How do we stay sane in a society that is sick? How do we work in a world that doesn't work?

This practice will accompany you while you create your own box of 'tools' to stay well. You will finish with a 'toolkit' or 'toolbox' of some sort, but it will look and be completely unique to you.

What brings you life? What encourages you? What are the things deaden you?

In this first episode, Sustenance Radio host Bridget Holtom shares a 30 minute practice which helps you to see what sustains or drains your energy. This practice helps to identify activities, things, people, places, practices that can help us find balance between giving on the one hand and receiving or letting in on the other.

Some of us will be working harder than others to re-fill our stores of energy due to structural inequalities and differences in society. While we can never fully avoid the things that drain us, we can all become aware of and either move away from things that drain our energy or towards things that bring us closer to a more deeply nourishing feeling of fullness, of sustenance.

In this interview, Priya Huffman and Sustenance Radio host, Bridget Holtom, explore the work of the eco-poets and their place in walking the line between hope and despair. Eco-poetry is the name given to a genre of poetry that speaks to /and of / our relationship to the natural world. In a period when she was feeling the weight of what difficulties children may face in the years to come, Priya asked her son if he was scared for the future. He replied: “the only ones who are scared are the ones not working to make it better, we don’t have time to be scared”.

But, we are scared, confused, sad, grieving. Social injustice, division and oppression and environmental desecration is felt through our eyes, heart and can be channeled through our pen. Writing poetry can give words to the discomfort of our times, to the grief of loss, the confusion of climate change and more joyfully, to the deep love of wilderness, within and without.

The music threaded throughout is Wild Beautiful Animals 'The Ballad of Ghosts'

For an activity to accompany this audio episode, please visit https://www.sustenanceradio.com/episode-06-remembering-our-place-in-the-family-of-things-with-eco-poet-priya-huffman/ 

"Reclaim the culture that is rightfully yours. Use the language you have inherited. Our mission is to empower people to take action. "

Join Sustenance Radio host Bridget Holtom in a conversation with Janet Marie Rogers about what it means to find your voice and speak truth to power. How can poetry be a source of energy as well an outlet for self-expression? Janet argues that creativity changes the conversation and that artistic expression may be the only truly sustaining avenue for people to challenge historic colonisation and ongoing oppression for Indigenous peoples in so-called British Colombia.

Janet Marie Rogers is the Poet Laureate of Victoria, B.C. Janet is a Mohawk/Tuscarora writer from the Six Nations band in southern Ontario. Janet works in the genres of poetry, short fiction, science fiction, play writing, spoken-word performance poetry, video poetry and recorded poems with music. Janet's book Unearthed is a groundbreaking collection that shatters the silence about the Native traditional territory beneath your feet. You can listen to and support their work here.

In her book, The Big Swim, Carrie Saxifrage shares 12 ideas and actions that sustain her, while she works to sustain the world we live in. She circles around big questions of how species might survive the sixth extinction, or avert catastrophic climate change. She shares how swimming is something that sustains her, while she attempts to stay with the suffering of the current situation, in order to face the harsh reality, to feel the urgency with sinking into despair, in order to act, again and again. In our interview on Cortes Island, BC, Canada, she reflects on the privilege of "finding a place to dig in and start taking responsibility". In her 'Swim for the Lakes', she literally swam with and for the sacred waters of the island to raise money to sustain them for generations to come.

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean" Arthur C. Clarke

The oceans sustains us in so many invisible ways, how do we save and sustain the sea in return? The loss of keystone species such as salmon will impact our coast and more-than-human communities in ways in which we can not imagine yet. Salmon sustain bear, wolf, whale and seal as well as feeding the forest floor as they are dropped from the sky by eagle and become the nitrogen rich soil that make the temperate rainforest trees grow so tall.

Join Sustenance Radio host Bridget Holtom for an interview with Rama DelaRosa about sex, swimming and singing as sources of strength. We often admire strength in other people, but does resilience come from surviving the tough stuff? Rama DelaRosa is an inspiration, a force to be reckoned with. She says: “don’t pray for strength…life’ll give you shit to deal with”. A surviver of sexual trauma, Rama swum an awe-inspiring 86km long-distance swim around Salt Spring Island in the summer of 2017. She talks about how the water soothed her and the sea welcomed her anger, transforming frustration at the state of the world into empowering and meaningful action. She swam for the salmon. She swam for the 78 resident orca who swim in the Salish Sea. She swam to raise money for Indigenous legal challenges to the Kinder Morgan pipeline in the Pull Together campaign as the Tsleil Wautuh, Coldwater, and Squamish First Nations who went to court in October 2017. She completed her goal of raising CA$14,034 but you can continue to donate to the cause here. You can also show support by taking time to educate yourself about the impact of the BC pipelines on the BC coastline here.

The final song that plays in this episode is "They said "no" they said it in your language!" sung by The Sisters of Mercy.

The Sisters of Mercy stand in solidarity with the Musgamagw Dzawada'enuxw Nation who have stood in opposition to fish farms in their territory for nearly 30 years. Since time immemorial they have protected their salmon and herring for future generations. Their people have spoken. Fish farms must be removed from their territories.

In your Language written by Betty Supple

The song at the start of the podcast is from Leah Ambramson's album Songs For A Lost Pod. The album, described as "song cycle that combines scientific research, orca vocalizations, and marine mammal history." Leah's music looks at the similarities between human and orca communication and intergenerational trauma. For an interview with Leah, please visit our friends at Big Bright Dark, a podcast about the fears that haunt us and the possibilities that rise before us in this time of great human and planetary uncertainty.

Emily Doyle-Yamaguchi and Sustenance Host Bridget Holtom talk about what it means to them to take part in a movement for change, to stand together in solidarity.  They navigate with honesty some messy but necessary questions about privilege, accountability and equity in community. We are all entangled in the struggle for reconciliation and repatriation, we are all part of the shared history of colonisation and oppression.

As the festival organisers partner once again with Quw’utsun elders and traditional leaders to host Koksilah 2019, this compilation shares some of the highlights from Koksilah 2017. 2017 marked Canada’s 150th but also more than 500 years of Indigenous resistance to colonial exploitation and assimilation on turtle island. 

Koksilah Music Festival takes place in the unceded territories of the Quw’utsun People at Tuwe’nu (Providence Farm), at the base of Pi’Paam’ (Mt. Tzouhalem) in what is commonly known as Cowichan Bay, or Tl’upalus in Hul’qumi’num. Koksilah's intention is to highlight the perspectives of Indigenous musicians, artists, activists and knowledge keepers.

Get tickets to this year's festival September 6-8 2019.

All festival proceeds are donated to grassroots initiatives led by Indigenous people asserting sovereignty over their ancestral territories. These groups are working tirelessly to re-occupy and protect their traditional lands and waters, revitalize their cultural practices, and reconnect people with the land.

When are we surviving and when are we thriving? What positions of privilege in society enable some people to take a break while others shoulder the burden of struggle and survival?

The horrific history of residential schooling, genocide and cultural repression of First Nations People in so-called Canada has impacts that reverberate and continue to re-traumatise people today. What might reconciliation look like? How can people support cultural resurgence?

Thank you to Meeka Noelle Morgan for her courageous conversation about how trauma and oppression can become a source of unending energy and how witnessing and listening to one another can help heal the wounds within families and between communities to work towards reconciliation and peace.

Meeka is involved in several musical collaborations as well as her ongoing education and storytelling workshops related to her Masters thesis: Making Connections With Secwepemc Family Through Storytelling: A Journey in Transformative Rebuilding that you can read by visiting http://cicac.tru.ca/readings/meeka-morgan.pdf

JUST is Indigenous Grassroots Woman Punk Collaboration between Secwepemc-Nuu-Chah-Nulth and Dakelh Warrior Sisters. Building consciousness and reflecting reality of their peoples experience, coming from generations of strength, dispossession, trauma, to healing and medicine.

The Melawmen Collective was created to transform and rebuild relationships between Aboriginal People and others through music, story, art and collaboration. Through their workshops and performances, reflections and experiences of these representations and perspectives shared will result in creating new collaborative works about the process of how exploring ways to tell our collective aboriginal stories become a way of creating new ones. You can listen to their music and support their work by visiting https://soundcloud.com/user7476886.

We have so many heartbeats, but we only have so many. How do you spend yours? How can you wake up to the possibility of what you can do to make your life speak. Listen to the rhythm of your life and use your feet to dance to the drum beat.

Join Sustenance Radio host Bridget Holtom for a conversation with Travis and Craig from Mob Bounce about solidarity, music as medicine and the power of transformation and social change.

Mob Bounce is a Hip Hop duo from Northwest Turtle Island, Canada. Their musicianship is half-Travis Adrian Hebert, half-Craig Frank Edes and half-a-whole-lot-more-than-you-can-imagine. Mob Bounce is Indigenous influenced music and poetry, spoken and sung with conviction. They fuse Electronic Dance Music with Traditional and Contemporary soundscapes and free toning/chanting. Craig is Gitxsan and Travis is Cree/Metis and they have been making music as medicine since 2004. Both Travis and Craig's lyricism delve into spirituality, social justice and Mother Earth connection. Their words may make you cry or question why you are here or have you contemplating what action you might take to stand in solidarity. Mob Bounce will make you dance.

https://soundcloud.com/mob-bounce

http://koksilahfestival.com/performers/

[email protected]

Get tickets to this year’s festival September 6-8 2019.

All festival proceeds are donated to grassroots initiatives led by Indigenous people asserting sovereignty over their ancestral territories. These groups are working tirelessly to re-occupy and protect their traditional lands and waters, revitalize their cultural practices, and reconnect people with the land.

“This is all we’ve got, its a beautiful planet we live on…from the waters of Cowichan Bay and all the way to the rivers of the Koksilah and Cowichan Rivers, that is truly a powerful, powerful medicine within itself”.

The opening words of this special episode are those spoken in the opening ceremony by Tousilum, a Quw’utsun elder who greeted those gathered for the very first Koksilah Festival. Koksilah festival is reconciliation in action. The festival is organised in recognition and celebration of the sovereignty of Indigenous Nations in the unceded territories of British Colombia, Canada. As the festival organisers partner once again with Quw’utsun elders and traditional leaders to host Koksilah 2019, this compilation shares some of the highlights from Koksilah 2017.

Part 1:

La kwala ogwa, Emma Joye Frank, was born on the K'ómoks First Nation Reserve in 1994, in what is now known as the Comox Valley, Vancouver Island, Canada. She spent her childhood being raised in Port Alberni, disconnected from her culture. Just before high school, Emma moved with her family to Victoria. After graduation, she was invited to the Tribal Canoe Journey to Bella Bella in 2014. This experience was pivotal in reconnecting Emma to her culture.  Since then, she has pursued filmmaking as a way to express her perspectives as an indigenous person. During a Youth Media Project at the Comox Valley Art Gallery Emma created Hase'- Breath of Life. She also made this doc to educate folks about the K'ómoks Estuary: Project Watershed and at Reel Youth Invention Film Camp she created: Beachwalker with original music/vocals & performance! Emma recently moved to Vancouver to explore her creativity as an artist: musician, performer, filmmaker, facilitator. You can follow her work here.

Koksilah Music Festival takes place in the unceded territories of the Quw’utsun People at Tuwe’nu (Providence Farm), at the base of Pi’Paam’ (Mt. Tzouhalem) in what is commonly known as Cowichan Bay, or Tl’upalus in Hul’qumi’num.

Get tickets to this year’s festival September 6-8 2019.

All festival proceeds are donated to grassroots initiatives led by Indigenous people asserting sovereignty over their ancestral territories. These groups are working tirelessly to re-occupy and protect their traditional lands and waters, revitalize their cultural practices, and reconnect people with the land.