We are the original storytellers.
We are the original storytellers.
Vol. 18 - Podcasts for MMIWG2S+ Awareness Day, Riley Yesno, Michelle Robinson, and lots of pod news and resources.
Hihi!! Happy Pod the North Tuesday! 120 days until Nova Scotia!
In this issue:
Podcasts to learn more about MMIWG2S+.
Riley Yesno says Indigenous success in a medium of oral storytelling feels very right.
How CBC treats its temporary workers.
Kijiji’s AI-generated podcast.
How well is your podcast really doing?
ICYMI: There are still 32 long-term drinking water advisories in effect in 28 First Nations communities across Canada.
May 5th is Red Dress Day.
If you found yourself walking around Winnipeg in 2011, you might remember seeing hundreds of red dresses hanging from trees across the Universy of Winnipeg Campus. Each dress represented a missing and murdered Indigenous woman, girl and two spirit person in Canada.
Soon, Métis artist, Jaime Black’s REDress installation would garner national attention, and receive hundreds more donated dressed from across the country.
Despite years of calls to action by Indigenous communities, (many surrounding the Highway of Tears — the 725-kilometre corridor of Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, British Columbia), it was only in 2015 that over $53 million was pledged by the Canadian federal government to a National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in order to find out more about the crisis and why it existed in the first place.
MMIWG2S is an ongoing human rights crisis in Canada, and there is still a lot to learn. There are a lot of unanswered questions still, and broken families that deserve reparations.
Inspired by Jaime’s installation, Red Dress Day — or the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and Two-Spirit People — is just 3 days away, so I wanted to take today’s issue to highlight some important resources from the podcasting world to add to your queue.
Below you’ll find must-listen podcasts in support of MMIWG2S+ awareness, hear from some incredible Indigenous women in podcasting, and find resources to check out this week. Don’t forget to share them with a friend!
There is a support line for those affected by MMIWG2S+. For immediate emotional assistance, you can call 1-844-413-6649.
Learn more about MMIWG2S+ from these podcasts:
1. Missing and Murdered: Finding Cleo
Taken by child welfare workers in the 1970’s and adopted in the U.S., the young Cree girl’s family believes she was raped and murdered while hitchhiking back home to Saskatchewan. Connie Walker joins the search to find out what really happened to Cleo.
2. Unrooted Podcast: The Crisis of MMIWG: Don’t stay silent.
Co-hosts Meera and Sena along with guest host, Jordan Marie Daniel, talk about the crisis of MMIWG, as well as Jordan's inspirational journey of how she decided to advocate for MMIWG rights through her passion for running, and what inspired her to do so.
3. Warrior Life: Marion Buller on Urgent Need to Address Genocide in Canada
Pam Palmater chats with The Honourable Marion Buller, the former Chief Commissioner of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada.
The National Inquiry considered oral and written testimony and evidence, and reviewed tons of research and submissions before concluding that these grave human rights violations against Indigenous women and girls amounts to genocide – both historic and ongoing.
4. Unreserved: Tackling the Crisis of MMIWG2S+
Winnipeg’s North Point Douglas Women’s Resource Centre is the home of the Mama Bear Clan. The volunteer patrol walks three times a week in this neighbourhood, the poorest in Winnipeg and where many of the city’s most vulnerable have few places to get warm and even fewer places to get food. Walkers like Gina Smoke, Mitch Bourbonnaire and Morgan Fontaine hand out food, winter gear and plenty of love while searching for the missing.
5. Signal for Help: Brandi: A personal mission to report on MMIWG
Listen. Stay open without judgment or advice. Focus on what they need.
These are just a few ways we can better support survivors, as we learn this week from Brandi Morin, a Cree/Iroquois/French award-winning journalist and bestselling author from Treaty 6 territory in Alberta.
Brandi speaks from first-hand experience as a survivor of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) crisis. Today, she specializes in sharing Indigenous stories, including her own in her memoir, Our Voice of Fire: A Memoir of a Warrior Rising.
6. All My Relations: Protect Indigenous Women
Since the onset of colonization Indigenous women have experienced violence with reckless abandon, today it is a public health emergency. The issue is systemic and this episode discusses how we must hold systems and people accountable with Mary Kathryn Nagle and Abigail Echohawk.
Mary Kathryn Nagle (Cherokee) is a playwright and lawyer with Pipestem Law, a firm dedicated to legal advocacy for the safety of Native women and tribal sovereignty. She represents families of victims and has testified before Congress for the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Abigail Echohawk (Pawnee) is Director of the Urban Indian Health Institute. Her organization conducted a seminal report on the crisis to better understand the prevalence of the crisis which has harmed our relations for 500 years.
Thoughts from the ecosystem:
Riley Yesno says Indigenous success in a medium of oral storytelling feels very right.
Riley Yesno | (she/her)
Host of REDsurgence with Riley Yesno
I am an academic by formal training, but I have also been a commentator and a public speaker since I was about 16— in my experience, it is almost always speaking with and to people that lead to transformative changes and inner shifts in people.
Podcasting allows me to bridge my specialized knowledge and interests, honed through that academic training, with that oral medium. As such, I find podcasting excellently speaks to activist sensibilities and makes ideas accessible to people who are excluded from spaces like the academy.
I think there needs to be support for Indigenous people talking about things other than 'Indigenous issues' geared towards the education of a non-Indigenous audience. While there is certainly a need for that, there seems to be less celebration or empowerment for Indigenous comedy, horror, pop culture, media analysis etc. It is verrrry education-heavy right now, and I think that speaks to only a few, often-elite, subsections of Indigenous communities.
Indigenous success in a medium of oral storytelling feels very right to me. We are the original storytellers, and the oral tradition is one we have long taken very seriously. It makes sense to me that we continue to flourish here.
Riley says you to check out these resources:
Michelle Robinson | (she/her/they/them)
Assistant Producer, and Host of Native Calgarian
Podcasts are a fabulous way for Indigenous Peoples’ to be ourselves. [We’re] taking space and telling our truth.
There are 231 Calls to Justice that are free and open to the public. [But it’s also] important to give resources for actual Indigenous Peoples’. Typically Canada and the orders of government fund non-Indigenous rather than give money to Indigenous Peoples’ and their organizations. For example, police get MMIW funding instead of victims, families, Indigenou- led shelters, or it goes to settlers working at Indian Affairs instead of actual Indigenous Peoples’ and our Indigenous led orgs.
Michelle unpacks all of this nuance and more on her podcast, but if there’s any episode of Native Calgarian to listen to it’s Michelle’s conversation with Marilyn North Peigan, who shares her perspective on the Alberta NDP revoking her candidacy in the Calgary-Klein riding.
Shayla Oulette Stonechild | (she/her)
Host and Founder, Matriarch Movement
“Think of this podcast as an extension of ceremony - an act of coming together, in kinship, Wahkohtwin, with one another and reclaiming our voices, our spirits and our power, within spaces that have tried to silence, suppress and deny our existence.
I want to radically imagine a new future that is built on inclusivity, representation and advocate for a better tomorrow, not only for ourselves, but for the next seven generations. I want to honor our ancestors and the histories that have led us to this moment.
We are more than a statistic. When you press play, you can consider yourself officially a part of the Matriarch Movement.”
What’s happening in the Canadian podcast ecosystem:
The Hot Docs Festival and Podcast Showcase is this week, and they’re graciously offering discounted Podcast Creators Passes to subscribers of Pod the North. They also gave me some codes to share for 20% off a few of the live shows happening from May 4-May 6: Radiolab (HD23RADIO20), A Night with CBC Podcasts (HD23STORY20) and Kara Swisher (HD23KARA20). If you’ll be there, find me on the festival’s SwapCard app or come say hi at the Podcast Mixer tomorrow. :)
Podcast Playlist producer, Julian Uzielli, spoke out about CBC’s reliance on temporary workers, his experience as a temp, and his perspective as former Director for new members and precarious workers for CBC’s Toronto branch of the CMG union from 2019 - 2022. The post continues to be shared around from many current and former CBC temp staffers READ IT.
CoHost has released the first State of Podcast Agencies 2023 report. READ IT.
CBC Podcasts has won a bunch more awards! Run, Hide, Repeat won Gold for Best Personal Lives Podcast at the New York Festivals Radio Awards. Front Burner won the Daily Excellence award at The Canadian Association of Journalists for their episode, 'Inside the Ottawa convoy protest as police move in'. Meanwhile, Let’s Make a Sci-Fi won Standout Limited Podcast Series at The Webby Awards.
Another new podcast has joined The Sonar Network: It's Become a Whole Thing! Montreal’s Emily Rose offers a look at the best and worst moments of unscripted TV history, from cult documentaries to trashy early 2000s reality TV.
Canada’s marketplace, Kijiji, has created “a ridiculously long podcast” created entirely with Text-to-Speech, AI-generated audio called Wait-listening. "With shortages and wait times delaying factory-ordered vehicles, we want to shine a light on the fact that we have over 200,000 vehicles on Kijiji Autos available right now, instead of five months from now," said Adam Jardine, CMO at Kijiji. "There's as much reason to wait five months for a new car as there is to listen to a five month long podcast.” It’s so hilariously petty, and you can only listen to it live. Check it out here. (HT: Devin and Shreya at TINK Media)
For your pod:
How many places do you need to look to get an accurate read of how well your podcast is doing?
unpacked the differences between Podcasts Connect, Spotify for Podcasters and various other third party data providers like Chartable, over on . READ IT.Are you a trans/nonbinary voice actor? Join this Trans VA discord server!
Are you tired of spending hours crafting show notes that go unnoticed? Look no further than the Show Notes Summit - the ultimate event for mastering the art of show notes on Saturday May 6th. Register now.
5 signs your podcast is due for a makeover — Devin and Shreya highlighted some great things to lookout for on
. READ IT.How To Make A Profit From A Podcast — Audiogram website, Wavve, posted 7 strategies to try out to make some money from your podcast. READ IT
Afros & Audio is accepting speaker submissions until Sunday, July 16, 2023, at midnight. The Afros & Audio Podcast Festival is an event to support and highlight Black indie podcast creatives and professionals across the diaspora of all ages, genders, sexualities, spiritual beliefs, etc. Please read the inclusion and accessibility policy here before choosing to participate. Speakers will receive a discount code to share with their network, 25% of each ticket sold with their unique code, and a VIP Ticket to attend the conference.
Just Joe (getting rained on)…
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Thanks for supporting Pod the North, I’ll be back in your inbox in two weeks!
Kattie | @Podkatt
(Find me on Twitter, Post, Spotify, and Goodpods)
Thank you for the shout, Katt!