefit from patriarchy as well.   Refusing Patriarchy.   The panel:   Robyn Bourgeois (Laughing Otter Caring Woman, she/her) is a mixed-race Cree woman born and raised in Syilx and Splats’in territories of British Columbia, and connected through marriage and her three children to the Six Nations of the Grand River. She is an associate professor in the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies at Brock, where her scholarly work focuses on indigenous feminisms, violence against indigenous women and girls, and indigenous women’s political activism and leadership. In addition to being an academic, Robyn is also as activist, author, and artist. Angela J. Gray (she/her) is an emerging writer and visual artist who has shared her writing and poetry on Vancouver Co-op Radio’s Storytelling Show. Angela has trained as a photographer and enjoys using photography and acrylic painting as means to enhance her writing endeavours. Her training as a community addictions counsellor is a valuable resource to her creative work.Nick (they/them) is a white Jewish settler living on Coahuiltecan, Karankawa, and Sana land in Houston, TX. They are a queer transgender abortion storyteller, and they focus on improving abortion care and support for queer and trans people and providing practical support for people seeking abortions in the Houston area. They are married and have two cats, and they spend a lot of their free time knitting and cross stitching.Seán Carson Kinsella is migizi dodem (Bald Eagle Clan) and also identifies as twospirit/queer/crip/aayahkwêw and is descended from signatories of Treaties 4, 6 and 8 (êkâ ê-akimiht nêhiyaw/otipemisiwak/Nakawé/Irish). They were born in Toronto, on Treaty 13 lands and grew up in Williams Treaty territory. A member of the Titiesg Wîcinímintôwak Bluejays Dancing Together Collective, Seán has been featured as a reader at both last year’s and this year’s Naked Heart festival. Their zine pîkiskiwewin sâkihtowin featuring poems of Indiqueer futurism, survival and getting hot and bothered was released last year. They are currently the Director, the Eighth Fire at Centennial College and have previously taught Indigenous Studies there as well.   Taté Walker is a Lakota citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of South Dakota. They are a Two Spirit feminist, Indigenous rights activist, and a published and award-winning storyteller for outlets like “The Nation,” “Everyday Feminism,” “Native Peoples” magazine, and “Indian Country Today,” and “ANMLY.” They are also featured in several anthologies: FIERCE: Essays by and about Dauntless Women, South Dakota in Poems, and W.W. Norton’s Everyone’s an Author. Their first full-length book, Thunder Thighs & Trickster Vibes: Storied Advice from your Fat, Two Spirit Auntie, is set to publish in 2021. Taté uses their 15+ years of experience working for daily newspapers, social justice organizations, and tribal education systems to organize students and professionals around issues of critical cultural competency, anti-racism/anti-bias, and inclusive community building. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pattykrawec.substack.com

    1h 35m
  6. Ambe: Surrounded by Relatives

    26/10/2021

    Ambe: Surrounded by Relatives

    Somehow the last 20 minutes got truncated in the podcast release. You can watch and listen to the entire episode on Twitch. transcript follows the show notes. What are the conditions our communities need to see the Milky Way?   This is the question that Chanda Prescod-Weinstein poses near the end of her book The Disordered Cosmos.  I hadn’t meant to include a book on astro/physics when I created April’s topics, and indeed when I first thought of April I thought only about Braiding Sweetgrass. But I follow Chanda on Twitter and she’s been on the podcast and when I saw that she had written a book it occurred to me that we don’t look up often enough, so I asked her if she thought it would be appropriate and she thought that it would be. I hadn’t read the book at that point yet, it wasn’t published until early March, but we really don’t look up often enough.   When Chanda was on the podcast I had made a cheeky comment about Thoreau sitting in the woods thinking his Big Thoughts while his mother brought him sandwiches. It’s a common remark, intended to remind people of Thoreau’s privilege and the nonsense of Enlightenment ideas about pristine wilderness. Chanda turned this over and reminded me that the people who make her meals, who empty her garbage can, who sweep the floors and do all the myriad caretaking that exists in the world are also part of the scientific process.  Enlightenment ideas about wilderness are nonsense, but not because Thoreau didn’t make his own sandwiches. So what are the conditions that our communities need to see the Milky Way? To notice badgers and raccoons? To gather moss? To watch the growth of plants and their relationships to each other? To be undrowned.   Each of this books talks about how our relationships with the world around us are made complicated and disconnected.  Animals are an inconvenience. Food comes in packages. Weeds get pulled. Pets are much loved but still commodities, animals we buy and sell and who themselves live in disconnection.  We learn to listen to the world around us on its own terms, not just to draw lessons from them. They are teachers, but we need to be careful about the way we think about that because they don’t exist in order to teach us. Teaching is part of reciprocal relationship, it is not transactional and as Chanda notes in quantum physics, the act of observing has consequences, it changes the thing being observed.  So when we think of the conditions that we need in order to see, to know, to gather, to watch, to be undrowned we think about all the barriers that exist. The lights that drown out the stars and the distance that you need to drive, if you even have access to a car, to be somewhere that you can see. The way that we live in cities, not the fact of cities but the way that we have constructed them to pull resources from places we call remote and then concentrate them to meet certain needs, depriving those places of the resources that they need.   We think about our location, because our location and the way that we think about it is what complicates these things.  And thinking about our location helps us to work through what we might do differently.  How we might imagine, and then enact, a world where Black children can see the night sky and dream big dreams that come true.   If you haven’t had time to read the books, that’s ok. Please join us anyway. I have resources for you: * This conversation with Daniel about his book Raccoon that comes out in June. * This conversation with Mi’kmaq astronomer Hilding Neilson about Indigenous stargazing. * This magical interview with Mari Joerstad about the ways in which the Hebrew Bible describes a world that is filled alive with other than human persons. * And this article about the first three months of conversations. This month’s panel: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an American and Barbadian theoretical cosmologist, and is both an Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy and a Core Faculty Member in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of New Hampshire.  She is the author of The Disordered Cosmos, a book connecting theoretical physics and Black feminisms. http://www.cprescodweinstein.com/ Daniel Heath Justice is a American-born Canadian academic and member of the Cherokee Nation. He is professor of First Nations and Indigenous Studies and English at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Why Indigenous Literatures Matter which we discussed in January as well as Badger and the soon to be released Raccoon. Daniel also writes Wonderworks, which are speculative fictions. Home Neil Ellis Orts is a writer and performer living in Houston, Texas. His novella, Cary & John, is available for order wherever you order books. He is currently putting together a short story collection. Themes that emerge from Neil’s body of work include identity and religious faith, and of course grief.  There is almost always someone dead or dying in his stories, having absorbed the Pauline line about death being the final enemy.  His performance work often invites his audience into self reflection.   https://www.neilellisorts.com/ Ben Krawec is self-described forest geek.  A wild harvesting, dumpster diving, Anishnaabeinnini.   https://www.instagram.com/foodgetter/ Celeste Smith is an Oneida woman living in Anishnaabe territory and the founder of Cultural Seeds, a plant-based business rooted in Traditional Indigenous Knowledges.  https://www.instagram.com/culturalseeds/ More info on this yearlong series of discussions about Indigenous Literatures at daanis.ca/ambeTRANSCRIPT: transcript is lightly edited for clarity Surrounded by relatives Fri, Jun 30, 2023 10:23AM • 1:09:20 SUMMARY KEYWORDS land, book, indigenous, talk, relationship, plant, braiding, thought, year, writes, conversation, live, discovery, people, growing, called, fight, medicine, discovered, hear 00:14 PK  I am so happy to be here to talk about being surrounded by relatives, these  books that we've that I've collected are just some of them were really surprising to me.  I hadn't. I don't think any of my high school science teachers had ever thought that I would pick up a physics book again. But I really, really enjoyed The Disordered Cosmos. So what I was reflecting on, you know, as we're kind of going to move into the introductions was last night on medicine for the resistance, we talked with Helen Knott, and she had written a memoir, in my own moccasins:, a memoir of resistance, and we were talking about loss, the loss of relatives, the loss of place, the loss of connection, and we have been talking about connection to place and going home, and the feeling of the land remembering me when was the first time that I went home and how incredibly powerful that was, because I hadn't been expecting. I wasn't used to thinking in that way at that time. And so to have that feeling of the land, remembering me was really surprising. And then I was and of course I've been I was thinking how Kerry, you know, my co hosts would hear that either she's part of the black diaspora doesn't know where that land is that would know her ancestors. And then Helen made a comment. later on in the conversation, that her grandmother had told her what medicine shows up, you know, her grandma, she was going through some stuff, as we all do. And her grandmother had made a comment about medicine showing up. And in the context of what we had said a few minutes earlier, it sounded like the land reaching out and offering something of itself, you know, to any one of us and it sounded to me, you know, in the context of thinking about Kerry and how she might have heard earlier comment, you know, the earlier part of the conversation and the loss that would be associated with that for her. You know, I asked her about that. You know, what, what medicine shows up for you. In what way does the land reach out to welcome you and to know you and so that in the context of our conversation, that's kind of what I want to hear from each of you as we introduce ourselves and then in the chat as well. How, how does, what medicine shows up for you? How does the land or the universe of whatever, you know, whatever it is that reaches out to you, as you were writing the book, or reflecting on the book. So we'll start with Jenessa, and then she'll go take off and focus on the chat. With Jenessa what medicine shows up for you. Jenessa: Oh my Gosh, I was hoping to just fly under the radar of that question by keeping my camera. But you still are picking on me anyway. So I was I read Braiding Sweetgrass. Well, I read Braiding Sweetgrass, like last year, but for this month, I was kind of reading Robin's other book called Gathering Moss. And I haven't actually finished it yet. But I just think, just like reading, going through the book, the way that Robin writes about moss, it almost feels like this, like love letter to moss. And I think like, just like reflecting on that I've never heard, I've never really read a book where, like, a single like, plant has been described in this way. And like, there's one particular chapter where she talks about reciprocity, it's called a web of reciprocity. And she's like, it's like, the chapter focuses on like, her journey, trying to figure out what the traditional uses of moss were, and like, figure out other like, if Moss was like, as loved by other people is like, how she loves moss. And I thought it was really interesting in this chapter, and this might not be exactly the answer, you're looking for Patty, so I apologize. But, uh, one of the things that she found was one of the ways that moss reflects it's like best gift was in the hands of, of women, most namely during their like, reproductive cycles and with babies, and I thought this was interesting, sort of like looking forward to next month's conversation where we're gonna be talking about mothers and made me think about how you can like

    1h 10m
  7. Ambe: Memoir

    26/10/2021

    Ambe: Memoir

    Last month we talked about history and what stood out to me is the gaps.  The gaps in Black history where Indigenous peoples should be and the gaps in Native Studies where Black people should be.  Our histories never unfold in isolation, and yet they are told that way. In shaping each of these panels I am mindful of those gaps and I work to fill them in, to make sure that you have voices who will fill them in so that your vision, and therefore your imagination, will be encouraged and enlarged by possibility. Memoirs are personal history and they form the flesh and blood of the broad strokes that fill our history books.  Ernestine’s book reflects on the story of Raven stealing the sun, the relationship that he builds with the old man in order to gain access to his boxes of treasure in order to bring light into a dark world. There is loss and sorrow, but there is also life and our own lives are like this. Memoirs, our personal histories are like this. Our interior lives are filled with carved boxes. In this conversation we invite you inwards, to reflect on the carved boxes in your own lives and what treasures might be revealed in the opening.   Ambe This month’s panel: Ernestine Hayes, author the Tao of Raven.  Ernestine was born and raised in Juneau when Alaska was still a territory. When she was fifteen years old she and her mother moved to California where she spent 25 long years. When she turned 40 she resolved to go home or die with her thoughts facing north. It took her eight months to get from San Francisco to Ketchikan. She finally made it back home two years later. After she got back home she enrolled at the University of Alaska, eventually receiving an MFA in creative writing and literary arts and now teaches at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau.  Ernestine belongs to the Kaagwaantaan clan of the Eagle side of the Lingit nation. She has four grandchildren and two great grandchildren.   https://www.ernestinehayes.com/     Demita Frazier. Interviewed by Keeanga–Yamahtta Taylor for How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective.  Demita Frazier is an unrepentant life long Black feminist, social justice activist, thought leader, writer, and teacher. She is a founding member of the Combahee River Collective who has remained a committed activist in Boston for over 44 years, was a radical even as a child. While a high school student in Chicago, she helped organize a student walk out in protest of the Vietnam War. She has worked in coalition with many organizations on the issues of reproductive rights, domestic violence, the care and protection of endangered children, urban sustainability issues affecting food access in poor and working class communities, and a host of other important issues affecting communities of color. She has been an organizer and architect behind the scenes of many movement initiatives including the Chicago Black Panther Party’s Breakfast Program, Jane Collective, and more. After receiving her JD from Northeastern University, Frazier contributed to local and national campaigns for gender and racial justice. For more on Demita’s extraordinary activist journey, please see Keeanga–Yamahtta Taylor’s How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective. She has been a consistent advocate for the unequivocal freedom of Black women so that we can get on with the urgent business of freeing the world.Kaitlin Curtice, author Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God   Kaitlin Curtice is a poet, author and public speaker. As an enrolled citizen of the Potawatomi Nation, Kaitlin writes on the intersection of Indigenous spirituality, faith in everyday life, and decolonization within the church. Her new book NATIVE: Identity, Belonging and Rediscovering God is about identity, soul-searching, and being on the never-ending journey of finding ourselves and finding God. As both a citizen of the Potawatomi Nation and a Christian, Curtice offers a unique perspective on these topics. In this book, she shows how reconnecting with her identity both informs and challenges her faith. Joy Henderson  is a Black-Lakota writer, mother, and Child and Youth Care practitioner. She lives in Scarborough, is a constant commentator on Canadian politics, children’s rights, and Back and Indigenous identity. Joy has written op eds for the Toronto Star and spoken at various events.  She is also a huge fan of ketchup chips.Jenessa Galenkamp  is a citizen of the Métis Nation. Originally from Tiny, Ontario by the shores of Georgian Bay, She now lives and works in St. Catharines. She spends her 9-5 working as an executive administrative assistant, and her weekends in the summer are often spent photographing weddings. When not working, Jenessa loves hiking with her partner, playing cribbage, reading, chilling with their two cats, Eleanor Rigby and Penny Lane, or working out ways for her church community to become better relatives with the broader community and learning as she goes. Robin McBurney, chatroom moderator for this month Robin is a high school teacher in Niagara Falls. She advises the Student Council and encourages them to see activities through a diversity lens, such as cultures are not costumes and eliminating “crazy hair day.”  Robin is on the Literacy Committee where they work to bring in diverse stories and authors and has found several staff members with whom she can actively disrupt white supremacy in the classroom and the administration.  Seeing herself as an intern alongside the work of Black and Indigenous activists has changed how she sees her role in the fight. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pattykrawec.substack.com

    1h 27m
  8. Ambe: Our History is the Future

    26/10/2021

    Ambe: Our History is the Future

    stop writing about Indiansshe told me againonly louder as ifI was hard of hearingyou have to allow authorstheir subjects, she saidstop writing aboutwhat isn’ t in the text which is just our entire history excerpt from graduate school first semester: so here I am writing about Indians again, Cheryl Savageau This morning I watched a documentary about the public works projects of the early 20th century.  Dams that created hydro electricity for cities. Aqueducts that brought water to cities. Public parks that were protected from cities. They talked about the setting aside of land and the movement of dirt, but not the displacement of Native Americans who had lived on land before it got protected or turned into dirt. The Indians who weren’t in the text. Our history is the future. This is the title of Nick’s book and it captures a belief about history that matters. So often we are taught history as a thing that happened back then. It is static and has little to do with us today aside from being occasionally interesting. But history is indeed story and we’re in the midst of it. The things that happened back then reach forward to us in a hundred different ways.  My maternal grandmother was born in 1919 in the Ukraine. Her life contained the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, WW2, Stalin, Hitler, postwar immigration, the Big Bopper and the Bee Gees.  Moon landings and space shuttles. My paternal grandmother was born around the same time in northwestern Ontario.  Her life contained residential schools and trap lines, Treaty 3 and the concentration of Anishnaabe families into reserves, the children she outlived.  We live under laws and policies that were developed more than a hundred years ago, and with the consequences of others.   And yet we also live with possibility and promise because history is not only inevitable progress for some and disruption of others.  It contains examples we can learn from, actions we can build on, and ideas we develop and expand into new places.  For me it is the history of Black Disaspora in Indian country that contains so much promise amid the heartache. The relationships between Black and Native Americans is at once fraught and hopeful.  Many of our tribes sheltered slaves, others owned them. Sometimes both. We returned runaway slaves under the terms of treaties we were determined to respect and sheltered them because this wasn’t what we meant.  Tiya Miles, in the preface to the collection of essays Crossing Waters Crossing Worlds, notes that there is an third partner in Black and Native American relationships, a constant structuring white presence that gives shape to our ideas about each other.  We don’t think about this enough. We need to.  As I read history I am struck by how deliberate colonialism was. It wasn’t “the times” as if now is any different and it wasn’t accidental. I am also struck by the persistence of purity as an ideology and how ideas about purity were invoked to separate us from land and each other and in those things we can find paths forward. We can be just as deliberate about our own decolonizing, about embracing the relationships that impurity creates in and among us.  I am so looking forward to this conversation, there are bios and links below that will introduce us to the panel and other works by the authors you may want to dip into.  If you missed last month’s conversation on Why Indigenous Literatures Matter you can watch that here:  https://www.twitch.tv/videos/882335162   And next month we are looking at Memoirs, which are personal histories.  We have confirmed with Ernestine Hayes, author of the Tao of Raven, and Demita Frazer who was interviewed for How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor as well as our chat moderator Jenessa Galenkamp who will take a break from the chat rooom to join the panel.   Ambe! Panelists:   Khadija Hammuda works in child protection and has done some organizing and educating in the community around Islamaphobia. A settler in Canada with roots in Libya, Khadija works against the colonialism so often part of the immigrant experience by developing relationships with Indigenous peoples.  She recently started a new position on a specialized child protectionteam working collaboratively with Indigenous organizations to serve Indigenous families in Niagara.  Khadija enjoys daily ice coffees and hanging out with her cat, Mungi.   Seán Carson Kinsella is migizi dodem (Bald Eagle Clan) and also identifies as twospirit/queer/crip/aayahkwêw and is descended from signatories of Treaties 4,6, and 8 (êkâ ê-akimiht nêhiyaw/otipemisiwak/Nakawé/Irish). They were born in Toronto, on Treaty 13 lands and grew up in Williams Treaty territory. A member of the Titiesg Wîcinímintôwak Bluejays Dancing Together Collective, Seán has been featured as a reader at both last year’s and this year’s Naked Heart festival. Their zine pîkiskiwewin sâkihtowin featuring poems of Indiqueer futurism, survival and getting hot and bothered was released last year. They are currently the Director, the Eighth Fire at Centennial College and have previously taught Indigenous Studies there as well. Cheryl Savageau is the author of the poetry collections, Dirt Road Home, which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Mother/Land, which has been described as “one of the best literary depictions of New England to date.” (Craig Womack, author of Red on Red).  Her children’s book, Muskrat Will Be Swimming was a Smithsonian Notable Book and won the Skipping Stones Book Award for Exceptional Multicultural and Ecology and Nature Books. Savageau has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Arts Foundation. She has been a mentor to Native American writers through the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, and received their Mentor of the Year award in 1999. Savageau teaches at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. Tiya Miles is Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is a public historian, academic historian, and creative writer whose work explores the intersections of African American, Native American and women’s histories. Her temporal and geographical zones of greatest interest include the nineteenth-century U.S. South, Midwest, and West. Miles offers courses on African American women, Native American women, abolitionist women, and “Black Indian” histories and identities. She has become increasingly engaged in environmental humanities questions and ways of articulating and enlivening African American environmental consciousness. https://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/tiya-miles A citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, Dr. Nick Estes is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. He is a historian, journalist, and host of The Red Nation Podcast. Estes also is a founding editor of Red Media Collective, which publishes books, podcasts, and stories highlighting Indigenous intelligence in all its forms. His writing and research engage decolonization, Indigenous histories, environmental justice, and anti-capitalism and have been featured in The Baffler, The Guardian, The Nation, High Country News, Indian Country Today, Jacobin, NBC News, and The Intercept. In 2019, Estes was awarded the Lannan Literary Fellowship for Non-Fiction. Estes is the author of the book “Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance.” He is a co-author of two books coming out in 2021 on police abolition and Indigenous environmental justice, and is currently working on a book on the history of Red Power. https://nickestes.blog/ More information at daanis.ca/ambe This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pattykrawec.substack.com

    1h 36m
  9. Ambe: Why Indigenous Literatures Matter

    26/10/2021

    Ambe: Why Indigenous Literatures Matter

    Foundations, Why Indigenous Literatures Matter by Daniel Heath Justice After the Civil War the United States had a decision to make about who they would be. This happens regularly in nations, they form and reform their collective identity and the afternath of the Civil War was one such time. Would they reckon with a history that relied on racial hierachies and inequity to achieve their state, or would they reconcile with their southern brothers. Reconstruction could have been a time of reckoning and rebuilding in a way that brought everyone into that collective identity but it was not, and the promise of a racial solidarity rooted in white Christian supremacy remained the basis of American identity.  We’re at that place again, the US and Canada. The events at the Capitol, which were the inevitable outcome of what Black and Indigenous people have tried to raise awareness on for years, have brought us here again. To another crossroads. Many prophecies talk about times like this, choices that will need to be made and the consequences of those choices. The Christian book of Revelations isn’t the only place of such imaginings.  So on the day of the inauguration of the next US president, as we stand at another place of possibility, we will see how Indigenous literatures invite us to consider these questions.   What does it mean to be human?  How do we behave as good relatives? How do we become good ancestors? How do we learn to live together? There is a focus on kindness throughout the book that I think is very important, and if you have time there is a podcast by Kelly Hayes that I would encourage you to listen to, the link has a transcript as well but there’s something about listening to Kelly.  We need a riot of empathy, and right now, in this moment while we are about to launch on a year of Indigenous reading and thinking about what it means to be humans being as my friend Maya explains the word Anishnaabe, centering the idea of kindness will make all the difference in how we proceed out of this moment.   This month’s panel: Daniel Heath Justice is a Colorado-born Canadian citizen of the Cherokee Nation/ ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ. Daniel currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture at UBC on unceded Musqueam territory. His most recent book is Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, a literary manifesto about the way Indigenous writing works in the world. He is the author of Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History and numerous essays and reviews in the field of Indigenous literary studies, and he is co-editor of a number of critical and creative anthologies and journals, including the award-winning The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature (with James H. Cox) and Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature (with Qwo-Li Driskill, Deborah Miranda, and Lisa Tatonetti). Other writings include the animal cultural history Badger in the celebrated Animal series from Reaktion Books (UK) and the Indigenous epic fantasy novel, The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles. Daniel’s current projects include Raccoon (also in Reaktion’s Animal Series), a collection of essays titled This Hummingbird Heart: Indigenous Writing, Wonder, and Desire, an edited collection on Indigenous land privatization and allotment co-edited with White Earth Ojibwe historian Jean M. O’Brien, and a long-gestating Indigenous steampunk novel. Janet Rogers is a Mohawk/Tuscarora writer from Six Nations of the Grand River. She was born in Vancouver British Columbia in 1963 and raised in southern Ontario. Janet traveled throughout 2017-2019 working within numerous residencies in Vancouver BC, Santa Fe NM and Edmonton AB. Janet is based on the Six Nations territory of the Grand River where she operates the Ojistoh Publishing label. Janet works in page poetry, spoken word performance poetry, video poetry and recorded poetry with music. She is a radio broadcaster, documentary producer and media and sound artist. Her literary titles include; Splitting the Heart, Ekstasis Editions 2007, Red Erotic, Ojistah Publishing 2010, Unearthed, Leaf Press 2011 “Peace in Duress” Talonbooks 2014 and Totem Poles and Railroads ARP Books 2016, “As Long As the Sun Shines” (English edition), Bookland Press 2018 with a Mohawk language edition released in 2019. “Ego of a Nation” is Janet’s 7th poetry title which she independently produced on the Ojistoh Publishing label 2020. Jackson Twobears and Janet collaborate as 2Ro Media. They combined their individual talents and skills along with National Screen Institute training to produce two short documentaries;  NDNs on the Airwaves about Six Nations radio (APTN 2016), Moving Voice, a Telus STORYHIVE sponsored digital broadcast 2019 featuring the travels of literary trailblazer and Mohawk poetess E. Pauline Johnson, and The Spirit of Rage a short experimental video poem about anti-racism.  Janet won the 45th Annual American Indian Film Festival 2020, BEST MUSIC VIDEO award for her video Ego of a Nation produced with Wes Day of Fresh Shift Productions.  Ishenikeyaa Waawaashkesh is Deer clan, and a member of Ardoch Algonquin First Nation. As a mother, sister, auntie and community member, Ishkenikeyaa believes in liberatory practice as community care. An educator for 20 years, she is currently an Indigenous Education consultant, as well as Equity and Inclusive Education consultant, for Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board. Ishkenikeyaa is passionate about culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy, Anishinaabemowin, and beading. She has 2 sons, Bnajaanh and Ziigwan, and is a lifelong voracious reader.  Joy Henderson  is a Black-Lakota writer, mother, and Child and Youth Care practitioner. She lives in Scarborough, is a constant commentator on Canadian politics, children’s rights, and Back and Indigenous identity. Joy has written op eds for the Toronto Star and spoken at various events.  She is also a huge fan of ketchup chips.   Neil Ellis Orts is a writer and performer living in Houston, Texas. His novella, Cary & John, is available for order wherever you order books. He is currently putting together a short story collection. Themes that emerge from Neil’s body of work include identity and religious faith, and of course grief.  There is almost always someone dead or dying in his stories, having absorbed the Pauline line about death being the final enemy.  His performance work often invites his audience into self reflection.   Robin McBurney is a high school teacher in Niagara Falls. She advises the Student Council and encourages them to see activities through a diversity lens, such as cultures are not costumes and eliminating “crazy hair day.”  Robin is on the Literacy Committee where they work to bring in diverse stories and authors and has found several staff members with whom she can actively disrupt white supremacy in the classroom and the administration.  Seeing herself as an intern alongside the work of Black and Indigenous activists has changed how she sees her role in the fight. Biindigen.   Ambe! More information at daanis.ca/ambe This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pattykrawec.substack.com

    1h 23m
  • 9 Episodes

About

A year of reading Indigneous literatures featuring panel discussions with authors, academics, activists, and readers. Each episode features several books within a theme. pattykrawec.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    patty krawec
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2022
  • Episodes
    9
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © patty krawec
  • Show Website
    Aambe