Relentless Indigenous Woman Podcast

• Ep. 41: Redefining Native Music: Natasha Fisher’s Creative Freedom

  Dr. Candace Manitopyes sits down with Anishinaabe singer-songwriter Natasha Fisher, a rising independent artist known for her moody, edgy fusion of pop, alt-rock, and unapologetic storytelling. Their conversation gets deep into the heart of Natasha’s creative process, her path to sobriety, and the personal history behind her newest album, Temporary Feelings.Natasha shares how songwriting has always been the place where she can say the things she can’t always speak out loud. Her music, often mistaken for romantic heartbreak, is rooted just as much in family struggles, addiction, and the emotional complexity of healing. She talks about how sobriety brought her back to her teenage self—reviving old musical influences, emo roots, and a rawness that she finally gave herself permission to embrace.Candace and Natasha also unpack the pressure Indigenous artists face to “sound Native enough,” and Natasha speaks honestly about carving out her own lane—one that honours her identity without fitting into someone else’s expectations.Throughout the episode, she opens up about navigating the industry as a fully independent artist, from doing her own marketing to earning a billboard spot, to mentoring younger Indigenous creatives who want into the music world.This conversation is full of humour, vulnerability, cultural insight, and creative truth-telling. It’s a reminder that healing is nonlinear, identity is expansive, and art becomes its most powerful when it’s honest.@natashafisher_-Relentless Actions1. Choose an age where you felt misunderstood, silenced, or creatively limited. Do one thing this week that honours who you were then (a playlist, an outfit, a journal entry, a walk in a place you loved) anything that reconnects you to that self.2.  Pick one emotion you’ve been avoiding. Express it in a creative way (voice memo, drawing, movement, music, spoken word). No polishing. No editing. Just the raw feeling given form, and then released.Relentless Reflections 1. Where in my life am I still trying to fit into someone else’s expectations of who I should be?2. What emotion or truth do I find hardest to say out loud, and what creative medium might help it finally move? Relentless Resources1. Indigenous Artist Mentorship & Funding. Canada Council for the Arts – Creating, Knowing & Sharing Program. Supports Indigenous artists, storytellers, musicians, and cultural expression.2. Healing Through Art & Sobriety Support. Native Wellness Institute – Wellness Resources & Programs. Offers Indigenous-centered healing, wellness teachings, and community programs.Send Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!Join the RIW Patreon Community RIW Website Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

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• Ep. 40: Balancing Light and Dark: The Medicine of Creation with Copper Canoe Woman

  In this profound conversation, Dr. Candace Manitopyes sits down with Vina Brown, also known by her ancestral name ƛ̓áqvas gḷ́w̓aqs, which translates to Copper Canoe Woman. Vina is Haíłzaqv and Nuučaan̓uł, a mother, artist, weaver, scholar, and the powerhouse behind Copper Canoe Woman Creations. Her jewelry and artistry blend ancestral strength with modern design, carrying forward teachings from generations of matriarchs before her.Vina shares how she integrates her academic and artistic worlds through a holistic understanding of Dharma (living one’s purpose) and how her ADHD diagnosis reshaped her relationship to balance and joy.The two discuss entrepreneurship as a form of self-determination, the importance of Indigenous frameworks over colonial hierarchies, and the radical act of centring children, community, and kinship in our work. In the second half, the conversation turns deeply spiritual and decolonial as Candace and Vina reflect on religion, shame, and the need to confront darkness with compassion. They discuss how Christianity’s colonial legacy sought to erase Indigenous cosmologies, yet how returning to balance, between light and dark, creation and destruction, restores our humanity.This episode is a masterclass in courage, creativity, and compassionate truth-telling, and a call to remember that our work, our art, and our healing are all forms of ceremony.IG: @coppercanoewomanWebsite: www.coppercanoewoman.com -Relentless ReflectionsWhere in my life have I unconsciously centered myself or the institution over the relationships, children, or communities who actually belong at the centre?What parts of my “basement” (fears, shame, defensiveness, colonial reflexes) need to be acknowledged, so I can return to community with more humility?Relentless ActionsWrite down one place in your daily life where you can replace hierarchy with relationality.Walk on the Land and identify one place where decay and new growth exist together. Let that be your teacher.Relentless ResourcesDecolonizing Trauma Work: Indigenous Stories and Strategies BookWhat is Land-Based Learning? A Digital Forum VideoSend Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!Join the RIW Patreon Community RIW Website Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

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• Ep. 39: Soft as Bones: The Strength Beneath Tenderness with Chyana Marie Sage

  Our guest this week is Chyana Marie Sage, a Cree-Métis and Salish memoirist, journalist, poet, model, and author of the national bestselling memoir Soft as Bones. Dr. Candace and Chyana unpack truth-telling, survival, and the power of naming your own story.Chyana speaks vulnerably about her journey from silence to self-expression, describing how writing her memoir became an act of reclamation, giving voice to her younger self who had once been silenced by trauma and shame. She shares how traditional Cree-Métis healing practices, women’s circles, and language revitalization became lifelines throughout her process of writing and recovery.The two reflect deeply on what it means to be a truth teller in a colonial world that rewards silence, the body’s wisdom when something feels wrong, and the ways love, in all its forms, sustains us. They unpack the intersections of colonial violence, relational trauma, and how survivors can reclaim their narrative without apology.Chyana’s honesty about navigating toxic relationships, gaslighting, and her realization that “sometimes we’re not in love with them, we’re in love with our reflection in them” opens space for listeners to reflect on their own experiences of love, loss, and awakening.This episode is a reminder that healing doesn’t get rid of the pain, but alchemizing it into power, creativity, and truth.@softasbones- Relentless Reflection Where in my life am I still staying silent to “keep the peace,” and what would it look like to honour my truth instead of protecting someone else’s comfort?How do I relate to my own healing—do I see it as an isolated journey, or as something held within community, land, and lineage?Relentless Actions Choose a body of water, a patch of forest, or even a quiet spot outside your home. Sit, breathe, listen. Notice what shifts in your body when you allow the land to be a relational teacher rather than a backdrop. Buy a book, attend a talk, share their work, subscribe to a newsletter, or donate to a project. Decolonial practice includes shifting resources and attention toward Indigenous-led narratives and knowledge.Relentless ResourcesYellowhead Institute Land Back online course. This free, self-paced seven-module course explores the scale of land dispossession in Canada and Indigenous strategies for reclamation and consent-based relationships with land and governance.Matriarch Movement Podcast - A powerful platform amplifying Indigenous women, Two Spirit, and gender-diverse voices. A grounding resource for relational accountability, cultural healing, and Indigenous storytelling.Send Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!Join the RIW Patreon Community RIW Website Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

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• Ep. 38: The Pedagogy of Moss: Lessons in Fluidity, Belonging, and Resilience with Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer

  Dr. Candace Manitopyes sits down with the beloved scientist, writer, and matriarch Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass and Gathering Moss. They weave a dialogue on remembrance, resistance, and relationality, where Indigenous knowledge and scientific thought meet in the shared soil of hope.Dr. Kimmerer reflects on her newest movement, Plant Baby Plant, which calls people to resist extraction by restoring reciprocity through regeneration. She and Candace speak candidly about despair, joy as an act of resistance, and the necessity of holding “two buckets”(one for grief, one for goodness) at once.Their exchange moves through moss, language, and the sacred act of remembering. They explore how moss teaches us gender fluidity, adaptability, and queerness, and how Indigenous languages reveal a world where everything (water, trees, even a bay) is alive and in motion. They consider what it means to unlearn colonial rigidity, to delight in being wrong, and to find flexibility through humility and curiosity.This episode feels like an offering of hope in a time of dismemberment. It reminds us that the revolution begins with the choice to create, nurture, and remember our membership in the living world.-Relentless ReflectionsWhat parts of yourself, your culture, or your relationship with the land have been “dismembered”? Reflect on what remembering might look like for you, not just recalling, but rejoining the living web that has always held you.When was the last time you allowed yourself to be wrong, and what did it reveal? Consider what humility makes possible. How could embracing the delight of being wrong expand your capacity for relationship, creativity, or solidarity?Relentless ActionsBegin your own “Plant Baby Plant” practice. Whether it’s tending herbs on a windowsill, planting seeds with children, or volunteering in a community garden, ground your resistance in regeneration.Practice language as ceremony. Choose one phrase or word from your language (or the local Indigenous language where you live) that reminds you the world is alive. Speak it aloud. Let it rewire how you see everything around you.Relentless ResourcesPlantBabyPlant.com – A growing movement co-founded by Dr. Kimmerer that transforms resistance into regeneration through the act of planting and caring for the Earth.The Pedagogy of Moss - The award-nominated PhD dissertation of Dr. Candace Send Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!Join the RIW Patreon Community RIW Website Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

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• Ep. 37: The Queer Wedding and the Revolution

  In this deeply personal episode, Dr. Candace Manitopyes returns to the Relentless Indigenous Woman Podcast with honesty, gratitude, and renewal. She shares the story of her wedding to her sweetheart, Alex Manitopyes, a ceremony rooted in intimacy, cedar medicine, and Cree traditions. She reflects on how love, rest, and joy have reshaped her relationship with activism, creativity, and resistance.After stepping away from social media during their honeymoon, Candace speaks candidly about what it means to reclaim energy in an age of constant reaction. She unpacks how consumption often replaces creation, and how sustainable resistance begins with choosing to build, not just respond. Through reflections on fascism, education as rebellion, and the importance of channeling rage into regeneration, she invites listeners to pause, reflect, and discover their own gifts to offer the world.Candace also shares exciting news about the new season of the podcast, featuring conversations with brilliant Indigenous voices—including Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Kent Monkman, Tanya Talaga, Ma-Nee Chacaby, and many more. She introduces her re-imagined Relentless Indigenous Woman Patreon community as a space for collective learning, reciprocity, and transformation.This episode feels like a breath of fresh air. A reminder that rest us part of resistance, and that the revolution begins in how we care for ourselves and each other.-Relentless ReflectionsWhere is your energy going, toward reaction or regeneration?What gift has Creator placed in you that the world needs right now?Relentless ActionsSet digital boundaries to reclaim your creative energy. Try a 1-hour timer on social media this week. Notice how it feels to consume less and create more, whether that’s journaling, finding a new hobby, making art, teaching, or resting intentionally.Take one feeling (anger, grief, or hope) and channel it into something tangible. Write a poem, support a mutual aid fund, plant seeds, teach a friend about decolonial solidarity, etc. Transmute what overwhelms you into what sustains you. Relentless ResourcesBook: Braiding Sweetgrass by Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer Essay: Rage Becomes Her by Soraya Chemaly (or the audiobook) Send Us a Text with Your Thoughts or Questions!Join the RIW Patreon Community RIW Website Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

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