All My Relations Podcast

This is part two in our series For the Love of the Mauna which shares the story of Native Hawaiians’ effort to protect Mauna Kea. The first episode gave us the background and story of the beginning of the TMT fight and the cultural foundations of Mauna Kea. This segment focuses on the resistance camp at Pu’u huluhulu which was established during the summer of 2019 on the Mauna. This ended up garne...

This special three part series  is a story about land,  culture, and connections to place—it's the story to protect Mauna Kea on the Island of Hawaii. Kanaka Maoli people have been fighting to stop the construction of the thirty meter telescope (TMT) since it's inception in 2009, and in the summer of 2019 a resistance camp at Pu’u huluhulu was established on the Mauna.  Mauna Kea is the...

This episode talks with Wampanoag scholars Paula Peters and Linda Coombs, who tell us the real story of Thanksgiving, from an Indigenous Perspective. Thanksgiving is a time for people to come together with their families and give thanks for the blessings in their lives; but the American holiday is rooted in historical fallacy and upholds tired settler colonial belief systems. Instead, let's b...

Today is Indigenous Peoples' Day, and today is a good day to talk about how we can protect and uplift our communities. One way we can do that is by voting. That is a complicated suggestion for Native America, and on this episode, we discuss why.  Vote to make Indigenous voices heard. Vote because informed voting is activism. Vote for our ancestors that died for the right to do it. Vote becaus...

Join Matika and Adrienne In conversation with Jami Powell (Osage), Jaclyn Roessel (Diné) and Kristin Dorsey (Chickasaw), for the third and final episode of Indigenous Artist to Artist, Part 3: Who Decides? as we discuss the importance of indigenous people presenting, curating, and exhibiting themselves. As always, thank you to Ciara Sana for her amazing episode art, and Teo Elisio , for doing all...

We welcome you into this intimate laughy conversation with three awesome full time artists--Photographer Ryan Redorn (Osage), painter Yatika Star Fields (Cherokee, Creek and Osage) and traditional tattoo artist Holly Nordlum (Inupiaq) for this second episode of Indigenous Artist to Artist as we discuss the importance of indigenous people holding space in the art world, the difference between help...

Mid-August every year is usually when Matika and Adrienne head out to New Mexico to get #SantaFancy, visit artist friends, and partake in all of the joy of Santa Fe Indian Market--the largest Native art market in the US. Like everything, Art Market was canceled in person this year, leaving us worried about and missing our artsy relatives. So we decided to launch a mini-series on Native art and art...

Join us for a discussion with community organizer, citizen scientist, activist, water protector, entrepreneur, writer, gardener, and all around incredible Diné woman, Kim Smith. We talk with Kim about her work, aiming to understand how violence on the land is violence on our bodies, and that the inverse can also be true— healing the land is healing ourselves . Kim tells us about her 1200+ mile jou...

Join us for a discussion with Well For Culture founders Thosh Collins (WhaZhaZi, Haudenosaunee and O’otham) and Chelsea Luger (Anishinaabe & Lakota) as we discuss Whole Family Wellness. We cover an indigenous approach to prenatal, baby, postpartum, fatherhood, and a whole family approach to wellness. They study and implement lifestyle teachings of indigenous ancestors, while incorporating new...

Today we launch Season 2 of All My Relations : “Growing New Beginnings”! This episode was recorded around the new year when the world was functioning without Covid-19, and we were emerging from our off-season hibernation, reveling in new life, and trying to figure out a healthy and wellness-focused way forward. Then, things changed, and we sat on the episode for a bit. We decided to bring the conv...

This bonus episode explores the impacts of Covid-19 in tribal communities. Even though tribal nations are most at risk, Indigenous voices have been widely left out of mainstream news coverage. Nationally, health experts and tribal leaders are sounding the alarm that Native Americans are particularly vulnerable to the spread of Covid-19. During this time of crisis, it is critically important to hea...

Hundreds of years ago when colonizers instituted the idea of “blood quantum” as a means of reducing the Native population, our Native ancestors probably did not envision a modern Indigenous world of Tinder, multi-billion dollar tribal enterprises and per cap payments, or a world where who we love might determine if our children are considered Indigenous at all. Last episode we talked about Blood Q...

The foundational narrative we teach our children about Columbus is rooted in myth and falsity. Instead of teaching our real Native American history, or our real humanity, we’ve settled for American mythology. When we celebrate Columbus, we are blindly supporting indigenous erasure and perpetuating the romantic, dire, insatiable story of extinction. It’s the story that dilutes Native American genoc...

Blood quantum. The percentage of Native “blood” one possesses, the fraction listed on Certificates of Degree of Indian Blood, and a fraught concept that has its defenders and dissenters in our communities. Despite its colonial origins, many tribes still use blood quantum as a requirement for tribal enrollment, and these fictional fractions carry huge weight in the lives of Indigenous Peoples. In t...

On this episode we tackle a huge topic: the importance and power of our Indigenous languages, and the work that's being done to revitalize and promote Native languages. It was too much to fit in with just one guest, so we collected stories from throughout Indian Country, talking to Thelma Whiskers from Southern Ute, Harry Oosahwee from Cherokee Nation, Henrietta Mann from Cheyenne Nation, Amb...

All My Relations talks story with two of our favorite fashionable friends: artist extraordinaire Jamie Okuma (Lisueño and Shoshone Bannock) and scholar/fashion entrepreneur Dr. Jessica Metcalfe (Turtle Mountain Chippewa). Listen in as we venture into their journeys through the Native fashion world and what it means to them to represent for their communities through fashion and design. Jessica ofte...

Bonus Episode: Sacred is Sacred!  + In light of recent tragedy at Notre Dame, Adrienne and Matika discuss the indigenous response from our communities from a social justice perspective, while also considering our humanity.  + This is our first “bonus episode”! We thought that it might be powerful to interject indigenous perspective into the national dialogue. What do you think?  Text us your thoug...

In this episode, All My Relations explores the topic of cultural appropriation—it’s become such a buzzword, but what is it, really? Adrienne and Matika care deeply about Native representation, and talk constantly about this subject. Here, you'll have the opportunity to listen into that conversation, as we reveal our feelings about the infamous white savior photographer Edward S. Curtis, Hallo...

We join forces with two amazing Indigenous writers and scholars who are making waves in the literary scene with their poetry, prose, and fiction. They weave words and worlds to help us see and understand queer indigenous identities and bodies, the ways that settler colonialism has disrupted and distorted our relationships, and the power of asserting voice in spaces not meant for us. We discuss the...

Join us for a second discussion with Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Dr. Kim Tallbear on All My Relations. We'll explore Kim's “life project” of critical polyamory, her journey through feminism, her processes of writing in, with, and for community, and Kim treats us with some of her poetry, the “Critical polyamorist 100s”. AMR so far has explored our relationships between community, land, food,...

Can a DNA test make me Native American? As direct-to-consumer ancestry DNA tests gain popularity and narratives of “discovering” or “proving” Native American ancestry through DNA swirl through the media—what does that mean for Indigenous nations?  On this episode we talk with the amazing, badass, super cool Dr. Kim Tallbear (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate), who literally wrote the book on Native American...

Are you truly sovereign if you can’t feed yourselves? Today we delve into a topic we can all relate to! We all got to eat! But how are we eating, or better, WHAT are we eating?  And how has colonization disrupted our relationship with our traditional foods?  That is why today’s discussion on food sovereignty is so important because we all know that colonialism destroyed our food systems, sometimes...

In 2018 there are still over 2000 schools and professional sports teams with Native mascots, despite decades of activism and academic research demonstrating the harms of these images. Today Matika and Adrienne are in conversation with Amanda Blackhorse, Navajo social worker and mother, who was the lead plaintiff in the supreme court case against the Washington Redsk*ns, and Stephanie Fryberg, who...

Matika and Adrienne discuss their “origin” stories as Indigenous women, bloggers, and storytellers— revealing the intimacies of their friendship, the inception and goals of the All My Relations Podcast, and their relationships to feminism. Text us your thoughts! Support the show Follow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon .  Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrela...