Healing the Land is Healing Ourselves
All My Relations (AMR) podcast is back for its season 2 and it was dope to sit and talk with the talented and magnetic hosts, Matika Wilbur and Adrienne Keene. In our episode, Healing The Land IS Healing Ourselves, we talked about the work being done 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 our bodies. We reminisced about the 1200+ mile journey with Nihígaal Bee Lina (Journey For Existence), discussed the various projects to continue to heal the land from the hazardous impact of extractive energy plants, and so much more. Check out the episode and read more about AMR and Matika and Adrienne as they are badasses that are involved in so many things!
All My Relations, is a podcast that explores what it means to be a Native person in 2020. To be an Indigenous person is to be engaged in relationships—relationships to land and place, to a people, to non-human relatives, and to one another. All My Relations is a place to explore those relationships, and to think through Indigeneity in all its complexities. On each episode, hosts Matika Wilbur (Tulalip and Swinomish) and Adrienne Keene (Cherokee Nation), delve into a different topic facing Native peoples today, bringing in guests from all over Indian Country to offer perspectives and stories.
All My Relations podcast came from a desire to have more Indigenous voices accessible in mainstream media while also celebrating and uplifting our communities and cultures. Matika and Adrienne want this space to be for everyone—for Native folks to laugh, to hear ourselves reflected, and give us a chance to think deeper about some of the biggest issues facing our communities, and for non-Native folks to listen and learn.
Matika (Swinomish and Tulalip) is one of the nation’s leading photographers, based in the Pacific Northwest. She earned her BFA from Brooks Institute of Photography where she double majored in Advertising and Digital Imaging. Her most recent endeavor, Project 562, has brought Matika to over 500 tribal nations dispersed throughout all 50 U.S. states where she has taken thousands of portraits, and collected hundreds of contemporary narratives from the breadth of Indian Country all in the pursuit of one goal: To Change The Way We See Native America.
As a former educator, she realized that the representation of Native peoples in media and in learning materials as a "leathered and feathered" dying peoples deeply affected the identity and perceived potential of her students. Thus began Project 562, the mission of which is to photograph and collect stories of Native Americans from each federally-recognized tribe in the United States. Through her lens, we are able to see the vibrancy and diversity of Indian Country and in seeing we challenge stereotypical representations and begin shifting consciousness about contemporary Native America.
all photos courtesy of matika wilbur
Adrienne is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and is passionate about reframing how the world sees contemporary Native cultures. She is the creator and author of Native Appropriations, a blog discussing cultural appropriation and stereotypes of Native peoples in fashion, film, music, and other forms of pop culture, and a faculty member in American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University.
Through her writing and activism, Keene questions and problematizes the ways Indigenous peoples are represented, asking for celebrities, large corporations, and designers to consider the ways they incorporate "Native" elements into their work. She is very interested in the way Native peoples are using social and new media to challenge misrepresentations and present counter-narratives that showcase true Native cultures and identities.