75 Episodes of All My Relations: How We Got Here

Relatives, we made it to 75 episodes.

For our 75th episode, we’re looking back at the relationships, voices, laughter, hard conversations, and unexpected turns that have shaped All My Relations from the very beginning. We move between the present and the archive, returning to moments with our co-hosts and collaborators and remembering what each of them brought to this space—and what they taught us about making something in relationship.

This episode is less a highlight reel than a reflection on the journey: how the podcast has changed, how we have changed, and how a project rooted in kinship has been carried by many hands. There has been joy, grief, friendship, transition, humor, mistakes, growth, and a whole lot of love along the way.

Seventy-five episodes later, we’re still asking the questions that started it all: What does it mean to be a good relative? What becomes possible when Indigenous people get to tell our own stories, in our own voices? And where do we go from here?

Thank you for listening, for growing with us, and for being one of our relations.

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Produced & Hosted by Matika Wilbur

AV Production & Edit by Pancho Francisco Sánchez

Artwork, Social Media & 2nd Edit by by Mandy Yeahpau

Episode Transcript:

This is our 75th episode. Can you believe it? We started All My Relations in 2019,

and it has really become such a big part of my life. We are now in our seventh year,

Sacred Number Seven, and to celebrate, we are doing some big things. First, we made this episode.

We went back through seven years of conversations, seven years of good teachings. We filtered

through all the loud anti-laughter, the uncomfortable disagreements, the tear-jerking moments,

and so many stories. try to understand really what all my relations is and what it might become

next. But to commemorate, we are turning this podcast into an exhibition right here at Tidelands.

And I know, how do you take something like this and put it into an art gallery? We're trying to

figure that out. But you can come and see on September 19th, we're having a big grand old

celebration and we want you to come. Let's just take a moment to go on an AMR retrospective.

Let's start in the beginning, why we did this podcast in the first place.

Hi, I'm Atika. I belong to the Swinomish and Tulalip people. I'm a photographer and the creator of

Project 562. And I'm Adrienne. I'm a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, a scholar, and the writer

behind the blog Native Appropriations. This is all my relations. All My Relations is a podcast to

explore relationships, our relationships to land, identity, ancestors, and to one another.

In this space, we talk with amazing, inspiring natives to explore indigeneity in all its

complexity.

Let's talk about All My Relations. Why are we calling our podcast this? It's a good question,

Adrienne. You know, All My Relations is a pretty popular topic throughout Indian country,

popularized by Lakota, Nakota, Dakota relatives. But all throughout Indian country,

our primary identity is inextricably connected to our relationships, whether it be our

relationships to land, if we're defining ourselves as the people of the blue-green water or the

people of the tall pine trees. or the people that live within the Four Sacred Mountains, or for us

here, the people of the clear saltwater, the people of the tide, that relationship to land and

water is our primary way of identifying ourselves. And then, of course, we also see ourselves as

our grandmother's granddaughters, and we see our role and responsibility and purpose directly

connected to our lineage. A part of what we would like to explore in this project is talking with

some of our guests about how one talks about their relationship. in their own community. And I know

for me as someone who grew up without those relationships, without the connection to community,

not knowing what it meant to be a Cherokee woman, that has been the biggest anchor in my

reconnecting journey is building and finding those relationships. So when we were talking about,

okay, what are the equivalents to these concepts in our communities, in our language, I had to go

to my friend Patrick, Patrick Del Percio. I asked him what the equivalence would be in our

language. And I'll try to pronounce it. They all kind of relate to different aspects of this idea

of all my relations or we're all related. So sorry, Patrick. Which means let us all be careful with

one another's well-being. There's something very powerful about. Learning that understanding, too,

of figuring out what it means to be in relationship and how we each relate to these ideas of all my

relations.

That was us in 2019. Two Native women, some microphones, a makeshift set at a museum,

and really... I think we had just one big, enormous question. What is the antithesis of

colonization? It's living by kinship structure. It's rejecting individuality. It's exploring that.

And this podcast really It began because of that, but also because Dr.

Adrian Keene and I cared deeply about representation. We cared about who was telling stories about

Native people, about who was being seen and who was being heard, and what happened to our

communities when the only images people encountered were stereotypes rooted in mascots and

cartoons, in westerns, in racist costumes, and a version of Native life permanently trapped in the

past.

There's a connection here between the fact that right across the street from Harvard is this Urban

Outfitters with all this fake Native crap. And then my classmates don't know that Native people

still exist. I wanted to start exploring more of these things that we see every day and don't

really stop to question. So like the Urban Outfitters stuff or like the logos of sports teams or on

packages or whatever to start to make a case that all of these images collectively.

matter and it carries over in every sector in society. If we want to work towards goals of

decolonization, of revitalization, we can't do that if in most settlers' minds were just these

stock stereotypes that are rooted in cartoons and westerns and the past.

And relatives, we went hard on that question. We did not want to simply say that stereotypes were

offensive. We really wanted to understand what they actually did, how they affected the confidence

and self-esteem of Native children, how they shaped public policy, how they influenced Supreme

Court judges and lawmakers and teachers and doctors and how everyday ordinary people perceived us

and how those perceptions affected the material conditions of Native people's lives.

So we invite... like Dr. Stephanie Freiberg onto the show to help us understand the measurable

psychological effects of stereotypical and limited representations.

Connecting back to the responsibility to the elders telling me to get an education and come back

and help our children. I was really interested in how do these public representations of natives

influence native children. And so a lot of my early work in grad school where we exposed students

to public representations and looked at what effect they had. So the very first study we did showed

that exposing Native high school students to Chief Wahoo lowered self-esteem.

I remember when I first became familiar with that study. I was teaching in Tulalip at the time.

I was just feeling so overwhelmed by the sadness in the community and by going to so many funerals

in our community and thinking like if negative representations are affecting the self-esteem of

our kids and I'm constantly having to lay my kids to rest because of early death for whatever

reason, suicide or whatever it is that. that leads to those things in our community. I realized I

had to be a part of creating an image that was different. You hear the common arguments that people

make. It's just a mascot. Don't Native people have more important things to deal with? And what you

just said is exactly why the mascot's important, that you're playing with our identity. When you

look at health research, psychological... education, it all comes down to how we're represented.

All of those literature bases tie back to identity. And so how our identity is being used by

mainstream society matters. And not because we don't have strong identities, but because we have to

negotiate that public identity out there. And when we're not shown in these really highly capable

ways as being contributing members of society, there are consequences for that.

And that's the omission. It allows non-natives to feel good about American history.

It allows them to feel good about their lot in life, where they are situated, and not have to

realize that they got there as a result of what they've done to other groups.

We talked with Dr. Kim TallBear about identity, science, about sexuality and kinship,

and the colonial systems that try to classify, contain, and control indigenous bodies. What exactly

is Native American DNA?

It's a settler colonial idea.

U.S.-based scientists have very much an immigration-based narrative. So not only are they looking

at human migrations historically, they're looking at how different populations in the world are

related to one another genetically. And so they can then tell, based on mutation rates, which

branches branched off different lines and where people went in the world. In your book, when you

talk about that, you say that one of the major problems with that is the origin story,

right? Because it debunks the origin story if there is. We don't have to reconcile our...

origin stories about who we are as people with genetic origin stories. But because genetics has

such cultural power in a settler colonial society, we are always faced with justifying our

knowledges and our definitions and our histories, according to the dominant narrative that they set

out, and frankly, most other Americans believe. I see indigenous genome scientists being able to

hold their spiritual, for lack of a better word, understandings and traditions on one hand, and

then their science on the other hand, and they just kind of move through the world where they have

both of these knowledge systems operating in their lives, but not always in the same place. That's

a very Indigenous thing to do. We began by asking for better representation, but the conversation

quickly became more complicated. Who controls the story? And what becomes possible when Native

people are speaking directly to one another, not translating ourselves or defending our existence

or performing Indigeneity for an outside audience? Hawaii is not our vacation land.

Hawaii is the homeland of the Kanakamali people. right now,

they are fighting to protect one of their most sacred sites. Let's begin this story with Lanakila

Mangual, who helps us to understand what this movement is all about. On one level,

for us as indigenous peoples here, Mauna Awakea is our most sacred mountain.

It is the tallest mountain on earth from the seafloor to its summit. And for us,

it's part of our genesis stories, our creation stories. It was the first child born of Papahanamoku

and Waakea, which is the earth mother and the sky father. And so we see the mountain as the eldest

of all of our siblings. of all these things being built in this area,

we see it almost like cancer. So in the tradition of our people, it was very,

very seldom that anybody ever came up onto the mountain, particularly to the top,

to the summit. That's what we refer to as vahu akua, or the realm reserved for the gods.

There's already 13 existing telescopes on the mountain. There's about 24 structures altogether, and

about... 10 miles worth of roadway that has been carved onto the mountain,

as well as the opening of this mountain as a public road that now opens the way for tourism.

You can count between 500 to 1,000 vehicles or 1,000 people coming up this mountain every single

day. and there really is very little to any management of them up there, so they get up there and

they just walk all about, and the University of Hawaii is actually who has the lease of this

mountain, and they are the ones who have basically done nothing for the conservation effort and

just opened up this mountain for tourism and astronomy. And so we are just kind of... in the

resurgence of our people coming back and reclaiming this place and for our right to protect this

place as it needs to be, both for culturally, spiritually, and environmentally.

Today we're going to discuss a widely covered topic, the southern currently called U.S.-Mexico

border. The southern border between what is currently called the United States and Mexico extends

from the Pacific coast to the Gulf of Mexico, and it's the world's single most crossed

international boundary. And it's Indian country. There are nine Native nations along the border

today. They range from the Apache, the Kokopah, the Kickapoo, the Kumeyaay,

Tanahattam, the Kwazan, Pai Pai, Pascua Yaqui, and Isleta del Sur Pueblo.

Hello, everyone. My name is Raoul Chrisman. I come from the Kumeyaay Nation, from the Viejas Band.

There are currently 21 bands of Kumeyaay, 14 north of the border and 7 south. The border itself has

disrupted tribal relations between these bands and complicated the preservation of tribal

traditions. So in our language, when you say something's dirty or has dirt on it, you say, ah, the

mat, you mat. But when you talk about the body, you, in our language,

it's almost the same word, mat, mat. And when you hear people describe location of a place,

they say mat kumiai, this is kumiai land. The word for earth, soil,

our bodies are almost interchangeable, that mat. And that's because we were told in our creation

story that the creator created us from the soil. It's very common for like people to say or the

older ones to say like that earth, that mountain, that soil, that's us. That's an extension of us.

Rather, we are an extension of it. Raul drives me to a section of the wall in Campos, where he and

several other kumihai gathered to protest construction during the summer of 2020. As you see now,

this wall is all, it's up, man. This wall is up. The women that came in, they did the circle dance

right there, unifying all of our people, people from this side, that side, bringing all our people,

you know, together. Now, we couldn't do that if we wanted to, bro. This wall is like right here.

That's crazy. That's ridiculous. That's, man. These songs were going to be used to help remind

everybody forever remember where they came from as a people.

Let's just take a moment to collectively acknowledge that this is real, that COVID-19,

the novel coronavirus, is among our communities. While doing some research, I came across some work

being done with the Urban Indian Health Institute that resonated deeply with me. I decided to reach

out. Abigail Elgahawk, a Pawnee citizen, is the chief research officer at the Seattle Indian Health

Board, and she is the director of the Urban Indian Health Institute, which is one of 12 tribal

epidemiology centers across the U.S. Eleven of them serve regional areas that are located on

federally recognized tribes. However, the Urban Institute of Health is the only organization that

specifically serves Native populations in large cities.

So this talk about... equity is never more relevant than it is right now in the midst of this

pandemic. So as we've seen across the country, that we simply have a crumbling system in the Indian

Health Service that is drastically underfunded by Congress. And as we are now in the midst of

COVID, I am very afraid and worried about the disproportionate impact that's going to happen in our

community. So here at the Seattle Indian Health Board, we've been waiting for materials related to

personal protective equipment for our staff. And there's a shortage of all of those things right

now in the country. So we've been waiting on shipments of them. So we got a box of something today

and we open it up. And instead of the materials we were expecting to see from the county in which

we live, it was a box full of body bags.

Through traveling and connecting with Indigenous people for Project 562, I learned that what is now

known as Los Angeles and what is now known as California is actually Indian land. You know,

there are over 109 federally recognized tribes in California, and Los Angeles has the largest

population of urban natives out of anywhere in the country, right? So in the wake of the fire,

to get some Indigenous perspective on the matter, we sent Poncho.

important wake-up call for me to start living in a good way with those things that maybe I hadn't

thought of as relatives, like fire. First, we're going to hear from Jessica Calderon. My name is

Jessica Calderon. I am Tongve, or also known as Tongva, Gabrielino, as well as Chumash and Yaki.

When it came to our loved ones, our relatives who are now ancestors, when they were tending to the

land, everything was with intention. And so it's with knowledge that when you set fire to the land,

you're going to put balance in the land. You're going to eliminate disease and prevent disease.

You'll allow fresh new shoots to come. And so it was...

a way of life to keep that balance throughout our communities. And then how has the settlement of

Los Angeles disrupted those practices? The very first interruption comes with the mission era with

the Spanish. They seen people utilizing fire in the way of taking care of the land.

They seen it as a threat. What I understand today, looking back, is because they're coming from a

very horrific mindset where I will do horrible things to you. So surely that's your intention,

right? And so when these fires are to keep the land safe, these people are taking it as a threat.

So it did eventually become illegal. And that brings up such a good point about the way that they

were using fires. as a means of colonization and they even coined a term for it they call it

scorched earth yeah that is a heavy practice that they have used to eliminate whole villages and

just completely devastate families it's definitely a state of mind if you come from a way of not

having good intentions you can't understand what good intentions are There's like this dumpster

fire happening in the media right now in the first hundred days of Trump's presidency. And I think

a lot of confusion and fear in Indian country. We're still not protected by the 14th Amendment of

the United States Constitution. And that's what's being called into question right now. Right. My

question is, in theory, are we going to have to choose between citizenship in our nation and our

tribal nation and citizenship in the United States? Is that what we're potentially facing? Undo a

statute. You just need a simple majority. But what if just 50.1% of the Congress decided that

tribal citizens shouldn't be anymore? They can just undo a lot.

Would we be forced with this unfortunate moment of choosing to relinquish citizenship from your

tribe to remain an American citizen? Now, again, the question is, where would they put you if you

decided to stay tribal and somehow be deemed?

To not belong here. In theory, it's like, okay, you're a citizen of the Tulalip tribes. You can't

leave the boundaries of the Tulalip tribes. Which is what it used to be, right? You used to have

Indian agents that would monitor whether or not you could leave the rest. Yeah,

they were essentially prisons. I don't think there's going to be a seismic shift in our lives here

in terms of how we belong here and interact as Americans and tribal citizens on a day-to-day

basis. But it certainly contributes to this narrative that has been perpetuated now by the U.S.

Supreme Court for nearly 150 years, and notwithstanding what Congress did in 1924, that we are

lesser than. That our right to belong here, the original people's right to belong here,

is not at the same level or of the same caliber as white people.

Over seven years, the circle around the microphone changed and widened. Adrian helped to build the

first fire, and together we learned how to make a podcast, how to ask difficult questions,

how to be willing to learn in public. It's also been such a journey of finding my own comfort in my

voice and my identity. Like for me growing up in suburban white San Diego where no other natives

around that I knew of. And then because I'm white coding and white passing, like nobody even knew I

was native. So to be able to kind of own that and not be embarrassed or ashamed by that and just

realize that. my perspective as a Native person is valid because it is a Native perspective,

because I am a Native person. And that being able to just sort of like release that shame of like,

I didn't grow up with my traditions. I didn't grow up in ceremony. I didn't grow up with access to

a lot of that stuff. But that's... okay and not my fault and being able to find my voice in general

and consenting to learn in public and messing up publicly and learning how to apologize publicly

and those sorts of things have been Really important. Then Dr. Dr. Desi joined the circle.

Hello, beautiful people. This is Dr. Dr. Des. And how wonderful to be back in community with the

fabulous Matika. Des helped us think about data sovereignty. Everybody knows sovereignty, right?

Like, hello. Like, we get sovereignty as indigenous peoples. It's like the first word our babies

speak, you know. They know. Yeah, it's not mama. They know sovereignty.

So, so, so, so.

Why I think Indigenous data sovereignty has built the momentum it's had is because it's grounded in

love, this concept of putting Indigenous data back into Indigenous hands. Like if we think about

what that data... is or are, right? It's songs. It's our stories,

right? It's the knowledge and what we know from our grandmothers and our grandfathers and what

we're passing down to our babies in real time. You know, it's happening right now. We had deep

conversations around MMIW. We talked with folks like Abigail, Echo Hawk.

For non-Indians, we need you to step up and be an ally. The collective power of allies can hold

significant But you need to be following the lead of Native communities and Native leaders.

In my times of my deepest triggered moments, I go back home to Alaska. I go home to the blueberry

fields to touch that plant and to know I'm a blueberry too. That our traditional foods are part of

it. us. So I'll stand in those fields of blueberries and I'll pick them and I'll be really loud and

sing super loud so bears don't come. But it's also to teach my sons those traditional songs.

And I'll go back to those ways. And when I'm in my deeply triggered moments, I have to remember I'm

a blueberry.

And then Temra Slane brought another relationship to the show. Hi, everyone. My name is Temra

Slane. Chalitia from Lummi Nation. I couldn't be happier to join each and every one of you on this

season of All My Relations. I don't remember if it was when you came on the podcast a couple of

years ago. I don't remember if it was just in passing. But I remember you explained to me that

American football is about land grabbing. Yeah, American football. is a game of violence that

resembles the warring frontier of destruction embodied by white masculine entitlements to

advancement of land. Since European contact, the agenda predicated on whiteness to acquire native

land and promote the myth of westward expansion and the American dream.

So it's like little by little, the force of... bodies, labored bodies,

as you point out, right? Black bodies, brown bodies. Yes, also white bodies. They are working to

grab land and are entitled to it with the use of exerted force and violence.

Ever since we had that discussion, I've never been able to see football any other way. Sorry about

that. Sorry about that.

Such a vibe. Isn't that fun? It's such a good vibe. And it's also just feels like something I've

wanted to come out of Indian country forever. You know what I mean? Like just something that you

feel really good listening to. And also when it first started, I was like, oh, there's like a

little hint of sadness in there. You get through it and then you're just vibing. Yeah, definitely.

I love it. Super fun. More recently, Dallas Goldtooth came on with activism and storytelling with

fatherhood and all that good Indian laughter. We need relatives like Dallas here,

good old sacred manhood, Uncle Dallas, to bring his sacred manhood onto this podcast for a podcast

takeover. Thank you for bringing all your sacrality to us. So sacred. That's like the most epic

buildup. That sounds very illicit. That was very... The way you worded that, it kind of made me

feel a little uncomfortable here. But yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to be coming here into this

space with my sacred manhood, as Matika so eloquently put.

Dallas showed us that A, our show could have a male co-host and still survive. Thanks,

listeners. But also, he held serious conversations about climate justice and colonial violence.

He discussed... fatherhood and family and indigenous masculinity. And he did it all so eloquently

and with humor. And it's no small feat. We're in a new space, right? We're recording in Tidelands.

This is your new gallery space, Matika. I love the fact that even your bathroom is traditional. She

has cedar on the toilet.

Like it's not, you know how you picture, picture a toilet. And you have the little container above

it that holds the water, right? And normally, that's where you put items, decorative items,

on top of the toilet tank. No, not here. We're even more traditional.

We're getting down to the earth. There are like four branches of cedar on the toilet seat. Right on

the toilet seat. One branch. Just a tiny branch. It's a branch. That's like five feet long.

And it's like, it's like the three seashells from Demolition Man. You're expected. You don't know

what to use, how to use a cedar, but you're supposed to use it somehow. How did you use it?

Did you use it, Dallas? No, I used it in a traditional Dakota way. Each host brought different

questions, different relationships, different teachings, and a different way of holding space.

And the podcast was never meant to present one authoritative Native voice because...

No such voice even exists. There are hundreds of tribal nations, hundreds of indigenous languages,

different lands and histories and teachings and governments and political experiences. And the

relationship between the hosts, our agreements, our tensions, our disagreements, our laughter, it

all became a part of the show itself.

Tigre Tiziaez, welcome back, relatives. I'm Matika Wilbur. Thank you for joining us on All My

Relations. I'm Adrienne. I'm a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, a scholar, and the writer behind the

blog Native Appropriations. My name is John Aion. I'm a Chicano salvadoreño filmmaker,

and I identify as mestizo. Both of my parents are immigrants. My father's from Mexico, and my

mother's from El Salvador.

Hi, everyone. My name is Tamara Slane Chalitia from Lummi Nation. I'm an ex-professional athlete

and sports broadcaster, but really at the core, a storyteller.

Today we have something very special for all of you. We have Mr. Dallas Goldtooth beginning his All

My Relations takeover. Hello, Dallas. Oh, happy to be here.

Blows his own foghorn. Yes, that's my Indian name, actually. Blows his own foghorn.

And the circle grew far beyond the hosts. We talked with scholars, artists, organizers, athletes,

parents, chefs, language keepers, comedians, filmmakers, culture bearers, rabble rousers.

And we made space for long, difficult conversations. We sat with questions that did not have tidy

answers. Over the years, there was so much change. And some of you have been with us since the

beginning. You were here with us before we had kids. during a pandemic, during the birth of Alma B

and Kaya, and you celebrated with us as we launched our books. You came to my book launch.

You made it a New York Times bestseller. That was all you. And I'm so... grateful for our

listeners. And then you were there with us as we found a permanent home for our podcast at

Tidelands here in Seattle. And so many of you have come to visit us and it's been such a joy to be

in community with you. And then last season, we launched our book club and we started reading

together. Our book club episodes allowed us to slow down and to spend time with these big ideas

over more than one conversation. We sat down with Leanne Simpson's work and we talked about land.

and water and love and refusal and world-making and what it means to imagine an otherwise.

How do we renew ourselves? How do we renew each other? How do we renew our communities? How do we

build life that brings forth more life instead of ending it?

We read Sasha Lapointe's book, and the community truly came alive. She taught a writing workshop

here at Tidelands. She gave an artist talk. We read her book. And for me, it felt so personal and

raw and real to open our book club with that book. I listened intently as my great-grandmother

told me for the first time the story of the Maiden of Deception Pass. But unlike mermaids and

selkies, the maiden of Deception Pass wasn't a victim, but a warrior, willingly braving the deep

sea to save her people and find happiness. I ran along the beaches with new enthusiasm and pride.

The ocean and I were practically related. I hopped along the stony shores, ecstatic each time I'd

see the rubbery shine of sea kelp on the surface. I'd scoop large bits of the maiden's hair up in

my arms, happy with the proof of it. I felt connected to the water in a new way now.

Next, we're reading Becoming Ken, and you should be getting your books in the mail soon. BTW.

And in this next season, we sit down with Indian Girls Book Club and we'll experience what happens

when Native women come together around a book. Not simply to review it, but to bring our histories,

our annotations, our questions, our laughter, and our lived experience into the conversation. My

teacher, I remember this, she very overtly made that decision to put a Native author on our

syllabus because it hadn't been done before. And I remember reading it and being like... where has

this been like what like all of a sudden you can talk about alcoholism substance abuse uh gendered

violence holy smokes like there's so much that you know, I've wanted to talk about for so long and

just have never had the words for. Since 2019, so much has changed in the world of Indigenous

media. There are many more Indigenous podcasts now. There's more Native hosts, producers and

journalists and storytellers making work from our own perspectives and for our own communities. The

Young and Indigenous podcast amplifies the voices, stories and experiences of Indigenous people in

all walks of life. By honoring the voices of our ancestors, we're reclaiming our narrative and

preserving our way forward.

This is First America, the true story of how the United States came to be and how we got to this

present moment. We've watched Native actors and writers and filmmakers and creators reach audiences

that the entertainment industry once insisted did not exist. We watched Lily Gladstone stand on the

Golden Globe stage and begin her acceptance speech in the Blackfeet language.

We watched Washington's football team finally abandon a racist name it had defended for decades.

Today's a big day for our team, our fans, a day in which we embark on a new chapter as the

Washington Commanders. We watched Reservation Dogs, Rutherford Falls, and other Native-led

productions create Native characters who could be funny and flawed and tender and strange and

ambitious and annoying and horny and grieving and fully alive. We watched more Native people into

writer's rooms. We had them come on the podcast. We had Tazba and Jana and Sierra Ornelas come and

talk to us directly about what it was like to create a writer's room full of Native people. We

watched Native people. enter studios and newsrooms and production companies, not simply as

consultants brought in after the decisions had already been made, but as the people creating the

worlds and making the decisions. And that change came from decades of organizing,

from decades of advocacy and scholarship and creative work. And all my relations has been one small

part of this much larger movement.

But the original question still remains. What does it mean to live?

As relational people. We say all my relations as hi-hi.

Which means we are all siblings.

We are all brothers, sisters, and siblings.

Is Potawatomi for all my relations. all my relations in Arawaka and Paine.

Kaolelo Hawaii, Hawaiian language, is kou o hana a pau, which literally translates to my family

till completed, till done. So until you can finish counting and there's no one left to count.

For the saying, all my relations in Māori, literally translated,

we would say, oku whanau na katoa. All my relations.

Using that as the backbone for the podcast is really powerful because it is something that we share

across Indian country. These ideas of being relational people, of not existing without being in

relationship to a place, to people, to culture. It's always about those relationships.

Across 75 episodes, relatives offer different pieces of an evolving answer.

There's no sense of I or me in the Hawaiian culture.

Our smallest unit is the ohana or the family, and we are just part of that whole.

Land is inseparable. from us. And this is what we know to be true.

It's our ancestral homelands and our ancestral waterways that tell us who we are.

What does it mean to believe in water? Because water is something that's been here since the

beginning of time. The same amount of water has been cycling over the planet.

Water changes forms, and every single living being on the planet has a relationship to water.

So rather than using land as an orienting sort of force, I wanted to listen to water.

For us here, as the people of the Clear Saltwater, that relationship to land and water is our

primary way of identifying ourselves. They're quite often millions of years old,

crabs, oysters. These things have been on the planet and feeding and sustaining not just us, but

balancing these ecosystems through time. And I think it's time to really feed ourselves,

you know, not just in a carbohydrate, protein, nutrient type of fashion, but feed our spirits and

feed the next generations by picking up those traditions again and passing them along. And we know

that it's our traditional languages that bring us home and root us in who we are.

If you keep coming, if I keep teaching you young ones, it'll be easy for you.

And I tell them bear dance is coming. And I tell them, that means bear.

That means a bear. He's coming.

He's coming to our reservation.

You better be able to talk you to him so he doesn't eat you.

There was never one universal translation. There is never one universal Indigenous worldview.

There have always been many nations, many languages, many distinct ways of understanding how we

belong to one another. Yes, we need individual self-love, but we also need community love. And we

don't heal in silos, we heal in community. Like, nobody can heal without their community. I don't

care who you are. You can quote me on that. I feel that. We need each other. What are we talking

about? I'm not talking about identity. I'm talking about my relations. I'm not talking about just

who I am as an individual. And that's, again, the difference between us and settler colonial

thinking about what it is to be Native. The conversations moved through land, water, food,

and language, through bodies, gender, sexuality, kinship, and Indigenous futures.

Okay, where is this going, and where do we want it to go to, and what kind of past pain is it

coming from? of coming out of and how do we kind of transform those negative affects into perhaps

not only survivable ones, but ones that kind of procure futurity too. Queer,

trans, and two-spirit relatives reminded us that reclamation cannot only mean returning to the

past. It must also make space for Indigenous people to imagine ourselves forward as artists,

lovers, storytellers, knowledge keepers, and future ancestors. And Native women,

aunties, and sisters, they reminded us that laughter is also knowledge. You're going to make me cry

on Native American Heritage Month. Thank you. Those tears cost more.

Notice we're all dressed in this black mourning outfit for this celebratory month that we have

going on as well. We're giving practical magic.

There are things you can learn about a people by studying their histories. And then there are

things you can only understand by sitting in a room long enough to hear them laugh.

Native laughter is who we are. It refuses to wait its turn. It enters before the story is finished

and it stays long after everyone has forgotten the point. It's affection,

correction, survival, and sometimes it is how your relatives remind you.

that you are not nearly as important as you have begun to imagine. Ryan, do you want to talk about

that topic, about relationality, being in a relationship with Sterling, this powerful relationship

you two have? It is powerful. It's so powerful.

And I went outside to kind of greet Ryan, and I see he's got this giant squash. I've never seen a

squash that big, first of all. It's a gashaw squash. Gashaw squash.

Osage-sized squash. Thanks.

So Ryan comes out with this giant squash in his car. And I was like, what the hell?

And so he's walking. I was like, all right, when you walk in, I was like, Uncle Junior is going to

be right across from the door, sitting there. He's talking to everybody. I was like, so Ryan,

when you come in, just like walk it over to him, hand it to him without saying a word and walk off.

He's like, all right, all right, all right. So like we go, Ryan goes in. I go in first.

And then Ryan comes in a little bit later, walks in, hands that squash. And my uncle's like mid

-story. And, like, turns, and, like, Ryan just comes with this big swash and, like, puts his hands

out. He grabs it. And then Ryan kind of does this and walks away. Gave him a little hand sign. I

went, what's that? Walks away. Ryan's going to, like, talk to people that he knows. And I just walk

right out the door. Yeah. And then, like, I'm sitting there, and he just, like, leaned over to

someone. He's like, why do you think that white man gave me that swash?

He asked if I was a ghost.

Anybody else see that white ghost? The archive sounds nothing like silence. It sounds like Janna

and Ryan Redcorn and Sterling and Dallas and Adrian and Desi and Temris,

our guests, our audiences, our relatives. It sounds like people fully alive. One of the reasons I

brought Georgina is because my mom was really nervous. And she was like, I don't look nervous. I

don't look nervous. Oh, my God. She's like, why do they want to talk to me? Well,

yeah.

What

the hell's wrong with them? They want to talk to me. Don't they know anybody?

Our guests disagreed. They corrected us. They teased us. They taught us. They grieved with us. And

they dreamed with us. And sometimes we arrived at the microphone prepared. And sometimes we

absolutely did not. Sometimes the teaching came through scholarships. Sometimes it came through

prayer. Sometimes it came through a story a relative had never shared publicly before.

And somehow, relatives, we always eventually return to the question. Now,

as we move into the next season of All My Relations, the circle is changing shape again. I'll be

returning as the primary host of the podcast. And I got to tell you, to do that feels exciting and

scary and vulnerable because this will be the first time I'll be hosting. a whole season by myself.

We'll have guest hosts. We'll have more artists and organizers and scholars and comedians and

culture bearers and people with their own questions. And we'll be in community. We'll be in

relationship. Some will join me for a conversation. Some will take over an entire episode.

And some may guide us into places I never would have reached on my own. The show will have one

primary host, your girl, but... will continue to hold many voices because the circle was never

supposed to close. 75 episodes later, we still don't have the answer to the question we began with.

We have 75 conversations, hundreds of voices, seven years of laughter and disagreement and teaching

and grief and love and becoming. And together they have formed a living archive. And now that

archive is becoming place. We are creating an All My Relations exhibit at Tidelands.

And you are invited to join us on September 19th. 6 p.m. here at 55 University Street.

We will gather for a full exhibit with special guests, a live recording,

merchandise, and a chance to experience the world of all my relations together.

In real life, for years, you've listened to these conversations through your headphones and your

cars and your kitchens on walks. You know, we've been with you on your long drives. But now we are

creating a place where you can step inside them, where sound becomes space, where voices live

besides photographs and artworks and objects and stories where you can sit and listen and remember

and... respond. So come with a story or a question or a teaching or simply come ready to talk.

So Tiguitseed Relatives, thanks for being on this journey with us. I think taking a moment to

reflect on everything that this podcast has been to me, to our community, to all of you,

to think about the ways that it's challenged us and changed us and inspired us and really made us

who we are. I think It's an important moment, you know, to just acknowledge that we're going into

the seventh season, that we have this home base, to acknowledge all the people that have done this

work alongside us, you know, to think about our time with Adrian and Desi and John Ione and Dallas

Goldtooth and all the people, Teo and Pancho and Mandy and Art by Sierra Sana.

You know, like when we think about all the people who have contributed to this community of... It's

exciting that we've done all this work. I can't believe it. We wanted to do more, you know, forever

has been my goal to do 52 episodes a year. Like I've always wanted to be a weekly podcast.

I've never been able to achieve that. Maybe this year will be the year.