All My Relations Podcast

Do you know the true narratives that shape the people, animals and lands of the Coast Salish People?This episode of All My Relations explores Lushootseed creation histories as living knowledge. These stories anchor us in the past, guide us through the present, and prepare us for an uncertain future.Host Matika Wilbur (Swinomish & Tulalip) leads the conversation through the origin story of the new exhibition, Coast Salish Creation Stories, opening at Tidelands, and shares why this moment calls all of us to learn from Indigenous knowledge and come experience the show.As elders teach, “make yourself still and engage your five teachers.” With that invitation, we sit with Puyallup Tribal Language Director Amber Hayward (Puyallup and Salish) and Tidelands Assistant Curator Ashley Frantz (Makah). Amber traces how colonizers recorded Lushootseed creation histories in English, often stripping them of meaning, and how today’s language revitalization movement restores their depth, power, and accuracy. Through her teachings, we learn why these stories matter, how to listen in a good way, and what it sounds like when creation history lives in Lushootseed itself.Ashley joins the conversation to share how artists and language keepers co-created the exhibition with the Puyallup Language Department and eight other Tribal Lushootseed language departments (and Lummi), bringing creation histories into visual form through contemporary Indigenous art.The exhibition opens February 7th at 6 PM. All are welcome to the opening reception and to experience the show through July 2026. Tidelands Gallery welcomes visitors Wednesday through Sunday, 11 AM–5 PM, with full step-free access throughout the space.We can’t wait to see you, relatives.++++ResourcesCreation Stories Exhibition Opening Reception: https://www.thisistidelands.com/event-details/creation-stories-exhibition-opening-receptionThe Puyallup Language Programhttps://www.puyalluptriballanguage.org/ptlp/ +++Credits:A/V Production by Francisco “Pancho” SánchezMusic by Mato WayuhiProduced by Matika WilburEpisode Artwork by Katana SolText us your thoughts!Support the showFollow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon. Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now! T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.

What does it mean to survive—and who carries the story afterward?When writer and filmmaker Julian Brave NoiseCat talks about survival, he does not begin with abstraction. He begins with a story. On this episode of All My Relations, Julian joins us to discuss his new book, We Survived the Night, a father–son narrative shaped in the tradition of a Coyote story—layered, funny, painful, and exacting in its truths.The book traces Julian’s relationship with his father through ancestral structure rather than Western memoir form. Coyote appears not as metaphor but as guide: a trickster forefather who teaches through contradiction, humor, and refusal. Julian describes dark Indigenous humor as a survival strategy honed over generations and carried forward through oral tradition.Throughout the conversation, Julian challenges the language often used to contain Indigenous knowledge. These stories are not myths or folklore. They live and change, told differently depending on who listens, who tells them, and what the moment requires. Multiple truths coexist within them, held in relationship rather than resolved into a single meaning. Indigenous languages, Julian explains, do more than preserve these teachings—they shape how knowledge moves through the world.That insistence on truth also shapes Julian’s filmmaking. The episode turns to Sugarcane, his award-winning documentary co-directed with Emily Kassie, which investigates the legacy of St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School. The film refuses easy closure, instead asking what responsibility looks like after harm, and how survivors and descendants carry grief alongside love.Across writing and film, Julian returns to the same question: how Indigenous people endure without flattening pain into spectacle. Basket Lady and Coyote emerge not as figures of the past but as living teachers—offering guidance for a present still shaped by trickster energy, rupture, and repair.These stories survived attempted erasure.They survived the night.May the stories of Basket Lady and Coyote live on.++++Resources:Purchase We Survived the Night today:https://shoptidelands.com/products/books-rooted-in-fire-copy?_pos=1&_psq=We+Survived+the+Night&_ss=e&_v=1.0 Watch Sugarcane on Disney+ and HuluNational Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition:https://boardingschoolhealing.org/Tribal Boarding School Toolkit for Healing:https://acf.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ana/NPAIHB_Thrive_BoardinSchoolToolkit.pdfText us your thoughts!Support the showFollow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon. Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now! T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.

What happens when food becomes a blueprint for liberation? On this episode of All My Relations, we’re joined by Chef Sean Sherman (Oglala Lakota) and journalist/co-author Kate Nelson (Tlingit) to talk about Turtle Island—a cookbook, a history lesson, and a future-facing manifesto for Indigenous food sovereignty. We get into what it means to remove colonial borders (and colonial ingredients), why Indigenous foodways are global and relational, and how Sean’s nonprofit model is moving real resources back into Indigenous communities—from Native producers to Native jobs. Along the way: moose stew, fir tips, colonized palates, seed keepers, Buffalo Bird Woman’s garden, and a clear-eyed conversation about ICE, labor, and who actually feeds this country. Food is the entry point—but sovereignty is the goal. Just change everything. Feed your people.++++ResourcesPurchase Turtle Island Today:  https://shoptidelands.com/products/books-whereas-copy?variant=47505083924728 To learn about Sean’s work and North American Traditional Food Systemshttps://natifs.org/ https://seansherman.com/  Kate’s Work: https://www.kateanelson.com/ Esquire Article: https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/restaurants/a36474711/chef-sean-sherman-owamni-indigenous-minneapolis-restaurant-profile/ Text us your thoughts!Support the showFollow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon. Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now! T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.

As SNAP benefits face new political threats, millions of families are being pushed deeper into food insecurity—including many of our Native relatives whose communities already navigate the long-term impacts of colonization on food systems.In this special All My Relations + Old Growth Table podcast collaboration, Matika Wilbur and Temryss Lane sit down with Valerie Segrest (Muckleshoot), a leading Indigenous food systems expert and advocate, to unpack what these proposed cuts mean for Native nations and why food sovereignty is central to our collective survival.Together, they explore how federal policy shapes daily access to food, the ongoing fight to restore Indigenous foodways, and what it means to nourish our people when systems fail us.This episode also features on-the-ground field reports from Gray Fox Farm, Suquamish Seafoods, the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA), and professional forager Chai Tobar-Dupres (Cowlitz), offering a rich, real-time look at the work happening across our communities to reclaim sustenance, land, and autonomy.This is a conversation about power, policy, kinship, and the future of how we feed one another.Resources/places to donate:www.unkitawa.orgwww.chiefseattleclub.orgwww.feed7generations.orgBusinesses featured in the episode:suquamishseafoods.comwww.grayfoxfarmwa.comnayapdx.orgcowlitzforager++++Credits:Film Production by Francisco “Pancho” SánchezPA Mandy YeahpauEdited by Francisco “Pancho” SánchezProduced by Matika WilburCo/hosted by Temryss LaneSocial Media by Katharina Mei-Fa BrinschwitzText us your thoughts!Support the showFollow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon. Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now! T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.

In this nourishing conversation, Matika and Temryss sit down with Pyet DeSpain (Prairie Band Potawatomi and Mexican), chef, entrepreneur, storyteller, and the first-ever winner of Gordon Ramsay’s Next Level Chef. Fresh from finishing her debut cookbook, Rooted in Fire: A Celebration of Native American and Mexican Cooking, Pyet shares the streams that brought her to this monumental point in her career and together we explore the meaning of being rooted in fire: cooking with passion, with purpose, with seasonality, and with reverence for the land that feeds us. Pyet reminds us that food is never just food — it is ceremony, resistance, community care, and lineage. It is how we remember who we are. With tenderness, she shares the deep spiritual work of reclaiming identity; the moments of grief and illumination that came with saying no to extractive opportunities; and the healing that arrives when we follow the recipes our grandmothers left for us in stories, memories, and the land itself.TW: This episode includes discussion of suicide. Please take care while listening.Filled with laughter, truth, plant medicine teachings, and the joy of returning to one’s roots, this conversation is for anyone longing to reconnect — to culture, to the land, to purpose, or to the fire within. So pull up a chair, relatives. This episode is fragrant with memory, alive with story, and served with the kind of warmth that lingers long after the last bite.++++Credits:A/V Production by Francisco “Pancho” SánchezEdited by Mandy Yeahpau and Francisco “Pancho” SánchezProduced by Matika WilburCo/hosted by Temryss LaneSocial Media by Katharina Mei-Fa BrinschwitzText us your thoughts!Support the showFollow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon. Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now! T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.

This week, we’re getting a little wild — in the best, most relational way. Temryss and Matika sit down with scholar and environmental educator Hailey Maria Salazar, (Yoeme) for a playful, grounded, and deeply expanding conversation on eco-erotics: the sensual, intimate, curious ways we relate to land, water, plants, animals, wind, and all our more-than-human relatives.Building from last week’s convo with Dr. Melissa Nelson, we explore how Indigenous stories, teachings, and everyday practices hold erotic knowledge — not in the Western shame-laden sense, but as connection, aliveness, risk, pleasure, and belonging. From berry-picking teachings, sensual winds, and yes… the infamous earthworm story… we open up what it means to feel deeply with the world around us.This episode is fun, lighthearted, and full of laughter — but also a reminder that joy, intimacy, and pleasure are vital forms of resistance, especially in heavy political times. So take this moment with us to breathe, giggle, blush a little, and remember what it feels like to be connected.Settle in, relatives. The world of eco-erotics awaits.Text us your thoughts!Support the showFollow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon. Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now! T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.

Melissa K. Nelson is an Anishinaabe, Cree, Métis, and Norwegian ecologist and professor focused on Indigenous sustainability. In this engaging discussion, she unpacks the concept of eco-eroticism, asserting our connection with the more-than-human world. Melissa shares stories that celebrate intimacy with nature, highlighting how plants and animals hold critical knowledge. She critiques colonial tourism, championing Indigenous stewardship and ancestral intelligence as pathways to healing. With humor and insight, she encourages a playful re-engagement with the land.

We’re closing out this season of All My Relations with something new and something we’re deeply proud of: the launch of our Author Talk series — the first step in the All My Relations + NDN Girls Book Club.In this debut Author Talk, Matika and Temryss sit down with poet and memoirist Sasha LaPointe (Upper Skagit, Nooksack), whose work explores trauma, healing, punk rock, and the power of ancestral memory. Together, they dive into Sasha’s acclaimed books Red Paint and Thunder Song, weaving in stories of lineage, belonging, and the courage it takes to write the things we’re told not to say.This tender conversation is an intimate exploration of Sasha’s life as an author, where we deep dive into storytelling as a form of Indigenous resistance and remembrance, and the challenges of writing through trauma with clarity and care. Sasha reflects on what it means to be a prolific Indigenous woman author and, reveals the hidden histories beneath the tulip fields of the Skagit Valley, and shares how the stories of her ancestors—and sea maidens—still live in her writing and spirit.This episode is not only the season finale—this episode is big medicine, and it’s also an invitation. We hope you’ll read along with us, join our hybrid book discussions, and help us build a community that supports Indigenous authors. Sign up for the All My Relations Book Club at allmyrelationspodcast.com/book-club to get invites, books,  background materials, and access to our live events.Resources: – Support Sasha’s books: Red Paint, Rose Quartz, and Thunder Song– Join the Book Club: allmyrelationspodcast.com/book-club – Support us on Patreon to watch the full video version of this Author Talk– Learn more about NDN Girls Book Club and the good work they’re doing to support Native authors and youthLove this episode? Text the link to a friend or tell your auntie.Text us your thoughts!Support the showFollow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon. Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now! T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.

What does it mean to say that rape is not a crime of passion, but a tool of conquest? In this searing episode, Matika sits down with Chief Justice Sarah Deer—legal scholar, citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and longtime advocate for Native women—to break down the root causes of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People (MMIWP) crisis. Together, they trace the systemic failures—from jurisdictional loopholes and underfunded Tribal justice systems to harmful stereotypes and state indifference—that enable violence against Native people to persist across generations.Sarah shares insights from decades of research, courtroom advocacy, and lived experience. She explains why the word “rape” still matters, how U.S. law continues to reflect colonial patriarchy, and what tribal sovereignty has to do with personal safety. With clarity and care, she connects the dots between land theft, gender-based violence, and narrative erasure—and offers a vision for Indigenous feminist legal theory that centers survivor agency and collective healing.This is a vital episode for anyone who wants to understand the roots of violence and the pathways to justice in Indian Country.Learn more about Sarah Deer’s work at sarahdeer.com.Educational Reading & Reports• Sarah Deer’s The Beginning and End of Rape is essential reading on how U.S. law enables violence against Native women—and how we can reclaim justice through sovereignty and Indigenous feminist legal theory. Purchase the book here.• Broken Promises: Continuing Federal Funding Shortfall for Native Americans is a 2018 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights detailing chronic underfunding of Native programs. Read it here.• Justice Denied: The Reality of the Tribal Law and Order Act by Amnesty International explores how systemic legal gaps harm Native women. View the report.Advocacy & Action•The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center offers toolkits, trainings, and support for survivors and advocates working to end violence against Native women.•The Sovereign Bodies Institute collects data and honors MMIW2S cases, centering Indigenous-led research and action.•MMIW USA provides direct services and support for families of the missing and murdered, offering healing and justice-centered care.•The Urban Indian Health Institute provides data, reports, and resources on urban Native health disparities, including MMIWP-specific studies.++++Text us your thoughts!Support the showFollow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon. Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now! T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.

We are so proud to introduce our newest collaboration: The Old Growth Table, a brand new podcast hosted by Valerie Segrest (Muckleshoot), launching from our home at Tidelands Studio in downtown Seattle. It’s something we’ve been manifesting for years and it’s finally here! In this very special episode, we invite you into the first season of The Old Growth Table by airing its premiere episode right here on All My Relations.Valerie Segrest, Native nutritionist and food advocate, invites us in with teachings about springtime, a season of awakening, when the first wild foods emerge after months of winter stillness. She introduces us to two early spring greens—nettles and dandelions—and shows us how they offer more than nutrition. These are ancestral foods that carry teachings, stories, and ceremony.With humor, honesty, and deep care, we talk about what it means to rekindle relationships with these foods, especially when those relationships have been disrupted or shrouded in shame. Valerie reminds us that food is not just about nutrients— they offer us wisdom, remembering, and healing.Valerie also welcomes two powerful voices in Indigenous food sovereignty—Mariah Gladstone of Indigikitchen and Sean Sherman, author of The Sioux Chef—who join the conversation to reflect on what it means to say: Our food is our medicine.So come join us. Let’s listen, gather, and nourish. 🌿This is The Old Growth Table. And this is just the beginning.Please support the work of our amazing guests:Mariah Gladstone – Founder of Indigikitchen on at www.indigikitchen.com/  and on Instagram at @indigikitchenSean Sherman – Chef, author of The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen, at https://seansherman.com/  and on Instagram at @siouxchefHelp us grow The Old Growth Table by subscribing, rating, and sharing:🔗 oldgrowthtable.com🎧 Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts📲 Follow us on Instagram: @oldgrowthtable💌 Share with your community — and let us know how you’re (re)connecting to ancestral foodsText us your thoughts!Support the showFollow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon. Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now! T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.