Medicine for the Resistance

Most people have never met an Indigenous person in their entire lives, and everything they know is shaped by Hollywood and Mascots. Indigenous people are increasingly getting in front of, and behind, the camera to make sure that our stories are told our way. Meandering through Indigenous identity, the ancestors we discover, and the importance of narrative.

Transcript available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Rr0SaM76osWq5Ca-_PTGHs6EZdXWMA8Y/view?usp=sharing

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Poor whites were mistreated, excluded, jailed, and generally abused by the white slave owning class. So why did they align with them then, and why do they continue that alignment today? There are moments of collaboration between poor whites and enslaved or emancipated blacks, but only moments before the ruling class changes their strategy.

Keri Leigh Merritt's book, Masterless Men unpacks the history of the Deep South during the antebellum period. It explains much about deep seated beliefs today, and contains clues about how to move forward.

Transcript available here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wOF2Rr0jyVSKmrrQadArRKwnhnRVpOTk

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

Author, playwright, documentary filmmaker Drew Hayden Taylor joins us for a conversation about finding your voice, and what that looks like after being at the bottom of the social hierarchy for so long. As always, we talk about serious issues with a lot of laughter. Because while we have to get the poison out, we also need to heal, and be heard.

https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/episodes/searching-for-winnetou

https://www.nfb.ca/film/redskins_tricksters_puppy_stew/

Transcript available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IDQOuFdhqP9iKDJMZKXiUthOVt2GcwUR/view?usp=sharing

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

From Reparations to solidarity to imagining what comes after. We talk with writer and human rights lawyer Anthony Morgan about the case for reparations being paid to the descendants of African slaves. Anthony also suggests that instead of settler, we talk about being displanted, forcibly removed and planted elsewhere, and the repeated ways that this has happened to Black communities. We end by imagining what comes next, and the power and resistance to be found in building relationships between Black and Indigenous people.

Transcript available here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yQhcEW_xsKlhqINeivCVtF_9n0n7HTZk/view?usp=sharing

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

In Part 2 of this conversation with Cherokee genealogist Twila Barnes and French Canadian Academic Darryl Leroux we continue our conversation about the similarities between those who would claim Cherokee and those to remake themselves as Metis. These stories have real world consequences and it is important to get people talking, to get them comfortable with talking about this. Disrupted families are real. But so are those who take advantage of that disruption to claim what isn't theirs.

Transcript available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LM2FMqzPIMNEBNLIzTWTr5IOzFTo7h_X/view?usp=sharing

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

From Cherokee grandmothers to the rise of the eastern metis in French speaking Canada, the stories we tell about our family history has consequences that go beyond the beliefs of an individual. Cherokee genealogist Twila Barnes joins previous guests Daniel Justice and Darryl Leroux to talk about the similar themes between these groups of pretendians, and the material costs that these stories have on Indigenous peoples.

transcript available here, errors in transcription are my own ~ pk https://drive.google.com/file/d/1StC6AWIVsF0TSVYP4a3HpJfuOHO5RX8d/view

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Racialized people pay a personal and collective cost for the constant pushing back against settler colonialism. It burns us out.

But what we we doing it for? What is growing beneath the fires of activism?

Aylan Couchie is an Anishinaabekwe interdisciplinary artist and writer hailing from Nipissing First Nation. She is a NSCAD University alumna and received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design at OCAD University in where she focused her thesis on reconciliation and its relationship to monument and public art. Her written, gallery and public works explore the intersections of colonial/First Nations histories of place, culture and Indigenous erasure as well as issues of (mis)representation and cultural appropriation. bio from https://aylan-couchie.com/

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

Sedina Fiati is an artist, actress, and activist. We talk about changing the narrative from the way she does land acknowledgements, to Black and Indigenous presence in the arts, and somehow landing the revelations about R Kelly and Michael Jackson and the importance of believing women. We claim our "hell no" and talk about building communities that are not thriving, not just surviving. Moving beyond dealing with trauma and harm, using activism to achieve what is our due.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

Going home can be hard, but it is also critical to our wellbeing as BIPOC. No matter how much we think we fit in, or think we look like the people in charge, we don't. And they know who we are. So much of our anxiety and stress is related to that. And picking up aspects of our material culture, like beadwork, is one way of reconnecting. Going home. Listening to the ancestors. Beads against fascism does that. Listen to her here, then find her on Instagram. The resistance will be beautiful.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com

Briana Ureña Ravelo joins us again to talk about the intentional nature of white supremacy. The racist structures and laws did not happen by accident, the system is rigged to ensure that racialized people play particular roles, and the solution is not to work from within. There is no within for racialized people. We need to build something different.

You can find Briana's writings in a variety of places by searching her name, or you can find her here on twitter where she writes brilliant threads: @brujacontumbao

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit medicinefortheresistance.substack.com