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.

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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 Hulu

National 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.pdf

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Support the show

Follow 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.

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Resources

Purchase Turtle Island Today: https://shoptidelands.com/products/books-whereas-copy?variant=47505083924728

To learn about Sean’s work and North American Traditional Food Systems

https://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/

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Support the show

Follow 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.org

www.chiefseattleclub.org

www.feed7generations.org

Businesses featured in the episode:

suquamishseafoods.com

www.grayfoxfarmwa.com

nayapdx.org

cowlitzforager

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Credits:

Film Production by Francisco “Pancho” Sánchez

PA Mandy Yeahpau

Edited by Francisco “Pancho” Sánchez

Produced by Matika Wilbur

Co/hosted by Temryss Lane

Social Media by Katharina Mei-Fa Brinschwitz

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Support the show

Follow 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.

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.

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Credits:

A/V Production by Francisco “Pancho” Sánchez

Edited by Mandy Yeahpau and Francisco “Pancho” Sánchez

Produced by Matika Wilbur

Co/hosted by Temryss Lane

Social Media by Katharina Mei-Fa Brinschwitz

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, 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.

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Support the show

Follow 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.

Have you ever had a relationship with an inanimate object? Or been stirred by the scent of the forest or sound of birds? Are you practicing eco-eroticism and you don’t even know it?

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Melissa K. Nelson, Turtle Mountain Chippewa ecologist, scholar, and author of Getting Dirty: The Eco-Eroticism of Women in Indigenous Oral Literatures.

Together, we explore ecoerotics—a way of understanding and connecting with the world as kin, not as resource. With laughter and stories, this conversation brings forth Ancestral Intelligence (the true A.I.)–that reminds us of the power of our sensuality and intimacy with the world. There’s sacred activism brimming between skin and soil, driftwood and hand, breath and water.

What awakens when we let ourselves get dirty—when we surrender ourselves and feel deeply with the land? Melissa reminds us that Indigenous remembering and sacred stories of our relationships with plant and animal kin aren’t just myths—they’re real relationships. Living, breathing, co-mingling connections filled with the depth and meaning that we imagine as an antidote to settler colonialism.

Eco-eroticism is a doorway to our bodies and space. So get curious; it’s time to reenter kinship with all our relations.

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, 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’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 youth

Love this episode? Text the link to a friend or tell your auntie.

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, 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.

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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, 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.