Aunties!

This episode of Unreserved is all about aunties — why we love them and all the ways they lift up our communities.

Join us in the Auntie Circle at Katita Cafe in the Winnipeg Art Gallery to get the Auntie 101. Sonya Ballantyne, Heather Bjorklund and Joanne MacDonald give us the tea on what an auntie is in Indigenous family and community, and share some sweet and funny auntie stories.

Toronto’s Call Auntie Clinic started out as an impromptu healthcare hotline at the start of the pandemic, but it has since grown into a cozy space to come and visit. The clinic is staffed by Indigenous doctors, midwives and birth workers like Niiohontéhsha A’nó:wara, Krysta Williams, Ryan Giroux and Cheryllee Bourgeois who provide reproductive and sexual health services, using a kinship model.

Tenille Campbell is a poet, photographer and auntie. She says not all aunties are sweet, gentle and kind. So she wrote the poem “We aren’t all nice aunties” and invited many self-identified aunties in her life to record videos of themselves reading the poem. She shares her big auntie energy!

The podcast, Auntie Up! features Indigenous women talking about the important stuff like missing and murdered Indigenous girls and women and the effects of lateral violence in our community. But they also talk about boujee bannock and the politics of bead work. Journalist, author and storyteller Tanya Talaga says she created the podcast to give space to the Aunties in our communities and help share their important voices with the world.