In the final episode of the winter season, Dr. Candace Manitopyes sits with Dr. Rocio Rosales Meza, a Xicana/Mexicana seer, initiated medicine woman, and psychologist whose work bridges ancestral teachings with liberation. They name the moment we’re living in—the collapse of empire, the overwhelm of digital life, and the spiritual and emotional toll of witnessing global injustice. Dr. Rocio shares how grounding in creation, tending to the Earth, and honouring the elements are what keep her centred when the world feels chaotic.

Their conversation goes straight to the heart of what many are experiencing right now: the “spirit-eating” nature of colonial systems, the dysregulation caused by social media, and the exhaustion of carrying both awareness and responsibility online. 

They talk openly about burnout, boundaries, and the courage it takes to hold hope when the world keeps offering reasons to despair. Dr. Rocio offers wisdom from her own collapse—losing her tenured academic career during a health crisis—and how that breaking became the doorway to her calling.

Both women unravel the myths of New Age spirituality, the reality of decolonization, and the necessity of confronting our shadow without shame. This episode is a reminder that healing is spiritual work, the underworld is part of the journey, and our medicine often lives in the very places we were taught to fear. It’s an invitation to slow down, reconnect, and remember who we were before colonial conditioning told us otherwise.

https://www.drrosalesmeza.com/

@dr.rosesalesmeza

-

Relentless Action

1. For one week, track when you override your limits, numb out online, or perform “awareness” instead of feeling — then name the body sensation underneath it.

2. Write from the part of you that feels resentful, jealous, exhausted, or ashamed, then respond from your grounded adult self without exiling what you find.

Relentless Reflection

1. Where have I mistaken visibility or knowledge for actual integrity?

2. What part of me did I silence to survive systems that were never built for my wholeness?

Relentless Resources

1. All About Love by bell hooks. A rigorous examination of how domination distorts love, spirituality, and community, and what it takes to confront those distortions inside ourselves.

2. Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés A deep reclamation of the instinctual feminine and the underworld journey, unpacking how culture fractures women from their wild knowing — and how to return.

Send Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!

Join the RIW Patreon Community

RIW Website

Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

In this powerful cousin episode, Dr. Candace Manitopyes welcomes her cousin, Dr. Tara Hutchison, a young Cree physician from Moose Cree First Nation, for an intimate and wide-ranging conversation about medicine, culture, identity, and the realities facing Indigenous communities today.

Both women discuss the emotional labour of being Indigenous professionals in colonial systems: balancing advocacy with gentleness, resisting the pressure to be palatable, and unpacking the internal battles around perfectionism and imposter syndrome. They speak openly about therapy, burnout, and the crash that often follows major achievements, reminding listeners that success doesn’t erase vulnerability.

The episode ultimately offers a portrait of two Cree women who have navigated demanding systems while staying rooted in who they are and where they come from. It celebrates community, resilience, cousinhood, and the growing wave of Indigenous people transforming medicine, education, and futures in their homelands and beyond.

-

Relentless Actions

1.  Write down what you carry in rooms that isn’t in your job description, then choose one thing to stop doing this month.

2.  Identify two people who understand your context without explanation and schedule a real check-in before burnout forces one.

Relentless Reflection 

1. Where did I learn that excellence is the price of belonging?

2. After I achieve something significant, do I let myself land or do I immediately chase the next proof of worth?

Relentless Resources

1. My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

2. Your Body Is Not an Apology Workbook: Tools for Living Radical Self-Love

Send Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!

Join the RIW Patreon Community

RIW Website

Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

In this vibrant episode, Dr. Candace Manitopyes speaks with acclaimed actress, musician, and director Crystle Lightning of Enoch Cree Nation, an artist whose three-decade career has broken barriers on screen, on stage, and behind the scenes. 

They get into the reality of working in film, television, and theatre—far beyond the glamor audiences see. Crystle opens up about the grit behind the craft, such as the long rehearsals, endless travel, last-minute script changes, and the discipline it takes to thrive in an industry that often expects Indigenous creators to prove themselves twice over. She talks about imposter syndrome, leading her cast with auntie-level care, and building space for emerging artists to stand confidently in rooms not built for them. The two discuss the creation of Bear Grease, the smash-hit Indigenous musical she co-created, and the wild, funny, nerve-wracking backstage moments that became the heartbeat of the show’s success.

The episode ends on a powerful note: a call to action for Indigenous creatives to pursue their dreams with courage, curiosity, and community. Crystle reflects on the legacy she hopes to leave—opportunities, representation, and a path wider than the one she had to fight through. The conversation is full of laughter, truth-telling, motivation, and love for Indigenous art. It’s a celebration of what’s possible when Indigenous stories are centred, protected, and brought to life by Indigenous hands.

-

Relentless Reflection 

1. Where in my own creative or professional life am I still shrinking, even though I know I’m meant to take up more space?
2. What barriers did my younger self face that I can now remove for someone coming up behind me?

Relentless Actions 

1. Write down three tangible opportunities you can offer to another Indigenous creative this month (a connection, a recommendation, a shared resource, a skills exchange).
2. Choose one creative risk you've been avoiding and commit to taking the first step within 72 hours—send the email, revise the script, shoot the video, publish the post.

Relentless Resources

1. Native Women in Film & Television (NWIFT) — advocacy, mentorship, and networking entirely focused on Indigenous women and gender-diverse creatives in film.
2. Illuminative’s Storytelling Guides — free toolkits that help creators frame, protect, and elevate Indigenous narratives across industries.

Send Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!

Join the RIW Patreon Community

RIW Website

Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

In this gripping episode, Dr. Candace Manitopyes sits with award-winning journalist, author, and filmmaker Tanya Talaga, whose work has become a lifeline for truth in a country still wrestling with denial. From the moment they begin, the conversation feels less like an interview and more like two Indigenous women pulling back the curtain on generations of silence, survival, and spiritual return. 

Tanya shares her path from being the lone Indigenous journalist in mainstream newsrooms of the 1990s (where stories of Indigenous suffering were dismissed as repetitive or “not news”) to becoming one of the most vital Indigenous voices in Canada. She speaks about the spiritual rupture created by Christianity’s imposition on Treaty 9 families, the generational fear of ceremony, and what it means to finally question beliefs handed down in the name of survival. 

The conversation deepens as Tanya describes “the knowing”—the ancestral intuition that lives in Indigenous people, the sense that something is missing, the unspoken grief. She recounts sitting with survivors in Kamloops during the discovery of unmarked graves and how their words struck her like a freight train: “We always knew.” That knowing becomes the backbone of her work and the spiritual compass that guides her truth-telling. 

Candace and Tanya explore the cost of telling the truth, the courage it demands, and the liberation it creates for everyone who has been waiting to breathe. 

- 

Relentless Actions

1. Revisit one belief you inherited—not from your spirit, but from survival. Choose a belief handed down through family, school, or church about identity, ceremony, or “rightness.” Write down where it came from, and whether it still belongs to you. Release what no longer aligns.
2. Have one truth-centred conversation this week. This could be with a friend, a family member, or even your own journal. Name something you’ve been avoiding, such as a question, a discomfort, a story. Let truth, gentle or sharp, be medicine.

Relentless Reflections

1. What truths have I been carrying quietly because I was afraid of what they might disrupt, and what would it mean to finally speak them?
2. Where does “the knowing” live in my body, and how often do I silence it to fit into spaces that were never built for me?

Relentless Resources

1. The Knowing by Tanya Talaga, book

2. Debunking the “Mass Grave Hoax”: A Report on Media Coverage and Residential School Denialism in Canada, report 

Send Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!

Join the RIW Patreon Community

RIW Website

Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

Turtle Island (aka North America) meets Aotearoa (aka New Zealand), and the stories of Indigenous resistance mirror each other. 

Dr. Candace Manitopyes speaks with Māori artist Theia, whose music is less performance and more ceremony. Candace describes experiencing Theia’s live show as a moment of kinship across oceans, a palpable spiritual recognition that transcends borders and mirrors the shared wounds of colonization. 

Theia speaks about her journey from major-label constraints to full creative sovereignty, describing how leaving the industry machine allowed her to create the music she was born to make—music that confronts misogyny, racism, religious trauma, and the violent legacies of colonialism. Through her songs, she carries her grandmother’s stories, the generational scars of language loss, and the relentless fight for Māori sovereignty. 

The conversation moves into the political crisis unfolding in Aotearoa, where treaty rights, language, protests, and Māori cultural practices are under attack. Theia names both the devastation and the uprising—the collective defiance, the resurgence of language learners, artists, healers, and community protectors refusing to disappear. 

Candace and Theia speak to the alchemy of art: how music becomes medicine, how beauty can hold the darkness without collapsing, and how Indigenous women carry fire in ways the world is only beginning to understand.

IG: @theiaofficialxo  

-

Relentless Actions

1. Name one belief about your worth, your culture, your voice, or your ancestors that didn’t come from you but from colonial conditioning. Write it down. Then write the truth beneath it. Burn, shred, or bury the lie. Keep the truth visible.

2. Choose an action that requires courage (emailing a representative, donating to an Indigenous-led movement, showing up physically, correcting someone’s harmful language, or publicly naming the injustice happening in Aotearoa and on Turtle Island). Let the action stretch you.

Relentless Reflections

1. Where am I still choosing comfort over justice, and who pays the price when I stay quiet? Sit with this without defending yourself. Let it sting. Let it teach you something about the gap between the person you are and the person you’re becoming.

2. What part of me is still afraid of my own power, and who taught me to fear it in the first place? Trace that fear back (family, church, school, government, media). When you see its origin, ask yourself: What would my life look like if I stopped inheriting their limitations and started inheriting my courage instead?

Resources

Resistance in Indigenous Music: A Continuum of Sound, academic article 

A Radical Revival: Indigenous Music Strikes Chords that Cross Borders, an article 

Send Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!

Join the RIW Patreon Community

RIW Website

Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

This is the episode that will make listeners laugh, blush, heal, and rethink everything they were taught about love, shame, and who they’re allowed to become.

In this electric and tender conversation, Dr. Candace Manitopyes connects with with Dr. Tenille K. Campbell, a Dene, Métis, poet, photographer, PhD holder, auntie, and unapologetic storyteller whose work has cracked open space for Indigenous women, femmes, and queer folks to reclaim desire without shame. 

Tenille shares the raw, often hilarious journey that shaped her groundbreaking book #IndianLovePoems: on heartbreak, sex, vanilla surprises, 12-hour dates, threesome confessions, and the slow, sacred unlearning of colonial purity culture. 

Tenille and Candace trace how healing pleasure ripples outward into parenting, intergenerational cycles, and the ways daughters, nieces, and femme relatives now move through the world with softness, boundaries, and emotional fluency their Ancestors could only dream of. 

They speak about queerness as ancient, relational, and culturally rooted; something that has always existed in our stories, despite colonial attempts to suppress it. And through humour, honesty, and unmistakable auntie energy, they remind listeners that choosing self-respect is lineage work, reclamation, and love.

-

Relentless Actions

1. Take out a journal and name one belief you were taught—by family, religion, school, or society about sex, pleasure, gender, or self-worth. Then rewrite it in your own words, from your own truth. Let it become a declaration of who you are now, not who you were told to be.

2. Practice one act of softness that you were once taught to fear. This could be resting without guilt, saying no without apology, taking a sensual photograph for your own eyes, or letting someone care for you without shrinking. Choose something small but real, and signals to your nervous system that safety and pleasure are allowed.

Relentless Refections

1. What parts of my intimacy—emotional, relational, or erotic—are still shaped by someone else’s fear, and what would it mean to return those fears to their origin? 
2. Who am I becoming as I choose myself more often? When I say yes to my truth, my boundaries, my pleasure, my softness, who do I turn into? And how does that person change the lineage behind me and the future ahead of me?

Relentless Resources

1. #IndianLovePoems by Dr Tenillie Campbell, book 

2. Stolen From Our Bodies: First Nations Two-Spirits/Queers and the Journey to a Sovereign Erotic by Qwo-Li Driskill, an academic article

Send Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!

Join the RIW Patreon Community

RIW Website

Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

In this moving episode, Dr. Candace Manitopyes has a conversation with Minister Mandy Gull-Masty, the first Indigenous person to ever serve as Canada’s Minister of Indigenous Services, and a woman whose leadership was forged in lived experience, sharpened through education, and guided by a heart rooted in community. 

What unfolds is an intimate, honest, and generous exchange between two Cree women reflecting on responsibility, belonging, exhaustion, joy, and the heavy yoke carried by those who are “the first.” Minister Mandy shares how becoming a mother at a young age shaped her sense of duty, how stepping into federal politics required a profound shift in lens, and how being the first comes with loneliness, scrutiny, and an unspoken pressure to set the tone for everyone who will follow. 

She speaks with remarkable tenderness about grounding practices: beading, time on the land, a supportive husband who calls her back to rest, and children who remind her she is still just mom when she walks through the door. 

Their conversation moves into the emotional terrain most people never see: queer kin who are forced from home, the harm of exclusion, the spiritual sensitivity of young people, and the courage required to transform systems from within. It is a conversation about what it means to lead without losing yourself.

-

Relentless Actions

1. Take 10 minutes this week to unplug completely. Step outside, breathe, and let your nervous system settle without your phone nearby.
2. Reach out to one Indigenous leader, creator, or community member you admire and send them a note of gratitude for the work they do.

Relentless Reflections

1. Where in my life am I being called to lead with more grace, even when I feel unseen or overwhelmed?
2. What parts of my identity have I outgrown, and what new parts am I finally ready to claim?

Relentless Resources

1. First Nations Leadership Philosophies: A Systematic Review of Recent Academic Literature Book  

2. Restorying Indigenous Leadership, article

Send Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!

Join the RIW Patreon Community

RIW Website

Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

This episode opens like someone cracked a window in a crowded room. Fresh air, honesty, and two Indigenous minds settling into a conversation that feels intimate, necessary, and decades overdue. Dr. Candace Manitopyes connects with internationally acclaimed Cree artist Kent Monkman, whose work has reshaped how the world understands history, queerness, and Indigenous presence.

Kent speaks about the power and pain behind paintings like The Scream, describing how art becomes both meditation and medicine as he confronts the legacy of residential schools. He shares how his new Knowledge Keepers series honours the children who secretly whispered their languages to each other—moments of quiet rebellion that kept culture alive. Candace meets him in that depth, recalling how seeing The Scream during the uncovering of unmarked graves felt like a punch to the heart.

Then Miss Chief Eagle Testickle enters: Kent’s iconic, gender-fluid alter ego. Part trickster, part theorist, part seductress, she’s his weapon for reversing the colonial gaze, stepping into Western art and rewriting the story from the inside. Kent and Candace dismantle the myth that queerness is new or un-Indigenous, naming how binaries rooted in Christian colonialism buried truths communities once held with ease.

Their conversation becomes a meditation on love, liberation, kinship, and the courage it takes to be oneself in a world that benefits from your silence. By the end, listeners are reminded that art can heal, queerness is ancient, and Indigenous love will always outlast the systems built to erase it. 

-

Relentless Actions

1. Visit a local gallery, museum, or online archive featuring Indigenous artists. Spend 10 minutes observing one piece without reading the caption first, just let your body respond, then learn its context.
2. Have a short conversation with someone in your life about a topic you usually avoid, such as identity, queerness, colonial history, or truth-telling. Keep it grounded, curious, and honest.

Relentless Reflections

1. Where in my life have I confused silence with safety? And what might become possible if I allow myself to speak or live more truthfully?
2. When have I witnessed love—mine or someone else’s—expand beyond what colonial binaries said was acceptable? What did that moment teach me about freedom?

Relentless Resources 

1. Kent Monkman's website

2. The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: Vol. 1: A True and Exact Accounting of the History of Turtle Island, book 

Send Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!

Join the RIW Patreon Community

RIW Website

Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

In this episode, Candace sits with not one, but two Deadly Aunties—Stephanie Pangowish and Sherry McKay—two Indigenous comedians who have turned everyday Indigenous life, ceremony, mistakes, and cross-community confusion (“scone dog” vs. “bannock dog”) into a full career.

They talk about the realities of comedy behind the scenes: how humour travels across nations, how it sometimes absolutely doesn’t, and what happens when you try to make zoom-comedy work while staring at 48 blank squares. 

Both share how they moved from regular jobs into the comedy world, a transition that can best be described as: terrifying, necessary, and apparently involving a lot of self-talk, prayer, and occasionally wanting to vomit. They also speak candidly about sobriety while working in environments where alcohol is built into the job, and how having a friend who will literally knock a drink out of your hand is underrated support.

Underneath it all is the thread that Indigenous humour has always been survival, connection, and medicine. Not the romanticized kind, just the practical kind that gets people through another day.

The Aunties show how laughter and honesty keep communities close, and why sticking with your purpose (even when you’re unsure) is worth it.

-

Relentless Actions

1. Think of one conversation this week where you can use humour to build connection—not to avoid discomfort, but to ease into honesty the way Indigenous communities have done forever. Pay attention to what kind of humour feels natural and what kind strengthens relationships.

2. Whether it’s writing a short story, sharing an idea publicly, posting a TikTok, or attending an open mic (even just to watch), choose one low-stakes action toward a creative dream you’ve stalled on. The point isn’t perfection, but it’s building the muscle to follow that “scared-but-curious” feeling the Aunties described.

Relentless Reflections 

1. What’s one moment in my life where humour carried me through something I wasn’t ready to say out loud? Consider how laughter has acted as medicine, grounding, or connection for you, and what that reveals about the role comedy plays in your relationships or healing.

2. Where am I currently choosing safety over purpose? The Aunties left the security of 9–5 jobs to pursue something uncertain but aligned. Reflect on a place in your life where you’re avoiding a leap, and why. What would support or community look like for you there?

Relentless Resources

1. The Deadly Aunties, website

2. In a good way: Reflecting on humour in Indigenous education, academic article

Send Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!

Join the RIW Patreon Community

RIW Website

Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

In this episode, Melrene Saloy Eagle Speaker—Blackfoot designer, artist, and founder of Native Diva Creations and Authentically Indigenous—opens up about the heart, history, and hard lessons behind her work. From carrying her ancestors into global fashion stages to building one of Calgary’s most beloved Indigenous markets, Melrene shares how legacy, loss, and love continue to shape her artistry.

She reflects on navigating backlash to her Medicine Collection, describing what it means to create from dreams, protocol, and deep cultural intention. The conversation moves through community accountability vs. cancel culture, the emotional toll of public criticism, and the courage required to stay rooted in one’s purpose.

Melrene and Candace also dive into entrepreneurship: the realities of financial literacy, learning in public, accepting feedback, and building supportive relationships that make creative risk possible.

They discuss the origins of Authentically Indigenous, the importance of accessible markets for makers, and the joy of seeing 285+ Indigenous entrepreneurs thrive in a space built by community for community.

Grounded, funny, honest, and generous, Melrene’s story reminds listeners that Indigenous entrepreneurship is legacy work woven with medicine, imagination, and the refusal to leave anyone behind. 

-

Relentless Actions

1. Take one creative risk this week that you’ve been avoiding because of fear, backlash, or someone else's perception.

2. Spend 20 minutes mapping out the community you already have — mentors, peers, supporters — and choose one person to intentionally reconnect with or uplift.

Relentless Reflections

1. Where am I holding back my gifts because I’m worried about how others will react, and what would it look like to create from intention rather than fear?

2. What am I carrying that isn’t mine (someone else’s expectations, projections, or limitations) and how can I release even a small piece of it this week?

Relentless Resources

1. Authentically Indigenous, website 

2. Indigenous Business Development Services, website

Send Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!

Join the RIW Patreon Community

RIW Website

Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat