Relentless Indigenous Woman Podcast

In the final episode of the winter season, Dr. Candace Manitopyes sits with Dr. Rocio Rosales Meza, a Xicana/Mexicana seer, initiated medicine woman, and psychologist whose work bridges ancestral teachings with liberation. They name the moment we’re living in—the collapse of empire, the overwhelm of digital life, and the spiritual and emotional toll of witnessing global injustice. Dr. Rocio shares how grounding in creation, tending to the Earth, and honouring the elements are what keep her centred when the world feels chaotic.
Their conversation goes straight to the heart of what many are experiencing right now: the “spirit-eating” nature of colonial systems, the dysregulation caused by social media, and the exhaustion of carrying both awareness and responsibility online. 
They talk openly about burnout, boundaries, and the courage it takes to hold hope when the world keeps offering reasons to despair. Dr. Rocio offers wisdom from her own collapse—losing her tenured academic career during a health crisis—and how that breaking became the doorway to her calling.
Both women unravel the myths of New Age spirituality, the reality of decolonization, and the necessity of confronting our shadow without shame. This episode is a reminder that healing is spiritual work, the underworld is part of the journey, and our medicine often lives in the very places we were taught to fear. It’s an invitation to slow down, reconnect, and remember who we were before colonial conditioning told us otherwise.
https://www.drrosalesmeza.com/
@dr.rosesalesmeza

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Relentless Action
1. For one week, track when you override your limits, numb out online, or perform “awareness” instead of feeling — then name the body sensation underneath it.
2. Write from the part of you that feels resentful, jealous, exhausted, or ashamed, then respond from your grounded adult self without exiling what you find.
Relentless Reflection
1. Where have I mistaken visibility or knowledge for actual integrity?
2. What part of me did I silence to survive systems that were never built for my wholeness?
Relentless Resources
1. All About Love by bell hooks. A rigorous examination of how domination distorts love, spirituality, and community, and what it takes to confront those distortions inside ourselves.
2. Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés A deep reclamation of the instinctual feminine and the underworld journey, unpacking how culture fractures women from their wild knowing — and how to return.

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Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

In this powerful cousin episode, Dr. Candace Manitopyes welcomes her cousin, Dr. Tara Hutchison, a young Cree physician from Moose Cree First Nation, for an intimate and wide-ranging conversation about medicine, culture, identity, and the realities facing Indigenous communities today.
Both women discuss the emotional labour of being Indigenous professionals in colonial systems: balancing advocacy with gentleness, resisting the pressure to be palatable, and unpacking the internal battles around perfectionism and imposter syndrome. They speak openly about therapy, burnout, and the crash that often follows major achievements, reminding listeners that success doesn’t erase vulnerability.
The episode ultimately offers a portrait of two Cree women who have navigated demanding systems while staying rooted in who they are and where they come from. It celebrates community, resilience, cousinhood, and the growing wave of Indigenous people transforming medicine, education, and futures in their homelands and beyond.
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Relentless Actions
1.  Write down what you carry in rooms that isn’t in your job description, then choose one thing to stop doing this month.
2.  Identify two people who understand your context without explanation and schedule a real check-in before burnout forces one.
Relentless Reflection 
1. Where did I learn that excellence is the price of belonging?
2. After I achieve something significant, do I let myself land or do I immediately chase the next proof of worth?
Relentless Resources
1. My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
2. Your Body Is Not an Apology Workbook: Tools for Living Radical Self-Love
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In this vibrant episode, Dr. Candace Manitopyes speaks with acclaimed actress, musician, and director Crystle Lightning of Enoch Cree Nation, an artist whose three-decade career has broken barriers on screen, on stage, and behind the scenes. 
They get into the reality of working in film, television, and theatre—far beyond the glamor audiences see. Crystle opens up about the grit behind the craft, such as the long rehearsals, endless travel, last-minute script changes, and the discipline it takes to thrive in an industry that often expects Indigenous creators to prove themselves twice over. She talks about imposter syndrome, leading her cast with auntie-level care, and building space for emerging artists to stand confidently in rooms not built for them. The two discuss the creation of Bear Grease, the smash-hit Indigenous musical she co-created, and the wild, funny, nerve-wracking backstage moments that became the heartbeat of the show’s success.
The episode ends on a powerful note: a call to action for Indigenous creatives to pursue their dreams with courage, curiosity, and community. Crystle reflects on the legacy she hopes to leave—opportunities, representation, and a path wider than the one she had to fight through. The conversation is full of laughter, truth-telling, motivation, and love for Indigenous art. It’s a celebration of what’s possible when Indigenous stories are centred, protected, and brought to life by Indigenous hands.
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Relentless Reflection 
Where in my own creative or professional life am I still shrinking, even though I know I’m meant to take up more space?
What barriers did my younger self face that I can now remove for someone coming up behind me?
Relentless Actions 
Write down three tangible opportunities you can offer to another Indigenous creative this month (a connection, a recommendation, a shared resource, a skills exchange).
Choose one creative risk you've been avoiding and commit to taking the first step within 72 hours—send the email, revise the script, shoot the video, publish the post.
Relentless Resources
Native Women in Film & Television (NWIFT) — advocacy, mentorship, and networking entirely focused on Indigenous women and gender-diverse creatives in film.
Illuminative’s Storytelling Guides — free toolkits that help creators frame, protect, and elevate Indigenous narratives across industries.
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Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

In this gripping episode, Dr. Candace Manitopyes sits with award-winning journalist, author, and filmmaker Tanya Talaga, whose work has become a lifeline for truth in a country still wrestling with denial. From the moment they begin, the conversation feels less like an interview and more like two Indigenous women pulling back the curtain on generations of silence, survival, and spiritual return. 
Tanya shares her path from being the lone Indigenous journalist in mainstream newsrooms of the 1990s (where stories of Indigenous suffering were dismissed as repetitive or “not news”) to becoming one of the most vital Indigenous voices in Canada. She speaks about the spiritual rupture created by Christianity’s imposition on Treaty 9 families, the generational fear of ceremony, and what it means to finally question beliefs handed down in the name of survival. 
The conversation deepens as Tanya describes “the knowing”—the ancestral intuition that lives in Indigenous people, the sense that something is missing, the unspoken grief. She recounts sitting with survivors in Kamloops during the discovery of unmarked graves and how their words struck her like a freight train: “We always knew.” That knowing becomes the backbone of her work and the spiritual compass that guides her truth-telling. 
Candace and Tanya explore the cost of telling the truth, the courage it demands, and the liberation it creates for everyone who has been waiting to breathe. 
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Relentless Actions
1. Revisit one belief you inherited—not from your spirit, but from survival. Choose a belief handed down through family, school, or church about identity, ceremony, or “rightness.” Write down where it came from, and whether it still belongs to you. Release what no longer aligns.
2. Have one truth-centred conversation this week. This could be with a friend, a family member, or even your own journal. Name something you’ve been avoiding, such as a question, a discomfort, a story. Let truth, gentle or sharp, be medicine.
Relentless Reflections
1. What truths have I been carrying quietly because I was afraid of what they might disrupt, and what would it mean to finally speak them?
2. Where does “the knowing” live in my body, and how often do I silence it to fit into spaces that were never built for me?
Relentless Resources
1. The Knowing by Tanya Talaga, book
2. Debunking the “Mass Grave Hoax”: A Report on Media Coverage and Residential School Denialism in Canada, report 

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Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat

Turtle Island (aka North America) meets Aotearoa (aka New Zealand), and the stories of Indigenous resistance mirror each other. 
Dr. Candace Manitopyes speaks with Māori artist Theia, whose music is less performance and more ceremony. Candace describes experiencing Theia’s live show as a moment of kinship across oceans, a palpable spiritual recognition that transcends borders and mirrors the shared wounds of colonization. 
Theia speaks about her journey from major-label constraints to full creative sovereignty, describing how leaving the industry machine allowed her to create the music she was born to make—music that confronts misogyny, racism, religious trauma, and the violent legacies of colonialism. Through her songs, she carries her grandmother’s stories, the generational scars of language loss, and the relentless fight for Māori sovereignty. 
The conversation moves into the political crisis unfolding in Aotearoa, where treaty rights, language, protests, and Māori cultural practices are under attack. Theia names both the devastation and the uprising—the collective defiance, the resurgence of language learners, artists, healers, and community protectors refusing to disappear. 
Candace and Theia speak to the alchemy of art: how music becomes medicine, how beauty can hold the darkness without collapsing, and how Indigenous women carry fire in ways the world is only beginning to understand.
IG: @theiaofficialxo  
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Relentless Actions
1. Name one belief about your worth, your culture, your voice, or your ancestors that didn’t come from you but from colonial conditioning. Write it down. Then write the truth beneath it. Burn, shred, or bury the lie. Keep the truth visible.
2. Choose an action that requires courage (emailing a representative, donating to an Indigenous-led movement, showing up physically, correcting someone’s harmful language, or publicly naming the injustice happening in Aotearoa and on Turtle Island). Let the action stretch you.
Relentless Reflections
1. Where am I still choosing comfort over justice, and who pays the price when I stay quiet? Sit with this without defending yourself. Let it sting. Let it teach you something about the gap between the person you are and the person you’re becoming.
2. What part of me is still afraid of my own power, and who taught me to fear it in the first place? Trace that fear back (family, church, school, government, media). When you see its origin, ask yourself: What would my life look like if I stopped inheriting their limitations and started inheriting my courage instead?
Resources
Resistance in Indigenous Music: A Continuum of Sound, academic article 
A Radical Revival: Indigenous Music Strikes Chords that Cross Borders, an article 

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Music Produced by Award-Winning Anishnaabe DJ Boogey the Beat