November 8th Indigenous Veterans Day

Marina Crane reflects on her family's history, particularly focusing on her late father, an Indigenous veteran, and the impact of systemic racism and intergenerational trauma on Indigenous communities. She discusses the complexities of grief, identity, and the struggles faced by Indigenous veterans and their families, emphasizing the importance of understanding these experiences in the context of broader societal issues. The conversation delves into Marina Crane's reflections on her father's life, his experiences with systemic racism, trauma from Indian residential schools, and the complexities of indigenous identity. It also explores themes of grief, the importance of community, and the need for intimacy and connection in human relationships.

Thank you for sharing this. What comes through most strongly is that this is not only a reflection on your father, but also a meditation on grief, memory, intergenerational trauma, family responsibility, intimacy, aging, and what it means to be Indigenous in a changing world. A few central themes stand out: Honouring your father's life You describe your father, Leonard Ralph Crane, as a young Indigenous man who enlisted during the Second World War era, served Canada, and continued military service afterward. You remember both his strengths and his struggles. Rather than presenting him as perfect, you are trying to tell a truthful story: a veteran, a father, a community volunteer, a man affected by residential school trauma, racism, addiction, and grief. Your tribute emphasizes that people should be remembered in their full humanity. The legacy of residential schools A major theme is the distinction you draw between those who directly experienced residential schools and the generations that followed. You describe how trauma can be carried forward through families and communities, affecting parenting, relationships, addiction, shame, and violence. You repeatedly return to the idea that many survivors were deeply harmed as children and then struggled to cope with those wounds as adults. Grief and family Your thoughts about your father are intertwined with concern for your sister in intensive care and grief for other family members who have passed. You speak openly about the difficulty of maintaining boundaries while also fulfilling family responsibilities. There is a strong sense of matriarchal duty, of carrying family history and caring for relatives even when relationships have been difficult. Intimacy versus sexuality One of the more philosophical parts of your reflection concerns intimacy. You agree with the idea that many people, especially men, may mistake a need for connection, affection, and emotional closeness for a need for sex. You argue that intimacy can exist independently of sexual relationships and that loneliness, attachment, and grief are important human experiences that deserve honest discussion. Truth-telling Throughout the recording you return to the importance of telling the truth about people and communities, even when the truth is uncomfortable. You question myths, exaggerations, and idealized stories, whether about education, achievements, spirituality, or personal history. At the same time, you advocate compassion and understanding of the circumstances that shaped people's lives. Homeland and belonging Another recurring theme is feeling disconnected from the sense of homeland you knew as a child. You describe how urbanization, systemic racism, and social change have altered your experience of belonging. Even while living within your community, you express feeling that something precious has been lost. In many ways, this reflection reads as a tribute to your father's intentions. You acknowledge the harm caused by his alcoholism, but you also remember his service, his generosity, his encouragement of your mother, his community involvement, and the ways he tried to protect his children. Perhaps the clearest message from the entire piece is this: people are more than their wounds, more than their addictions, and more than the worst things they have done. Your father's story, as you tell it, is one of struggle, service, trauma, love, and humanity, and you want that complexity to be remembered. I hope your sister recovers, and I hope sharing these memories of your father brings some measure of peace and honour to his memory. Wopida for sharing his story.

Marina Crane (00:01.346) Good morning. I'm Marina Crane from Sutina Nation. It's November ninth, twenty twenty six. And I was hoping to post this yesterday. but but again too I I got a phone call from my sister. So I have like you I gotta understand my the matriarchy in my family because of my mother and my grandmother's like it's very strong. And and so th my family is pretty unique in the sense that my sisters have lived off of away from my community but they're still connected. like they paid mortgages for decades and yesterday I got into a discussion about my late brother in law because he I I helped organize his funeral and got you know asked if he could be buried in in our cemetery. Now when we talk about boundaries and aging and what's appropriate or inappropriate, it is important to look after our mental health. So yesterday was vet November eighth, National Indigenous Veterans Day. So I am going to talk about my late father and and sort of wrap up this EP this episode, just focusing on on the things that's my fa about my father's life. My late dad was a true warrior. This is what I posted on Instagram. On this day in Canada, it's it's Indigenous Veterans Day. This is what I posted November 8th. My late my late Indigenous father, Leonard Ralph Crane, Regiment M2783, born July 15th, 2026, died December 4th, 1978, was on standby for overseas to Northeast Europe from September 23. Marina Crane (02:07.499) second, nineteen forty-four to february seventh, nineteen forty-six, from ages eighteen to twenty. World War Two lasted from September first, nineteen thirty-nine to september second, nineteen forty-five. My late father was thirteen years old when World War Two started, and nineteen years old when it ended. After World War Two he took on military service for many years. tha that's how I remember my dad. you know, it was like five years after the war he he started having children with my mother. In my opinion, he was a child willing to die for his country, for Canada, a country that showed no respect towards indigenous peoples because we had to have you know he we had to have a card to move off the like to even go go off the reserve to even work. It had to be signed by the Indian agent. A lot of things like in terms of just custodial responsibility as if indigenous people were incapable of looking after or eating or cleaning themselves. I mean, that's my metaphor. I just it's disgusting. Okay, so pardon me, I'll continue trying to talk about my late dad. At the end of the Second World War, Indian affairs reported that three thousand Ninety status Indians had participated in World War II. That's 2.5% of the 125,946 status Indians identified in the Canadian census. Again, this figure does not include, okay, does not include non-status Indians like the Sioux, the Sioux tribes in Canada, the Inuit and the Metis soldiers. This year in twenty twenty six my father would be would have been a hundred years old, should he have lived past fifty two years old. He was too young to vote, too young to drink alcohol, but not too young to be taught how to kill in basic combat training. May he rest in peace knowing that those who love him remember him and his good intentions. Now the reality of it is like my father died at fifty two. Marina Crane (04:29.959) And he was he was drinking and a car hit him. And and I did manage to go and see him. My my my siblings and I did man didn't actually well, we saw him before they took him into surgery. now why am I why am I bringing up my my late dad? A lot of times a lot of times people ask me, Well what was your dad like? Who was you know, what's what's Like like a lot of people who've married into Sutina, it's like they don't believe I had a dad. I like w tell me about your dad and I'm going, What are you you know, like you're you know, like hello y you've you've married in when you were young, you had children, and all of a sudden now you want to know about my father? You've had decades and decades to find out. So anyway, these are some of the things that I've said about my dad. my late father ran away from Indian residential school in Edmonton. He was brought back to the school and his punishment for running away was being f was being forced to stay in a cold attic. He was forced to sleep there, where they kept the bodies of the dead children. like sometimes when I hear about people you know, like in in when they do truth and reconciliation and they wear the orange shirts and everybody's walking and protesting or not rallying we'll say most likely. And these are indigenous people fifty years and under, and I I try to make an explanation of this because there just there's a distinction. And and the more historical wise that people get it through their thick Marina Crane (06:20.663) Numbskull heads. There is a true difference in Indian residential school trauma. My father, my uncle, their age, they and my mother, they lived in a horrific state in those Indian residential schools because it was white people beating the bejesus, beating the crap, torturing these children. And it's these children who who when they left when they when they left residential school and be started becoming parents. Some of them were horrible. Were horrible. let's see. so I so I basically said like he enlisted on September twenty seventh, nineteen forty four at age f eighteen. During this year of enlistment his duties were to guard World War Three prisoners, German prisoners in BC. okay, so y so you you've got to understand you took basic training. Got he's got his stamp on his little military book. And one of the elderly women here, she's ninety-seven. Her husband was my father's first cousin, and he was also my father's best man at the wedding. So we were talking and she says, Yes, I rem she says in that time, like when because Germany had surrendered. So my father, like I he was on standby to be shipped to Northern Europe. And so he was in so when Germany re surrendered, all the troops who were in Aurelio were shipped back to Western Canada. My father was one of them, he was shipped to BC and he took on duties as as a a prison guard. Then then because the Japanese were still fighting, hi they they shipped them back to Aurelio, Ontario. In in let's see it's So he said he so I'm saying he completed his basic combat training april thirteenth, nineteen forty five, at the age and so at so at the age of eighteen he was in Aurelio, Ontario, waiting for overseas deployment. And so the war ended when he turned nineteen like he was still you know, he the war ended in nineteen forty five, September second, he turned nineteen. Marina Crane (08:45.155) That's when like they were ship they so they shipped them they did the basic training ship to like he was in Aurelio, Ontario. The Germans surrendered, they shipped him to B C and this is a whole thousands of of military, like young men. And then and then they the war was still going so they shipped them back to Aurelio, Ontario for standby overseas, 'cause that was their designation. So they're waiting to be deployed and Japan surrenders. And so the war ends. So my at the age of twenty three my dad married my mother. So understand this, like like I said, he was he he even though the war ended when he was eighteen, by nineteen he he like how he was no longer under military like under the military because the war had ended. But but see my father re enlisted he married my mother And they they got married on january seventeenth, nineteen forty nine, and they had eight children. And the military service he served in the military service with the Patrincia Patricia Canadian Light Infantry at the Calgary Curry Barracks and the Calgary Highliners until the nineteen sixties. I remember him wearing his Scottish kilt so proudly in the military parades with bagpipes blazing away. And a lot of people don't really get the gist of it. You've got to sort of put your mind in a space where there was no employment, no work, you couldn't leave like they couldn't even go into bars. You couldn't it w like I it was a amazing that, you know, here's my father struggling to make a life and and being in the military. I remember at times when my my my mother and him would be talking and I'd be listening and he my father would be saying, he says he says, Mrs He says, they really treat me bad. Like systemic racism. He would talk to my mother about how the white soldiers would treat him. And then he then he would finish. He says, But misses, he says to my mom. Like I'm hearing it. Like, you know, it's just like yesterday. In my ear, he says, But misses, the way they treat the black soldiers is worse than they treat me. Like the systemic racism that my father experienced because of his skin. He wore his skin. Marina Crane (11:13.973) And you know, you could be you know, a black millionaire and there're still people that would treat you like as if you're a savage because of the color of your skin. Sutina had leased land to the military and my father's status showed up as living on a First Nations over the past four years while he was you know like during the time of his military early military service. Most indigenous veterans like my late father were not given military pension. compensation for day school nor compensation for Indian residential school. So and it's not just Canadian indigenous veterans. One of the veterans who is a couple of years older than me who served in Vietnam you know when he w he's passed away and he was instrumental in in conducting sweats and sundance and he started the organ he started a ride From the Dakotas to Mankato, Minnesota, where they had the largest mass execution of 38 indigenous Dakota Sioux people being hung during the time of President Lincoln. Now, Jim also had killed 38 Vietnamese. And when he talks about his life in Indian residential school in the United States, he's talked to his wife and he says, that he really believed like the trauma that he experienced in iz Indian residential school was basically brought into the combat field in Vietnam. Because even when he came back he'd say he'd say like he shared his stories to to all indigenous people. And he said he said just the smell of meat frying would trigger him. The sound of babies crying would trigger him. Just you know, just things that would trigger him into this Traumatic, like trigger him into trauma. Now, when I when I talk about the red orange shirt day and everybody marching, like it triggered me. So and this is a very mild trigger that I'm talking about. I'm not comparing myself to post-traumatic stress disorder of military people like my dad and Jim. I I just want to give you an analogy. I'm 74. I I haven't had I haven't had the experience that some 75 Marina Crane (13:38.831) four seventy year old and older indigenous people have had when they've had white people beat them up. I've never had that experience. So so get that out of your mind. When when I talk about my trigger, it has nothing to do with a white person beating me up. What what triggers me is the is when I try to make a distinction between the severity, the horror, the just the the abuse Because because like like there there is there is a stark difference. And I wish I wish a lot of young indigenous people and white people, I wish they understood this. And this is part of the whole discussion with my podcast too when it comes to intergenerational trauma and how people how white supremacy has effects on indigenous people to this very day. To this very, very day. We're so we're so h sel what do you call self defeating in dismantling our own our own structures of of violence or the lack of intimacy or the lack of understanding what grieving is all about. So what does it have to do with the trigger of Born Shirt Day? So I woke up in the morning and I couldn't go to sleep and I was wondering, well, why am I like this? I have anxiety. And usually when I have anxiety I try to a lot reach out to somebody, dial them up or text them. At ow all hours of the night. So be grateful, be grateful that that you're not on my list. 'Cause I d you know, and I'm and I'm really cautious of overextending myself. I try to be and I try to explain to people that I that you know, I'm not cruel. I've just gone through so much in my life that when I extend myself to somebody or or we ghost each other, that's that's okay. Because that's part of the the the healing and growing experience on my un in my opinion for myself. If people don't understand it, you know, I'm sorry, get off the cross, I need the wood to make a sweat. But going back to the triggers of Orange Shirt Day, I was so anxious and I I text my my c former classmate who's who's been living in Hong Kong and she's married to a fellow from Ghana who who lives in Toronto and Marina Crane (16:05.849) W I was saying to her, I said I I just feel like trapped. I feel suffocated. I I'm in my home. I have you know, I live alone, and I live in my community, First Nations community. I I've grown up like I've known people, I know over two hundred and thirty four people who are elderly that I've known my whole life and that like I embrace them like a brother, sister, like family. And and and you know, they take part in helping me grieve. especially when we see each other, we we you know, extend a a welcoming hand. And I I said to my friend in Hong Kong, I said, Even though I have that, I feel entrapped. I said, I thought like moving back from the States and coming back into my community, I wouldn't feel this triggering, this sort of suffocation. I said, because it's almost like I'm a criminal. Like I have to look over my shoulder. What's happening? Why am I feeling this way? And she says, Marina, she says There are black Americans who come to Ghana and they may it may take them a week to two weeks and all of a sudden they feel hu like human beings. And I said, What? She says, Yeah, you know, like in the States, if a black person is pulled over, automatically like are they being pulled over? Like even with ice. You know, are are are people of color being pulled over because of because of the color of their skin? And she says, So when they come to Ghana and they're black and they get pulled over by the police, it's because they they they had a driving violation, not because of the color of their skin. And she says, so th so it takes about a week to two weeks for them to feel like they're in the homeland, the motherland, like this is this is peace. And I said to my friend Cherie, I said, I don't feel that way. I do not feel that way in Canada. I don't feel this way in the United States, especially the United States. But I thought it would be so intense too in Canada. But but because of my interaction and engagement with a lot of organizations within the city of Calgary and a lot of indigenous people who are like fifty years and under, or even it from sixty and under, and the lack of dismantling that they haven't done or or haven't really talked about it to heal. What am I getting at is that I didn't realize that there's no homeland. Marina Crane (18:32.111) Can you believe that in Canada? Like so when I hear young people say land back, I I know what it means to have land back because I grew up in the wilderness. I grew up snaring rabbits, eating rabbits as a child. you know, just the whole nature that white people were so foreign. There weren't that many around. I mean, mind you in 2026, what one billion white people, one billion black people and what, six billion people of brown skin. Life life is constantly a form of education. But the reality of it is that I could be triggered so much that I it would wake me up in the middle of the mor in the middle of the night wondering what's happening? Who's chasing me? Like like I just didn't feel like I was safe, even in my home, in my indigenous community. And the and I believe because it's the it's the subconscious part of me when I go into the city that that I that I like I it's like a subliminal in the subliminal messages of systemic racism that I'm being more conscious of. And and because of that I like I'm just so overwhelmed that a lot of young people just don't understand what it feels like to to be in the homeland. As a child I felt like I lived in the h my homeland because Calgary was just a little town. And over the course of my lifetime it's gone over a million people. And and most most of the time when I see huge cities, like it took me years to to acclimatize myself when I lived in the United States. So and I was young too, so it was it was good that I experienced that at a at a young age too. I mean running away to Vancouver at seventeen you know, th I there are a lot of things that I did in my life to be in a big city that that I had to what you call dismantle a lot of the fears that I think my parents had or or indigenous women had. Okay, so what does it all have to do with intergenerational trauma and triggers? Well like I said, Jim Jim was so triggered when he came back from Vietnam and just the slightest things that triggered him Marina Crane (20:57.294) He'd he'd end up drinking, getting in trouble with the law, and he served time in prison. How he tried to find balance and intimacy was through sweats and sundance and ceremony. So so a a lot of a lot of the balance of intimacy in in in in being sane wa was was was a really difficult thing for him to do. and he had to live a spiritual life. Now my my father didn't have access to that because at that time indigenous people weren't allowed to practice spiritual practices even though it was becoming revolutionary and this is why I try to say like when people ask me w how did I how did I know what Nathan Chasing Russ was all about. was because I saw this within my parents' lifetime, my grandparents' lifetime. I saw the distinction between children who were grown raised in those residential schools who were terrorized, brutalized by white people. Then there's my parents who who started having children and and and it was indigenous upon indigenous because as the Indian residential schools were closing down. Most of the most of them take took on indigenous staff members. And it was those staff members who were who were also abusing indigenous children. So so in the whole process of understanding and having shame of being indigenous, like wearing your skin, a lot of a lot of, especially in Suitina, there were a lot of young people, maybe 10 years older than me, who were ashamed to be indigenous. Now I'm also saying it still exists today, like even within my family. my part I'm I'm shunned from my family. I I don't practice Mormonism and if you've ever ever w wanted to know about systemic racism, just just read up on it. so but again too that's it's in every family, even the former chief's sister who can pass for a white woman Marina Crane (23:23.276) denies that she has any any indigenous blood and yet she carries her status card. But that's that's that's the thing about it is like I I have a sister who she's seventy three and I'm seventy four and she get passed for white. We were raised like twins. Now now why is this so important? Well yesterday when I wanted to post this this podcast I got a call from our younger sister and she told me my seventy three year old sister was taken into the hospital in the ICU. And she's got pneumonia and sepsis. So so I don't know. I I know as a woman that a lot of elderly women die from sepsis. So it's just a a a waiting game right now, waiting to see if she's gonna survive. And and so there's a lot of closure and a lot of grief that I'm dealing with. And part of my podcast too has to do with with grieving. Because because I truly believe like like when when people sort of I d I don't wanna say bastardize the things that I think are very positive like very very positive in the sense of healthy human sexuality. I don't think I don't think people understand what it is to be single and alone. And I think a lot of times people tend to just don't want to dismantle things because they're so scared. They are so scared of that that isolation or that knowing that they're they're single and like it it there there's no it's not it's not a curse to be single. However, it is important to understand what it is to be single and what it is to find balance and what it is to Marina Crane (25:28.502) understand just to un it's just it's it it's important to understand like how you function, what what intimacy is. And a lot of times I think I I don't a lot of times I don't think we ha if we have the courage to deal with it we'll we'll understand it. My my late father did all that he could like I said, he he he served he served in the military after and until I was about maybe ten. But even yeah maybe no well he like I said, I was ten when eight when he traveled to South America and ten when he went to India. And the the thing the thing that I want you to understand is like the the jealousy or the I don't know what to call it, but Like like when I when I spoke to my sister yesterday and r I was talking to her about a childhood friend who was who was saying like she was saying stuff about, you know, non nation members being buried in Sutina and I said to her, Well I I I made it a point to I made it a point for my brother in law to be buried here. You know, my my sisters have lived off community for decades. And we've and during this these decades people have been voted onto membership. People have been married into membership. And then here are my sisters. And my my sister, who's right now in ICU, you know, like my cousin says, Marina, all you can do is is just pray 'cause you're the oldest, you're the matriarch. Marina Crane (27:23.254) So I you know, I make sure that my relatives know and I told my cousin it's really hard to you know, have boundaries and not tell people. Not tell people I'm grieving. Like I I'm going to be going out for lunch without a childhood friend. I cannot tell her about my sister. Because you don't know what how they're going to be triggered. And based on that trigger, you know, I need to have some some respect for My family. And my cousin said, Marina, it all th you you're doing all that you can do. I said, Well I just want to let family know that this is what's going on. I I don't want I don't want people to say My marital status as single? I said I just I don't want people to Assume the worst? You know, it's just like like how dare my childhood friend say that s it was so controversial that my brother in law was buried in Soutina. And that's for many people who are in Soutina who've been buried here. But the audacity I said to her, do you know how hard it was to for me to support my sister and my nieces and nephews? When the when my brother in law's entire family turned against her and the and and her and their children. I said the very fact that everything for for Ris' funeral is embalming, the casket, everything was paid for, did not come to suituna nation did not pay for nothing. Marina Crane (29:04.525) I said he he he had talked to my sister about where he wanted to be buried. I said this is a young man. He he died at forty nine. And for this childhood friend to just flippantly say, yeah, people were just talking about it. Like at the time when when my brother in law was being buried. Not even giving a hoot's ass about about how my sister felt or her family or even or even me. And so it's the same thing, you know, when my brother in law passed away a couple of months ago, that's my sister's husband, the one who's my sister who's in the ICU right now. I like like I talk about separation like within families dismantling colonial constructs. It it's really hard. It's it's really hard. I was raised with my sister Like I said, we were raised like twins and yet in these past fifty years I don't know her. I don't know her because she's been involved with Mormonism. And and the nieces and nephews that aren't involved in Mormonism, I continue to talk to them. And the reality of it is like whatever's going to happen, I'm I'm gonna have a niece and nephew who will have no parents. And somehow as a family we have to get together to support them. Should should my sister pass away. We're right now even trying to get her to move home since her husband passed away. So it it's not it's not for the lack of of trying or having structure for for my sister and her family. But this is this is like something that really gets to me is because like my cousin said sh they've lived so independently. They're not enabled by, you know putting their hand out, asking the chief and counsel for handouts or money. See the majority of i indigenous women who've married into Soutana, that's what they're known for, putting their hands out because they've come from poorer communities. And and it's it's a real it's a real pain in the ass for leadership. But hey, you want the job, take it. For for me, I I like I said, my mother worked so hard. I worked hard. My sisters Marina Crane (31:29.6) All of my sisters have worked hard. Matriarchy. And you know, the fact that I try to talk about how difficult it is to to be in a community where there's so much lateral violence. Marina Crane (31:47.879) but I I want you to I I played this before quite a few times and but I but I I enjoy playing it only because it it when it talks about people, especially when it comes to to men who have such a what's the word? Marina Crane (32:11.129) They have such a they don't have the capacity to to understand intimacy. Some of them do, okay. and and they're good men when they do, but but it's the misinterpretation too of in of of women and what it means to find balance and and understand. So I play this I'll play this video this this because there's no shame in in feeling this way. There's no Shame and and grieving. Like when you're single and you don't have somebody with you, it's grieving for both male and female. Marina Crane (32:51.577) Marital status is single, but there's a man who's not my man, but because of him there's no other man in my life. It's unclear but very interesting. Technically I'm available, but emotionally that position has already been filled by someone who never officially applied for it. We're not together but somehow I still consider him before entertaining anyone else. And that's the confusing part. He didn't ask me to wait. There's no label, no commitment. Yet there's this invisible loyalty I can't seem to switch off. And at this point someone new could come into my life with every quality I once thought I wanted. And still s something inside me would hesitate to choose him because a a part of my heart is still emotionally attached. To someone who never truly became mine. And maybe that is the cruelest part of an undefined connection. There is no relationship to hold on to, but somehow there is still something to to grieve. Ma so when she talks about invisible loyalty, like as a single person, there is an invisible loyalty. There always is. Like when I talk that I haven't been sexually active in fifty years, imagine how many invisible loyalties I've had to this invisible person. Now I'm saying invisible 'cause I want you to metaphorically think like you can't see them. They're just like a puff of smoke. But in reality they do exist. The individual does exist. And and it's the emotional attachment that that is so like you you you want you like what do you do with it? It's it's it's a it's it's a space where where we're grieving because because there's nothing in that space to hold. And and the person that you're grieving over has no understanding like the significance they have they have on your life. And and for a single person it's okay to have that feeling because that means you're alive and celebrating life and you're understand intimacy. Marina Crane (35:15.874) The search for me for decades in searching for intimacy started off just very practical, didn't understand the whole scope of it. And and like even in my podcast when I talk about like finding closure with this whole Nathan chasing hor chasing horse horse debauchery, I just you know the the whole notion of why people think think the way they do and why people are so cruel in in in intentions. So so y and I want to make light of this because and I don't mean to laugh because it really ticks me off. Like when when you're whole when you have that emotional attachment, you know, when we have death here, we we we that we you know some I think some religions they have death shrines for all the people who've passed away within their family. And and other people, like there's in in indigenous communities we have we have memorials every year. And like my sister w they're having a memorial for my late brother in law. It's a scholarship. And and she says, you know, people don't need to know these these things about my husband. She says, Don't don't don't you know, be talking to people about family. And and so when she called me about our sister, I just that's that's in my mind, I just going, I I can't t talk about my sister because people know like like how she's treated me and and the boundaries and barriers I've had to put up with her. A and not just her, my other brother who's also Mormon. And and his children, their children. This is what's s like the whole nature of it, especially now when when like she needs family. And so like how how do how do we function? And and so all I can do is be there and and if if I'm approached to do something, I I will I will do the best that I can to support her. And her children, her adult children. So so what what's all this about? Like so when my sister and I, like as we're aging, like my younger sister's sixties. Marina Crane (37:40.878) And I understand that sixty. I'm seventy-four. My late brother would have been seventy-six. So so when we talk about grieving, we usually when we have funerals, we usually have handouts. You know, it's a obituary and it shows the family lineage and little quotes and favorite passages and all that. And in the obituary Because we've grown up with a lot of the people who have passed away. Like I I can like you know, when I went to university and there were a lot of young students younger than me, and we had some sort of closure at the end of the four years, and the question was, How many people do you know that have died? Like I put it out there. 'Cause I wanted them to know there's a distinction between indigenous students and non indigenous students and how indigenous students have a connection with with the land and community. And the majority of them, I think the majority of the my class had only I think one had only known two deaths. And I said to them, I've known over fifty. I said, I either cousins, second cousins, relatives grew up like neighbors, other people from other communities that that I've known intimately. I'm using the word intimately Which again too qualifies, okay, because you're part of that grieving circle. Now at the same time when we get these obituaries, because we know people. So I will talk to my siblings or s friends and I say, Did you read the obituary? And they said, Yes. I said, When did that person become get a degree in computer science? Like these are people who've never left the community. have never like I academically I You know, I've grown up my entire life in an academic background. When I for example, when I was working at Barry Imharded Wounded Knee, they hired this stony fellow from Eden Valley who claimed to have had his masters in linguistics, and I said, The guy is bullshitting you. I said, I don't know his name. I said, Do you don't you think that because we live in in in an a in a community where education is very scarce because of the funding? Marina Crane (40:00.706) That those who get educated know who's who. I said the very fact that you that you as a white company, a movie company, would hire this man because he can speak Nakota is not comparable to my mother, who you know was raised in Indian residential school, who could read and write in Dakota Sioux. This person who claimed to have this linguistic master. Who was a young man, younger than myself, f bullshitting, lying to the studio so they could have money and income. I'm saying to those people, don't you get it? You've hired me and my mother to help you out in this movie set. Don't you understand? My mother could read and write in Dakota Sioux when she was just a child, from ages five to fifteen when she was in residential school. My grandfather would write to her in Sioux. The Sioux lawyers and get this this is why I want you to get whatever the hell you think of indigenous people not being smarter educated. The Sioux lawyers when my grandfather was a young man, they would come up from the Dakotas to have a translate and interpret the old Sioux. That's how profoundly s a scholar my grandfather was, and he taught this to my mother and her brother. My in and the same mother and brother chose to marry. indigenous First Nations people and live in indigenous communities. So language has such a strong hold on things. And here I am trying to explain this to, you know, the pup the directors and producers of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, an HBO project. But you know, so I'm I'm used to having people pretending to have degrees. I've had you know elders who I've known my whole life who've r had like eight or ten children. say to me that they have a teaching degree and I'm going, No, you don't. And the fact too is like they started mainstreaming a lot of indigenous students because the quality of education wasn't that high in terms of academics reading or you know, all the sciences. 'cause I know I struggled. I struggled. I knew how an academic I was, so I know the struggle. Like I said, it it it's like it's I had to dismantle all that. Marina Crane (42:28.237) You know, my education and what I what I dismantled, I earned it. So when I'm critiquing people who say, I got a teaching degree, yes, but you I said you can compare two indigenous people, one who gets mainstreamed, the other one who has special program. The one who's mainstream is dismantling and is really struggling is actually actually doing the academic work with as equal of all students, whatever color skin you are. You're treated like everybody else. And then you've got the special ones who are are being trained s in a special program to be an indigenous teacher. Because the academics, say the University of Calgary, knows that these indigenous adults are going to be going back to their communities to teach in the schools. They're not going to be teaching in the city schools. There are some like when I was director of education, when I was going through the resumes, there there were some teachers who had had gone through the mainstream program, but ha nobody would hire them. Because so, you know, even though they went through the hard core of academics, just like this past year, 150 students were graduating, not one was hired by a white company. So again, the struggle for education and to you know acknowledge like you it's not like I'm saying it's something to be smart, just because I struggled and I dismantled does not mean I'm a genius. And for all you listeners who are more intelligent than me, yeah, believe it or not, I know I'm not a genius. Surprise, surprise, surprise. But the point the point of the matter is I do know the people I've grown up with, and my sister and I jokingly laugh about it, and I said, Yeah, in my obituary, I want you to write that I was a Stampede Rodeo princess queen, or that I was a indigenous indigenous rodeo princess, or I was a First Nations princess. Like I said, just just you know, just create a whole new fantasy of my life. Like how how I said 'cause a lot of people will put in things, will put in stuff to make it look like they were academic when they're not. And I'm going, bless that family's heart that they put this in their loved ones obituary. And and like like the Marina Crane (44:52.609) One lady I grew up with, she says, Well well, why don't you talk to the family? I said, It's none of my business. I said, I know, I like I'll use my father as an example. Like my father went went to joined the military. We have we have people who like they they want to be in the military. My father was 13 years old when the war started. We have one person in in my community who says that. She's she's a she's a veteran. But she would have been she's eight years, seven years younger than my father. So she would have been six or seven years old when the war started. How in the hell can she say that she's a veteran? But again too, it's not my place, but I do say it when I post stuff on my dad, how old he was. Because the oldest veteran we had was at least fourteen years older than my father. The veterans in Sutina who died were at least a decade almost a decade and a half older than my father. My father was a child when he enlisted in the military. And and like when the war was over, he was nineteen when he when he was released from his military service he was twenty. And then he re enlisted. Like I said, when I'm talking to my childhood friend, I said, you know, I I did not understand my father's legacy. Because and this is this and this is why like I'm paying tribute to him. And I want people to understand this. I talked to young people and I said, I hated my dad so much. I hated when he'd come home drinking and I hated it when he would beat up my mother. I hated it that we'd had to run outside and sleep in the woods. So that we so that he wouldn't be angry. For whatever reason he was angry. Marina Crane (46:51.874) But you know, people look at looked at my father bec and when he died he he d he died because he was intoxicated and was walking across a gravel road and someone hit him. And and people don't understand why my father lived the life he'd lived. Because he was he would be downtown on Skid Row, even though he had a home. And every once in a while he'd come home. He'd come home and he'd sober up and he'd be but then again too He'd he'd just have some such anxiety he had to leave. And and I saw that. But see, the things that I saw also before that was a sober man. A sober military man who would polish his boots, wear a kilt, organize military parades on behalf of the mayor of Calgary, Rod Sykes. That was my dad doing volunteer work for the Calgary School Division. doing volunteer work for the children's ho young boys hockey team in Soutina when it was an outdoor rink. You know, my father served in the military and when he went to South American India it was because he could talk. Like I can talk. Yeah, people people get jealous of me because I I have the ability to talk. And so I so I understand that spirit of intent when it comes to my father, my late father. And and he used to say to my mother that he says, I've been he like just the the lateral violence that people would push on him. Like the jealousy, the pure jealousy. He was working in the military. That's where his income was. The more I talked to people and I the more I tried to understand how people could be so vindictive, so jealous, so mean spirited. Is because they grew up in poverty. Not just that, but they had the experience of some white person beating them up. Now I say my father had that because he grew up in a Indian residential school where the white people ruled completely. Like I said, when he ran away, they put him they punished him, put him in the attic, sleeping in a cold attic with dead bodies. Running away. Like that's the trauma. Plus that too, he lost his father. Marina Crane (49:16.108) My grandmother remarried to to David Crowchild. And she had she had, I think, four children with my grandfather. But my grandfather, my dad's dad, George Crane, he he he died before I was born. And so my father he he was raised by his aunties who were Nakoda Sioux, who lived in Soutina. And also his Cree his Cree uncle win in Muscuchies. So that was my father's early childhood is is is being raised by his aunties and uncles because his mother had had taken on a second husband. And so so he he basically, you know, like it was like a extended family, traditional extended family, a family taking care of each other. But he also had that trauma. the the trauma of Indian residential school and systemic racism, but the the courage that he had to to enlist in the military. So you you have to understand, like I said, the ones who did join were fourteen years older than him. You know, they already had had children. They you know they they they were they were they were had been married. My father wasn't married. He was just a a young child, like like an eighteen year old. I remember being eight seventeen and running away to Vancouver and the change the things that I experienced there have changed my life forever. And and so I can't even comprehend my father, my late father, and you know, just what it took for him to join the military. Especially having the experience with white people. And appl on top of that too, like even when he got married and when he wasn't with the military, it was the the brutality, the The like my uncles, the men, the Sutana men where they had to work. They had the grungiest jobs in the city, the most stinking filthy jobs they the white people would hire them to do. And they'd come home just exhausted. Like like they treated my father and the men from Soutana like slaves. Had no respect for them. It's it like to me to me, you know, it's just Marina Crane (51:42.223) systemic racism and that white privilege that white fucking privilege. You know, that's why, you know, w when I look at young people today under the age of sixty and fifty and and they're really upset and they march with the orange shirts and I'm go and all and I'm going, no, you you don't understand. I said, I said, what you're feeling is indigenous upon indigenous. My generation, my age group, I grew up with white people i like abusing indigenous kids like my parents. I saw I was like I I experienced that. You gotta understand, like my like I said, my father chose not to be around his children. I think he he knew because he used to beat up my older brother and he stopped. He just stopped. I always give the example too like He was a spiritual man. I I I have always had a very I've always lived very vicariously in the sense that I've been a sickly person. And and I know my father knew that. Like he he knew and so when an owl was visiting our house when I was a child, he everything he did, he did with good intention. So these Sutana men came to the door. I don't know, they were talking with my dad and they had their coats on and a rifle and They went and an hour or two later they came knocking at the door after we had supper and there was this man standing there with his cap and holding this huge, huge owl. Like the owl had to be as big as me. And the owl was upside down and he was telling he was showing my dad, see, I got the owl. See, it was important for that for that owl to be taken away because my father didn't want any of his children or that any death to befall his household. You you have to understand too, the house that my father and mother lived in when they were first married was occupied by a medicine man, spiritual man. And so when he passed away, they had my grandparents had to come in and they basically washed the ceilings, the floors, everything 'cause it was just dark with smudge. This man smudged all the time. So when they moved in the first Marina Crane (54:10.307) Week my father would have these this con continuous dream. He would dream of this man walking up this the man who owned that house, not owned but possessed that house, came walking up the road and walked through the door and stood at my parents' bedside. And he'd just stand there. And this is in my father's dream. So my father told his his mother and relatives, his aunts and uncles, he told them, and they s he and it they were he would he was told He's he's probably left something behind. So the fan the extended family came in. Now, this is a story because I wasn't born yet. They they came in and they searched like 'cause they'd washed they thought they had washed everything. They thought they had done everything. So they go into the house again. And there was a chimney and somebody put their hand there and then they found that old man's hair. So so they took that hair and they had to to bury it in a good way. And so the next night how How my father and mother tells this story is that again my father had this dream and this old the the man who had been in that house came walking up the road through the through the door and stood at the bay the foot of the bed and he and my father this time said to him, There's nothing of yours here. You don't need to come back looking for it. And that was the last time he dreamt that. So a lot of these spiritual practices have meaning. Like like I don't know if I had I think I had taped something about good intention and how when you have good intention how it manifests itself because it it's not just it's not just what's the word? it's not like abracadabra puff of smoke. Th it it's it's a collective it's a collective way of of of how people see things because like like like in like at the powwow this this young man and his companion were dancing. I shouldn't say his companion his a friend were dancing and sh and it and people were like it's it's huge. Everybody's just in a frenzy. The sounds are good on the drum. This the drummers are singing and then all of a sudden this this fellow I forget what his name was Marina Crane (56:37.774) He he he eag he lets out an eagle whistle and everybody's just like clapping like yay, you know, like like they're all in in in this whole like just like in this joyish moment because you're you're you're basically dancing into another dimension, okay? It's like you're in grief, but you dance through that grief and you're all there in the same joy because we're all related. We're all gonna die someday. So we're in this moment. And you could hear the eagle whistle. And so so he so they're dancing around and and he s he turns to the the friend who is dancing beside him and he says, Do you see that? Do you see what I'm seeing? He says he says, so they they looked and down like they at a Powell you have concession stands and he says, Down b by the arbor there was a like there was a whirlwind and it and it was just whipping up whipping up a storm. And it traveled it travelled through the concession stands like the alleyway, came into the arbor, made a sharp left, and went right over to where that man was blowing his eagle whistle. And and the the man who's telling the story, he says that was the intent of that whistle. He said, No matter whatever his intent was, it was good. Because but it c because it was in it empowered everybody who was dancing. So so when When when I talk about spirituality and intention, my father knew this. I and and I think in the sense that's why I I talk about I talk about things that I will not dwell on because th the powers that be the intention is not good, we call it bad medicine. And and so even even too when we're s living in that one bedroom house the house that ha that my parents eventually like like I said, they s it was cleansed and everything. it was one winter morning or one inter winter evening. It was cold. It was so cold. We had a pot bellied stove and that stove would turn red. Like we used to use coal to get the house heated. I was still a child. I don't think I maybe I don't know if I was ten. 'Cause we stayed in that house until I think I was twelve. Marina Crane (59:01.986) But it was that one winter we were looking to the south east southeast from where where we were located. And and up on the horizon there was a huge city, huge skyscrapers. Just just you know, like like I think if I could use a metaphor or an imagination, it would be like Singapore, you know, the high mountains or even Hong Kong. Like this was a huge, huge city. And throughout the whole evening we You know, my my father, my mother, my siblings we'd look out, you know, we'd look at it, stare at it, go go back into the into the room and then every once and before we went to sleep we took a last look again, it was still there. In the morning when we woke up, it wasn't there. And and until like I think it was Ronald Reagan, he had a speech as as president. He was talking about the United States as the the the city upon the mountain and I thought Well that is a metaphor for what I what I saw as a kid, the United States. So a lot of the stuff that I think has ha has happened is is not something like like I think as human beings we want to make it look like like how great we are as a people. No. No, it's how great creator and the grandfathers and grandmothers are. Cause I I I do not think I do not think that we have the insight into this huge this huge mis great mystery that we live in. So again, I want to focus on my father. I just I I realize like I've been on this podcast for about an hour because I just want to focus on November eighth too and about grieving and about celebrating life. also about truth truth like truth truth telling, truth saying. And and shame and guilt and and why people pretend to have degrees when they don't. why people tend to fabricate like that that gorgeous man who's just horny for you, or that gorgeous woman that you know that got away. like those are I mean it's it's okay to have fantasy or fallacies or delusions or delusional, but but who's it hurting? Who is it hurting that Marina Crane (01:01:24.504) whole notion of grieving is is tied to being single and that whole notion of intimacy especially especially when it comes to men I I think one of the main reasons too that Marina Crane (01:01:47.55) well, let me put it this way. My father died almost fifty years ago, nineteen seventy eight. So seventy eight to s to eighty eight, eighty eight to ninety eight, ninety eight to two thousand and eight, two thousand and sixteen, two thousand and twenty s like he's you know, it's he's been gone for quite a while. Like he would have been a hundred years old. He died when he was fifty two. And people in my community don't know him. Like Like believe it or not, I go to some meetings with young people and I say, This is who I am, this is who my father was, this is who my siblings are. These young people don't even know who I am. And I jokingly say, Somebody adopt me, please. Because because that whole extended family like I like when I say two hundred and thirty elders that I know, our young people don't have that same connection. Our young people don't have that connection to the land. They don't have that connection to human sexuality. as something that that has some normalcy in it, especially when when there's so much promiscuity, pornography, human trafficking, sex exploitation, manipulation, bad medicine, and and and to to try and educate people, like it it's not like my intent. Most of the intent that I do talk about is is a process of healing. Because like I said, my father was a product of white people you know, him experiencing white people hurting children. And I I and I want to I want to be truthful here. My father's half brother was horrible, a horrible man. He too saw white people hurting children. And obviously he got hurt. Marina Crane (01:03:49.72) His whole life, when he died, he was a politician. When he died, he had a state funeral. You know, he was ashamed of my father. but you can ask his children, his the male his my my cousins who are men, you could ask them. Like the brutality that he had on his children. Like what he did to them, how he like he he was just arrogantly cruel. Like he sobered up. But but he was cruel. He was such a womanizer. Like like how like I I remember him driving up to my parents' home and my aunt comes in just with a bloody nose because he sh whatever the hell he was talking about, he just punched her and broke her nose. you know, I my my aunt used to ask my mum if sh if she could take me to look after to look after me, not knowing again that You know, my uncle would come home drunk and he'd kick down the door and and there I am, you know, my aunt holding me as a shield so he wouldn't hit her. Like I s I like I vaguely remember that. But but just the whole notion that my father tried to protect his children from him. And yet when they traveled to South American India, my uncle had abused my brothers and sisters. I didn't experience that 'cause I was in Edmonton with with white people. Like I said, I the ideology of white supremacy it's you know, I'm coming from a point of view where I I don't have that anger or that hate. I don't have the tenacity to to go up to a white person and spit in their face. You know, I don't. But I don't have the tenacity or the insight to to to to rob you of your your money and say pay me because I have an honor honorary degree in compati comparative literature. Or that I'm bilingual. Like you you name whatever fantasy you know I I could have manipulated the yin yang out of you know like I have relatives from Sutina who have had books written of them where they say they they can talk the socks right off your feet. Yes I'm that skilled. Marina Crane (01:06:16.077) like really, you know, I I'm trying to give structure here of the sub of the difference. It may seem subtle, but it's not. You have you have indigenous people who today today as they're in their late seventies, early eighties, who will who will con the bejesus out of you with smudge ceremonies and everything, just like Nathan Chasing horse. Okay, because because they they they were they were victimized by white people. They hate white people. you know, they're they're sometimes it's hard for their children to even live with them. Okay, like like I talk about looking after my mother. It wasn't easy. Yet yet, you know, understanding the complexities of intergenerational trauma, especially when it's white on indigenous. Now I'm I'm talking about indigenous upon indigenous. That's my that would be my father's age, my mother's age, my uncle's age, abusing other indigenous people, in abusing their own children, abusing other indigenous people. Indigenous upon indigenous. So those children would be like the gr would be the grandchildren at age fifty now in this generation. So whatever anger young people have, it's not the same type of of anger that that my parents experienced. There's a quite a distinction because because like the triggers the triggers of intergenerational trauma, I use the metaphor for Jim. Any little thing would just trigger him. And my father for whatever triggers he had, he didn't have he there was nothing for him. No sweat lodges, no sundance. And for Jim What he did and how he talks his narrative, what he organized, the the annual trip to Mankato, Minnesota, in honor of the thirty-eight Sioux warriors that were hung in the largest mass execution in United States history. My my father could have stayed home when he drank, could have could have beat me up, could have raped me, could have had incest with me, could have done that to all of his daughters. Marina Crane (01:08:37.037) Could have woulda shoulda coulda beat up my brothers, could have had incest with my brothers. Who knows what was my father capable of? But bless my father's heart. When he drank, he drank in the city. It was hard for him to sober up. He didn't sober up like his half brother. But he was nothing like my ha like my uncle. He was n my ha his half brother was nothing. My ha my uncle was horrible to children. Horrible to his wife. Was a womanizer right to the bitter end. And and and they honored him with a state funeral. Why? Because his last name is Crowchild. And you may think, geez, Marina. No, I'm trying to give you the distinction. My own cousin will tell you of how his father terrorized him. I'm telling you as his niece. I'm trying to give you a comparison in what it was like. for our parents, my uncles, my aunts, to have had the bejesus beaten out of them by white people and how when they started growing up and having children, how they couldn't handle it, how they couldn't handle the triggers that that were spontaneous from early childhood trauma. That they projected it onto their children, onto the very children they loved and those people who loved them. Like I said, I had a lot of anger towards my father. I knew what he was like to be sober. I knew what he was like to be in the military. I knew all these things and I knew he protected me from a lot. But at the same time, the lack of support from from from even his family, like even the lack of support I have for my own family, it's it's there in every indigenous community I believe in every family, not just indigenous. But the very fact that that that he had he had it in him not not to have that that that spirit that spirit that that of that that trigger to to be imposed on on us, like on me. I ha I ha I've had to live with the legacy that he was an alcoholic. I've had to live with the legacy that people were ashamed of him because of an alcoholic. But see that that was just a cover up what it was was Marina Crane (01:11:00.523) A lot of indigenous people were just ashamed to be indigenous. And they had to project that hate on somebody. And they did it to my dad. So yes, on November eleventh, how many indigenous veterans have been treated in such the same way as my father? When they had when they were making money in the military, or they lost their status, they didn't get compensated. My father never got a pension. They didn't get compensated at all. They tried, and if they did The Indian agent or the chief and counsel would take advantage, they took advantage of my father. How many indigenous veterans have lived through that? The jealousy. Even today when I have childhood elder friends, some of them will remember my dad and they say, I remember we you know, used to coach us in hockey, outdoor rink in the cold. I remember helping put the the stove, the pot bellied stove, warming it up and we'd we'd make hut dogs and feed feed the players. You know, th these young they're elders now and they said, Marina, I remember that about your dad. He said he he we'd play hockey and he'd take bring us home and your mother would have stew, fry bread and stew for us. And these were good intentions. My parents had good intentions. And it's nice that other people who who I grew up with can give me those memories. And I tell young people, you know, it I I I regret I regret hating him because I sure missed him. Every day, grief. Every day. Same with my parents. But it it's the grief and the understanding and wearing my skin and saying this is what it means to be indigenous. There's nothing shameful about it. It's being a human being. In in a in a country where where we're not supposed to be human beings. That's the irony of it. That he joined the military Marina Crane (01:13:06.049) But didn't respect him. You know, it it's it it at the same time, did did they even care? You know, I my childhood friends here they say like when I talk about older indigenous men who who just really con white people to pay them big monies for their spiritual practice. I said, How can they how can, you know, white people do this knowing how cruel these people are? Like I use an example of my uncle. 'Cause white people don't care. They they really don't. And my childhood friend says, Well, Marina, they w grew up in poverty. She says, Marina, they left slept on the floor and I said I said to my childhood friend, I said, I never slept on the floor. Like I had a I had a bed and a mattress. Like the the things that my father was able to to get because he was in the military. You know, a lot of peop a lot of men his age didn't have the courage to be around white people. And and so, you know, he went to South America and India, all the more so they were jealous of him. Even his own brother, his own full blooded brother used to be jealous and say that my my that his brother, my dad and my mom were living in sin for having eight children. Like how diabolical and jealous can that be? And that my father had to take that, be ostracized. So when I say, yeah, I've been I've been shunned by s my siblings because I'm not Mormon, it's nothing in comparison to what my father went through because that legacy was was a very tough legacy, especially when you've been raised by a around white people and Marina Crane (01:14:51.393) you don't have your family to protect you. See, my father was sober for quite a few years and I remember that. And that's why I I hated him when he drank, because I knew what he was like when he was sober. And and I tell that to young people. I said, you know, I I wish he was still here because I understand I understand why he was the way he was. And I'm grateful that he had the capacity to love us enough that he he didn't have to share his alcoholism with us. Like the violence of it, the brutality of alcohol addiction. Or even the dry drunk of my half uncle and my and my other uncles. You know, my family isn't a nice family, but whose family isn't? So when I when people s you know compliment me, Marina, you're like I just adore you, et cetera, et cetera. I I I I'd say this to my mum. I'd say, you know, people people look at me and they want what I have. I said, but they don't realize the sacrifice and what what the price I pay for it. And and 'cause it's pretty lonely. But again, too, that's being single. That's being a single person. Don't don't try and underestimate, you know, just how much a a single person has to balance out life. I think w as women we we have we have more practice with it. I think men need to sort of get a sort of have a gist of it, but usually it's when they're in with a relationship. But but to do it when you're single and understand that, I I I tend to think that there are more two spirited persons who understand that more so than than heterosexual males. That's just my opinion. Okay, so the reason the reason to that I talk about my father is is because Marina Crane (01:17:04.749) Like I said, when people write their obituaries, people tend to flower up the obituary. And like and you know, people say, Well y I d I don't know, this person is like they gotta validate this and that and I'm going, No, no, no, no, no. And my father with what money he was getting from the military, he and we he installed indoor plumbing and central heating in nineteen sixty three on Soutina and then his first cousin, who was his best man, my father helped him put in central heating and plumbing. And the hockey team my father used to coach the the yeah the men would come up and say, Now they come up to me after decades that my after my father has died. And they say, Marie, we used to c we used to enjoy coming to your house and flushing the toilet and see the water swirling down. So things like that that people were so jealous of. Only because my father was in the military. Marina Crane (01:18:21.622) In a time in a time when we couldn't even leave the communities, he could leave the community because he was in the military. He couldn't you know, indigenous people couldn't go into the bars, but my father could get drunk on the military base 'cause he was military. Certain privileges he had and income he had was because he was in the military. And the fact that he could talk to white people, like he used to say to my mother, Talk to them on the phone, misses. They they're just as scared as you talking on the phone. They don't know what color your skin is. Just talk to them. Things like that that my father encouraged to no end for my mum. And like I said, it's it's the it's the realization that the the impact of what brutality does, any kind of brutality, physical or sexual, that an adult has on a child, it's more damaging when it's somebody with a different skin color, with a different culture, with a different identity, because it's like an invasion. An alien invasion. You have all these people wanting to deny and they fabricate aliens and all this mysticism and you call it the Greek gods or whatever the hell you want to call it. Marina Crane (01:19:52.235) You know, the the the reality of how cruel adults can be to children and and how children create fantasies or fallacies or have delusions or illusions and the cautionary tales of these fables and mythologies to teach to teach people about eroticism or whatever and today we have podcasts. Today we have social media and today we have people understanding what it's like to be to be indigenous or to be like I like I just want to talk about the fact that this is Indigenous Veterans Day. Yesterday was November eighth. November eleventh's coming up. And I want people to understand my father would be a hundred years old this year. He was born in nineteen twenty nine. And anybody who claims that they're a veteran of World War II, who who isn't a hundred years old, is really manipulating, creating a fantasy or an illusion about their life. Because I tell you, to be trained at eighteen in combat, I've I've been around military men. I've I've I've loved military men. And And I I and for whatever reason I am, the age I am, and however I understand men, it's because of my father. It's because of my father. And and the very fact that you know, that he that he cared for me. You know, he cared for enough for me to to get an owl taken away from the home. He bought me an owl piggy bank. And but again he cracked it to go and get alcohol. But the the the things that my father did for his children when we were sober, you know, b taking us to ban practice, you know, just all the volunteer work he did in rodeo, in in being on on radio broadcasting, on TV. just the things that I saw, the potential when I was a child, a very impressionable Marina Crane (01:22:17.197) child, a girl. Like how many when I meet so many women my age or or or even younger who do not have that same experience with their dad, that same, you know, admiration for my father. Marina Crane (01:22:37.729) Like it took a whole community and other people, including his family, to bastardize him. Marina Crane (01:22:46.261) And to feel ashamed of him when he walked by when he, you know, was dirty and ugly. Marina Crane (01:22:56.877) So for all those veterans who fought with addictions, who fought with intergenerational trauma, who who grew up in those Indian residential schools and had the od the courage and the tenacity to to face their abusers and to try and serve in the military. So that we could be free to have freedom of speech and freedom to understand who we are as human beings. Like I said, to this day, I I don't feel like it. This is my homeland. Even though I live in my community, I have a sense of what it was like when I was a child and what homeland was. Cause this is our homeland. My genetics I've been here has been here for thousands of years. And for people f from Europe to try and say that we're nothing to erase us because they're still dealing with their own trauma, their own parents, their own grandparents, how mean and cruel they were. No, I understand about human sexuality. Marina Crane (01:24:15.789) Sex. Did you see this one? I think there was a there was a Washington Post article that came out saying that men in their thirties are having less sex than ever before. And I think it was framed as and forgive me, but I'm paraphrasing it like framed as they're not having enough sex or not having as much sex as they would like to have. And the number has gone down dramatically over the past few decades. And so obviously that study came out and I was reading that and the first thing I thought was like well You don't know how much people are having sex. You know how much people told you they're having sex. That's the first thing. But even but even if it is true, it was interesting to see the conversations that came afterwards, you 'cause then some people were saying this is why we need to have a right to sex in this country. You know, you need to have a right to sex. I that's why I say bad branding. I think what some people were saying was we need to decriminalize sex work in in America and in the world because we've created these structures that now make people ashamed. That conversation, I don't even think I'm You know, close to being qualified to speak on. I think sex workers have actually started many great conversations around how they think the industry should be formalized and changed. But what I what I did find was I found it interesting how the framing always talks about men and sex alone. No, but it but it it never it never talks about two things. One, very seldom in society do we talk about how the expectation of sex was often set by a society controlled by men, and women were just subject to it, you know. And as that has changed, you would hope. That now the dynamics would change. But it also makes it seem so one-dimensional. They go like, women, you know, men aren't having the sex that they want to have or wish to have. And I go, like, how much sex do they think they're supposed to have? Let's stop there. Secondly, like, do they think they're entitled to the sex? And third, and most importantly for me, and I really feel like we don't speak about this enough, is people don't realize how often men are experiencing a lack of Intimacy. And the only place that they can experience that intimacy is through sex. We've created a sci a society where men are so afraid to be vulnerable with each other, to be, you know, sensitive with each other, to care for each other, to love each other. You know, even saying that as a guy, you always have to change and be you can't just say I love you, like I love you, dog. You know what I mean? Like you can't just say it. And and it's interesting because that that is why I do feel women have done a much better job of being there intimately for each other. Not sexually, but intimately. And Marina Crane (01:26:27.052) I think we take for granted how much in society men who say sex is the thing they're not getting are actually struggling with a lack of companionship, of intimacy, of being in a space with a person where they where they're sharing, you know, everything from serotonin to endorphins to what to what humans need to feel. And and I I I hope we can change that conversation just a little bit more. I hope we get to the place where guys go, I actually I actually didn't need the sex. I need it to be held. And I live in a society where it's hard to be held unless I'm having sex. Because as guys, you can't just go to a guy and be like, just hold me. True. And I I I I hope the conversation goes there, you know, not just from well, right to sex. It's like, no, sometimes you just wanna be held. There are many sex workers who we've talked about this where they'll talk about how many men will pay them and then say, Hey, can we just talk? Can we just sit on the bed and talk and can you just hold me? Can you just and I think if if we Have a little more of those conversations, a few more honest conversations, a few more vulnerable conversations. We may get to a place where it's not just about sex or no sex, it's people actually saying, yeah, we are full human beings who require a full spectrum of of you know affection and affections towards us, and in the same way, for many years. Great therapists have been saying that women have to be allowed to express that they want and enjoy sex. I think we also have to encourage men in society to go, hey, I want to express and enjoy intimacy despite or apart from sex. And yeah, maybe maybe we can make it happen. What what you think? You have benefit? That's Trevor Nolan. And like I I agree with him because part of the problem I've had with my my sister who's the seventy-three year old, her being Mormon is she's gossiped about me being a lesbian because I made a statement to her that I I enjoy being intimate with women. Not not physical, okay? Marina Crane (01:28:40.513) Like what Trevor Nolan is talking about, intimacy. And and for me, even having intimacy with men, like this year, very intimate with a man that I traveled to Las Vegas with. But the reality of it is that so far and in between, in in in both sexes, having intimacy, intimate relationships. And I think for for for women, because like for me, like I said, it's fifty years I've been intimate with with trying to be intimate with people. Not not sexually, just intimate. Like my late mother would say to me, Marina, I need a hug. Come and give me a hug. Just g giving a hug, like a like intimacy, feeling close. You it's it's it's vitally important to to have that as human beings. You know, when I say land back and I want to feel like a human being, like that's a a metaphor, you know, because because that's you know, the earth is our mother. You know, the earth is our mother. And and to to have that intimacy and not have it bastardized by by shaming that, you know, someone whose two spirit is, you know, i is is out of the r the realm of being human. The the intimacy that people share is important. And and so I so I try, you know, to say, look, I'm a female, I haven't been sexually active. Like I'm showing that I've had to practice intimacy. Or when I say two spirited people know what it's like to to be hated for for showing intimacy. Like there's no shame in human sexuality. It's important for human beings to have honest conversations of what they enjoy in terms of sexual preference. And even then too, like I used I'll I'll I'll repeat it until I'm red in the face will say. But Yeah, like the the one East Indian therapist, she says she says, You know, you can you can watch like like you can watch we'll use the analogy. No, I'll take I'll take away that that that that story, but I'll use another an metaphor. When Spock in Star Trek dies and Leonard McCoy, the doctor, asks Stock Spock what was it like to die? And Spock says, Have you ever died? and the doctor obviously says, No, I haven't. So Spock says to Leonard Marina Crane (01:31:08.553) I cannot talk to you about death because you've never experienced it. We have nothing to talk about. And it's the same thing with respect and love and just feeling like a human being. If you have never felt that, you've never allowed yourself to feel that, then how can you have a conversation with someone who's never experienced it? And that's the joy of invisible helping hands. We are given the opportunity to meet people in our lives, not knowing at what stage they are in terms of practicing intimacy. So with that I give you the challenge. I hope you have a good day. Remember, November eighth is is was Veterans D Indigenous Veterans Day, and November eleventh is Veterans Day in Canada. I I wanted to post this about my late father, and I hope I've done a good job honoring him. Because he had the best of intentions. Just like that man dancing, the traditional Sioux man dancing in the arbor, blowing his eagle whistle, and everybody's in a frenzy dancing from from a grieving into another dimension of of of celebration of life and love. And that whirlwind manifesting itself coming through through into the dancing arbor, right to the to the the person who's dancing and blowing that whistle. That is a manifestation of intention. And whatever the intention of that eagle whistle was, is is what we're honoring when we talk about when we talk about honoring indigenous in veterans. So much we don't understand about the quality or the lack of quality of life that they've lived in the communities that they came from. I can only talk about my father, who was just a baby of eighteen. I can't talk about the older men, the other two older men who were at least fourteen years older than them. I can't. I can only talk about my late father and the contributions he made to me in my life. Wopida Midakya Piyavasana, creator, grandfathers, grandmothers, thy will be done.

Violence is as violence does

Thank you for sharing this transcript. It covers a great deal of difficult and deeply personal material. Several major themes emerge throughout the conversation: 1. Sexual violence and long-term trauma Marina describes a sexual assault that occurred when she was a teenager and reflects on the decades-long impact it had on her life. She discusses the challenges of reporting historical sexual violence, the reactions of others in the community, and the emotional costs of pursuing accountability. A recurring theme is the belief that many survivors remain silent because of fear, social pressure, economic dependence, stigma, or concern about community consequences. 2. Lateral violence and community dynamics The discussion repeatedly returns to the idea of "lateral violence," meaning harm inflicted within marginalized communities by community members themselves. Marina expresses frustration with people she believes minimized, denied, or distorted her experiences. She reflects on how gossip, social exclusion, criticism, and silence can become forms of harm. 3. Indigenous identity, status, and belonging The conversation addresses the effects of the Indian Act, status loss, and the historical treatment of Indigenous women who married outside their communities. Questions of who belongs, who has a right to community membership, and who may be buried in community cemeteries are presented as ongoing sources of conflict and grief. 4. Grief in many forms Beyond death, grief is discussed as the loss of relationships, status, youth, community connection, opportunities, and identity. Aging, retirement, loneliness, and living without a partner are all described as experiences that can carry grief. The speakers suggest that many people carry unresolved grief throughout their lives. 5. Healing and boundary-setting Marina emphasizes the importance of telling one's story, documenting experiences, finding support, and setting personal boundaries. She speaks about learning, self-reflection, therapy, mental health, and choosing carefully whom to trust. Healing is portrayed not as a single event but as an ongoing process. 6. The role of storytelling Throughout the transcript, storytelling is presented as a way to preserve experience, teach younger generations, and challenge silence. Marina views her podcast as a platform for discussing difficult subjects that are often avoided. Overall message The transcript is fundamentally about survival, memory, accountability, grief, Indigenous identity, and the struggle to heal from personal and collective trauma. The speakers repeatedly return to the idea that healing requires honest conversation, boundaries, community support, and the courage to speak about painful experiences. If you'd like, I can also: create a concise podcast summary, identify key talking points, edit this into a cleaner article or blog post, analyze the themes from a trauma-informed perspective, or extract quotes and timestamps.

Marina Crane (00:00.65) Okay. So good morning. This is Marina Crane. It's November eighth and I have a guest that I have on that's going to be we're go I'm gonna have a discussion with her and it has to do with with attitudes towards indigenous women, especially indigenous women who've who've grown up like in my community. So I was talking to to I'm mak keeping her anonymous, she's on the phone with me, and and I'm talking to her about a sexual assault that happened to me. Now I'm talking about a lady named Karen who was a coup a few years older than me and I had been downtown and and I again these people I've grown up with. So so Karen had a younger brother, Johnny, and he had a partner too who was like fifteen and then my neighbor who who had who had has passed. But he has a history of being a serial rapist as well. But here we are as teenagers. I'm looking to catch a ride back to Sutina. And so I say to Karen, I I'm looking for a ride. Is it okay if I come and sit with you in this bar? Now understand this, four of us were minors. She was the only one who was old enough to be in the bar. And there were two two men, one of them still alive and the other one has passed away. He was twenty seven when he passed away. And Both of these men were serial rapists. I didn't know this because I'd run away and I came back. I ran away when I was seventeen, turned eighteen a month later and came back that spring, and then you know, I turned nineteen and here I am, you know, trying to get a ride back to Sutina. So I've explained to to my caller here that that I caught a ride and then Johnny's partner who was again fifteen came back into the into the house where where Karen and w was with her mother and me. We were s we go we we were asleep we were gonna get to bed and the woman comes in and says she says they want you to come with them and I thought it would be safe because the these two men were a couple of years older than my brother and I thought, okay, I've grown up with them, they're safe. I was totally wrong. So they take me they so we go to their house which is my Marina Crane (02:22.083) my father's auntie's house. And in in traditional way, that that's my grandfather's half sister. And my grandfather had passed away. I never knew him. So we go into the house and there's just one chair in the whole living room. Like I thought, it's brand new house. They're just moving in. And so so Johnny sits on the couch. I can't remember her name because she died with within the following year. And and and the other fellow who was I think let's see I was n he would have been eighteen. He was he was there too. So there were two two teenage boys and me and Johnny's co partner. Again, they're living common law at you know, teenagers. So the one guy who who's still alive now, he's an elder, one of the serial rapists, they were upstairs and they had lured us to say, Well, we've got some alcohol we'll We'll drink, we'll share it with you. But they were upstairs and and so we're all sitting trying to all sit on this one little couch. And the older guy, his name's Victor, he came down and he said he called me over and I I went over there at the base of the stairs and I leaned over and I looked up and I saw this fellow up there, his name was Barry, and I heard him say to Victor, get her up here now. As soon as I heard that I turned around and I went looked at at Johnny and this other fellow and this woman like to to ask for help, the guy, Victor, grabbed me from behind and just dragged me behind. And there are these three teenagers, I'm a teenager too, watching and hearing me kicking going upstairs. I could I was gagging 'cause he had me by the throat. My whole weight was against like he was pulling at me. So they get me up there and you know, like I'm scared for my life. And I said, I'll do anything you want me to do. And they had this this wine and they poured it in my mouth and they proceeded to to sexually assault me. And and I like I said, these were these were men, okay, and I was afraid. I didn't know they were serial rapists. But yet even then too I was hoping those you know like I was hoping Johnny and this wo this guy and the Marina Crane (04:50.243) This young woman would come and help me. Like, you know, really, what's stopping them from coming and helping me? They knew he was dragging me upstairs. So that's why I figured like it was all planned and coordinated, you know, as soon as I had asked the older sister Karen if I could catch a ride back on to Sutina. Now, why am I bringing this all up is because as the decades passed and and again when we're talking about post-traumatic stress disorder, I didn't know I had it. And I'd always be talking about the sexual assault. So so when when I'm talking to to the tribal pol not tribal police, but but even when the tribal police came, like 'cause I 'cause I had a concussion, I ha was taken into the the hospital by ambulance the next morning. Now when when when I decided to press charges, they I in my report I'd mentioned Karen's name. So the tribal police had to go talk to her. Now this is the whole Reason for my talking to my caller this morning is because my caller knows her. And so here I am, I give the name to the RCMP, and because it's on federal land, it's on a reserve, they it wasn't city, the city police weren't involved. But I went through three RCMP officers and it took like five years. But during that time I didn't know the RCMP were coming into suit in a questioning every Tom, Dick, and Harry about my sexual assault. not even notifying me or my family for safety. I had my younger brother tell me that he a mess one of the Sudanation men his age punched him in the face and he says, Tell your sister to shut up. And and like that's why I I'm going, why didn't the RCMP prepare me and my family for this violence against my me and what I was trying to do? So so like when I use I'm talking to my caller, I'm talking about Growing up in Soutina and having people who speak the language be so mean in a gang mentality. And and what what draws me to this narrative this morning is that I was talking to a childhood friend who speaks fluent Soutina and we're talking about my late brother in law and how he's buried on Soutina. Now my caller, her brother's also buried on Soutina, and these two men aren't aren't Soutina, they're partners. Marina Crane (07:17.182) are are are from Soutina. And and each of us, the the the loved one who's buried in Soutina, the families paid for the funeral, like we like the the embalming, the f casket, everything. Even even the hearse, everything was paid for. Suttina Nation didn't pay for nothing. And and so again, for for and myself, for me, I w I was born I was born and raised here. The same with my sisters. And I'm saying to my caller, 'cause Because my collar is Metis and and her brother was Metis. So so they paid for everything. They went through all the protocols through chief and counseling leadership so that her brother could be buried here because his partner was from Soutina. And it bothers me to no end because we're women. Like I had to defend my sister just to and and negotiate for my brother in law to be buried here. And and the fact is like like that That no matter what we try to do, I say my sisters, one lives in Utah, one in Edmonton, they've paid their mortgage their whole life. They've never lived like except in their childhood here in Soutina. So when they're requesting something from the nation, we're not asking for a thousand dollars or any kind of gratuity, nothing. But yet we still get bombarded by other women, other Soutina women that we don't have a right. To have the people we love, especially the men, to be buried where we want them to be buried next to us. When we're going to die, we're going to be buried next to them. Like it it it com even after death, I mean when you talk about Bill C thirty one and when an indigenous woman married non non status. Understand this. Three years ago the Sioux the Sioux in Canada, the Inuit and the Metis were considered non status. They were they weren't even called indigenous. So so any First Nations or people who had status under the government, under the Indian Act, if they married other indigenous people, they would lose their status. So so all this, you know, w with my caller, we were discussing Karen and my caller said that Karen had lost her status and I said, No, she didn't. She married someone from from Saskatchewan. And and like I said when I was nineteen, years had passed by by the before Marina Crane (09:42.819) my serial rapist was prosecuted and found guilty. It was a two decades. So during that time, like I said, the RC and P were investigating and questioning, and they questioned Karen. So this is where my caller has come in and she says, well, you know, she wasn't she she just got recently back to you know on the banrolls and I said no she's been on the ban rolls for quite a while because because when I was like that's almost like thirty thirty one, thirty two years ago when I knew the R C and P were questioning Karen. And Karen had was suffering from depression. She was living on a in a w on welfare in the city of Calgary and I visited her. And she was so unresponsive. Like she was really suffering mental health wise from depression. And I I wanted to give her the heads up that the R C and P were gonna question her. J just, you know, like Like I just thought she's a female, she'll she'll have some compassion to me, she'll tell the truth. And and so the RCMP even talked to to her brother Johnny and and I'm driving and I'm coming into my driveway and Johnny with his partner, who's from the blood reserve, they're on a truck and he's chasing me. He's chasing me on my car, I pull into my driveway Like he wanted to run me off the road. So I called the p R C and P and I said, This this man was dangerous on the road to me because because he knows the RCMP is questioning him about the sexual assault that happened when I was nineteen. And he was like I said, they were we were all underage. So so I took him to court, we went to court in Okotoks and h his license was was taken away for for a whole year. So anything that I've tried to do to you know, talk about being sex like sexual assault, when when when I talk to people about ritual abuse and how rape culture is so seductive, it's so commonplace that people just don't even give a damn. You know, they they just think, it's your fault. You you were wearing these clothes or you know what I mean? Yeah, but it that that's not true. That's Marina Crane (12:08.055) That's a fallacy. Yeah, so so even when when the police went to speak to Karen, like the lies she made, she she made up a lie that that the the serial the two men who were serial rapists weren't even there. And she she projected that it was another Sutana man. And the thing is that all of the like again, all of the other people who who were believing her lies believed that the man she said was there, who wasn't there, bless his heart, he's passed away. I didn't know that she was lying. You know, she and I said, how like, what? Just to just to cover up anything for her brother or the serial rapists, she created a fallacy that it was another man. And and to this day, like I've had that man's rel relatives confront me, and I said, that's not what happened in the courts. I said it's all documented who actually was there because I told them the truth. Your uncle wasn't a part of it. Like it's amazing. You know, like a it's amazing like that that Karen would have concocted such a lie. You know, such a lie. And then like to my caller, I want to tell my caller here, it wasn't until the Fifth Estate did did the broadcast about Nathan chasing horse. And that I became credible. Because understand this, the lateral violence from the serial rapists, these two men, the political involvement with their the leadership, and the protection that leadership had on these men. One of the men died at twenty-seven, but the legacy even within his h own siblings, you know, about sexual violence like this was so dominant. The other man who's alive right now. You know, he he is so shunned because understand this, and this is what I try to say in my podcast. When they did the investigation and it went to court, they had to they had to the RCMP had to document and say the findings that they had for six years of investigation. And in in that investigation when they were ch questioning people from Sutina, over ten women came forward. Marina Crane (14:29.719) and said that been that they'd been sexually assaulted by these two men. And when the R C and P asked them if they would testify on my behalf that they were also sexual assault victims, they all refused. Isn't that amazing? Marina Crane (14:47.779) Why would they refuse? I hypothetically I I this is just my opinion. I think they were either single parents who were working for the nation under the administration office and if they so much as testified they could lose their jobs. Okay. Their income. I actually I I've never spoke to you about this previously. woman from down south. She was a secretary of mine. And she had married onto the reserve, onto your reserves. And she was living there with her little girl. And she said that the lateral violence and the boun and the violence that she faced from other women was extreme. she said to me that her Her door was kicked in one night and he was raped. Now, that's a story that I was told and of course that Marina Crane (16:01.774) To me, women support women and Marina Crane (16:19.909) that I have some sort of compassion to him or some sort of decency. Or or or even that you would say that he's an elder? Well, I think in my old age, knock on wood is my old age. I think anything that I've tried to do has been out of good intentions. And and that's just j the because we I I met a lady like one of the catalysts that got me into thinking about charging these men after decades was I I met one of my childhood friends who was from Obima and she charged this man exactly the same thing. He broke broke into her door and raped her. And she took him to court. She was a teenager at that time. And so she in the meantime she bec had five children and it was decades, like it was historical sexual ach assault and she won. And I just I thought, what? What's the statute of limitations? So I started questioning and I had a I'd been the director of education and I had networked with a forensic nurse who who did a lot of home visits for people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorders, like mental health. And she she said to me, Like she she she was she was asking me 'cause I was talking to her, just like how we're discussing this on my podcast about the rape. the same story, like what I'm how I'm saying it to you. And she said to me, she says, Marina, do do these men or does this man know he hurt you? And and it just s it was just like a ton of bricks, like somebody slapped me across the face and I'm going, What? I said, I thought by telling you this story, just like as I'm saying on the podcast, that that I was healing. that I was healing because I'm explaining my narrative. And she's it it it's like it's like the dismissal. Like I did a podcast and we were talking about porn. And I said and this woman says, you know, you it look at it look at porn as if you're watching a speed race, like cars like you know, a drag a drag race where all these cars are speeding around the circle trying to win and you say, I I can do that. And but you've never driven a car. Marina Crane (18:35.298) You don't know how to sh gear shift. And and so you think you can do it because you're watching it. But but you have to like the the whole narrative as she's saying, you have to take part and learning to get in the vehicle, s churn it on, gear it up and all that. You it's training how to drive to become a race car driver. But it's the same thing too when it comes to the narrative of the sexual assault. It's it's having the courage to write down your narrative. presented to the authorities and to to make sure anybody who challenges you. That's why I think I'm so triggered when I have women that I've I've grown up with. Just like you said, you'd think women would would be there to support other women. And and it's constant trigger when women aren't doing it. Because here's this woman, like I said, she just said, yeah, there was such a big controversy that your brother in law was being buried in Sutina. And I'm just going, you know, I'm sick and tired of it. I'm sick and tired of of people not looking at my sisters who who have lived away from the community that that they don't have the right to bury the person they loved in in in you know a burial plot where they're going to be. I said you can take away their status as indigenous women, they lose their status, they lose community. What other else you can do against women? Because, like you said, you know. When it comes to lateral violence and people wanting to shut women up just to kick down their doors and silence them, it you know, like and the reality of it is like when I said all those women that the RCMP said were victims of these serial rapists, see, and this is the whole thing that's not documented, is because they have not come forward and they will never come forward to to face the perpetrators. And and so when when people think it's so easy. Like, I can spot evil. I can spot ritual abuse. And I'm going, No. It it's like racism. I said, I used to think racism was when somebody would just say, you you you dirty fucking squaw I guess I said, I thought that was racism. I didn't realise racism was so subtle. You know, that it could be d denying you a job, d dena d certain things. I said so so in terms of ritual abuse and even violence against women, it's very subtle. Marina Crane (20:59.971) And until you have a discussion, until you've actually done the work. So when you you're commenting on on my good intentions with this this elder man, believe me, this man is suffering. He he for all the women that he sexually assaulted in Sutana who probably died, maybe a few are alive, because this guy is probably what? He's probably near his eighties, he's probably like seventy-eight, seventy-nine now. And Every day he doesn't come to Soutina, he doesn't go to the Grey Eagle buffet or restaurant or anything like that. He goes you could find him on any given day if you go down Blackfoot Trail, there's a auto body shop. And he will be sitting there having coffee with with the people who are coming into the the showroom every day, talking to white people because because he is so shunned out here in Soutina. Because he knows he's been charged. And not only that too, but imagine the the the the the women who who chose not to press charges. The the pain, the emotional pain and how their attitude towards him and his family. So there's no healing at all. Exactly. And and you know, it i sorry to interrupt you, but I I also want to say that I I did get backlash from another brother of mine. he was upset that I chose to allow my my brother to be buried on Tatina Land. and he had said to me, I don't think they want him there and I said, Well, we did everything appropriately and this is where we're at. But It's all but at the end of the day he's on he's on a piece of land. He will not be by his wife and he will not be beside his daughter or his grandchildren. He will simply be on the land. And I I wish I would have thought that more through when I made the decision to put him there. Marina Crane (23:29.579) You win some and you lose some. I I I but I just I can't believe how generous you are. it it says a lot about your feelings. Marina Crane (23:43.111) And a lot of other people not healing. Well well that's the whole thing is like my sister and her children were devastated. You know, my my brother in law died at forty nine. Right. And and like I said, he we everything was paid for. He came from a a rich community. And during their lifetime together they had discussed, you know, death and dying. And he had made a comment and this is what I said to the my childhood friend a few like about a half an hour ago. I said In in the whole process I said my brother in law knew one of the Sutana men from here, a dodging horse. I said and he when he died he was buried in Muscochees. So my brother in law went to his funeral and he and years later he wanted to go visit the gravesite. And he went to he went to visit this gravesite and he told my sister, he said there was no headstone. He said he had a hard time finding the gravesite. And he told my sister, he says, When I die, I don't want that. I want people to find find out where I'm buried. I want, you know, I want a marker and I want, you know, people to know that I'm around people who love me. So so that was the conversation. And as brokenhearted as my sister was, and the anger from his family, she didn't need to have or face any anger from Sutana community. So I rallied around my my cousins and my siblings. to to get this done for her. And and my niece and nephew. Because they had a discussion about it. It's not like it's not like in the relationship where you know people aren't talking about it because some people refuse to talk about death and dying. And I'm I'm just going to That's very common. Pardon me? That's very common. And and for people to to understand that, because I said to this childhood friend, I said, I said, you know he didn't I said, there's a Sutin there are pe Sutina people buried in different parts of, you know, Canada. I said, and as nation members, d like do we know who's taking care of their gravesite? I said, Well my brother in law saw that that this man that he knew in Soutina because here's this childhood friend. So how long did you live in Soutina? And I'm going, you know, like he did. He ha he made friends, people knew him. And next week there Marina Crane (26:04.974) They're going to have a scholar they've got hi the company he worked for has given a scholarship to indigenous students. And and they've been doing that, like he's been gone for quite a while. So, you know, my family is gonna go up and do honor songs and gifting on behalf of my late brother in law. But it but it's the the whole notion that that people are so damn ready to criticize, like how dare you get you know, somebody who's not Sutina buried here. When when in reality it's like, Wha what are you doing? You know, like you y you know, with the Indian Act and the caste system, my sisters when they like my one sister married a Navajo, she lost her status. That's why when we're talking about Karen losing her status, I'm going, No, she's she's had the benefits of being a Sutana Nation member because she's lived on Sutina for over thirty years now. And when I did when she did move when she did separate from her her husband, she's had children from him, she she was suffering like in terms of mental health. She she was she was in deep depression and and for whatever like again, I can't heal anybody if they've been brutalized and they've been sexually assaulted and who knows what happened to her in Saskatchewan. But, you know, every time I see her, she'll call me by my my Indian name, Hapa. And and so, you know, I have that relationship with her. However, I do know she she doesn't have the capacity to tell the truth when it comes to the historical evidence of my sexual assault because she was protecting her her brother who's still alive. And the very fact too that her brother, you know, the notion of what he's what he did as a child, a teenager, like with women, and that his wife You know, just walks around like, you know, she I'm educated. I'm going, Okay, you're educated, but it but look at who you're married to. She's in total denial that this man has this history. And so everything she tries to do is to make herself and her her husband look like they're holy people. You know, the whole concept of of the narrative of being and looking as if you're somebody holy is is is is narcissistic. It Marina Crane (28:29.219) you know, it's it's it's very brutal because it it it comes at a price where people are want to believe those narratives but it's not true. That's why when when when I talk about people documenting and reporting sexual assault, that it's that it's not an easy thing. It's not an easy thing, but you need to have like a network of support people. I'm I'm very fortunate that I'd studied psychology and that I had already hooked up with a lot of like a forensic psychologist and a forensic nurse and and just s try to associate with as many women who were working in the area of family violence. But mind you, in that whole realm as like as I'm saying, some of these women too will never heal. You know, have been brutalized their whole lives by violence. And you know, one of the ladies I volunteered with, I I'm pretty sure we talked about her. and she's from Sixica. She's she's probably hitting eighty now. And just the the codependency, the codependency and limerence, like the narcissistic approach that she has in chasing men as an elder woman. Like my my other childhood friend, she she's up in Edmonton, she says, My my first cousin said to me, I'm gonna get you a husband. And she says, Why would I Why would I wash s some man's dirty underwear? And and he she s he says, Well, I haven't seen you with a man. She says, I don't need to be with a man. See, and so when I when I talk about healthy human sexuality and the evolution of women and testosterone and testosterone and estrogen, I said this whole dynamics of how physiologically our brain chemistry changes as we age. Sometimes we don't have filters, sometimes we have a difficult time with boundaries. I said in most of the time when we become elderly, whatever sexual behaviors we had or still have, if we haven't really did s d have done some self reflection, we bring that into our senior years. And and you know that's just the like when you say y when you compliment me, it it's it's not a question of like, I'm trying to be good. Marina Crane (30:50.337) I'm trying to be this holy woman. No, it's it's a question of just taking care of my mental health. Because no, and and I I do compliment you because you are very intelligent, you're very you're different, you're dynamic, and I believe that you could make a difference for many of our young people. When we're in a crisis with young people with sexual identity, with young people where suicide seems to be the solution, I believe you could be making a difference for those people. Well, thank you. That that's why I try and do this podcast, because I don't know who's listening, but I do see like like on like there is a graph that I I do see who's listening, as well as in my podcast. Not my podcast, my blogger. I've like last month I think I had ten thousand hits. So so I'm the message is getting out there because I think a a lot of the academics or the university curriculum or whatever people, however indigenous people are going through the system. They're it it's almost like being pushed, you know, like we they want to push through the taboos of like at the actual events that happen for with indigenous people. Like we have we've had this discussion too about like like slavery and grooming and you know, all all this stuff. Even the silence, right? The silence. Like I I remember like in the Met community, so some sometimes people see the Metis community and the First Nations community so separate. But it's not. Like I and and it's sad because those trying times of the thirties and forties and fifties and sixties and seventies in Calgary when people were trying to survive and they were surviving in such bad ways. I I I look back and people like I I Marina Crane (33:00.673) in the the vehicle with the late Florence Large and she says to me, that woman's Matea but but I I knew her and and I knew her history and I said, It's okay Florence. I knew her history also. And there there's People are shocked where we're all at. But it it it's the truth. Either you you were in that era and you improved and you healed and you moved on, or you stay stuck. And I'm happy to say that many of our women have healed and moved on, but many are stuck. And so many times I've heard in my own Metis community and in the First Nations community I've Marina Crane (33:59.126) if you don't talk about that that there's not gonna be any healing. And I I I think too, it's the it's the Like I said, it's it's it's one thing to have the narrative. So if so if I use a metaphor of pornography, like a like I said, when you have young people, see and this is what's so strikingly horrific, and I try to put this on my podcast. I said it's almost like before the pandemic and after the pandemic, because everybody was just home. They couldn't leave. And so most people gravitated to pornography. And I really think there was a shift there was a shift in in people who I I really believe there was a shift in people, especially children, gravitating towards pornography, like like looking at it. And and the reality again, too, it's like when they look at it and they think, I can do this, and the violence, the violence, like I think in the United Kingdom they passed a law that anybody who possesses or publishes pornography where there's strangulation, incest or some adult. pretending to be a minor under 16, that it's a criminal offense. So so when a child looks at pornography and and I use the the analogy of you know looking and wanting to be a race car driver, you know, all the process of how to do it. I I took a computer science class decades ago and the instructor said first you've got to get into the application. You can play around with it and then you get out. He says that's how you learn about the computer. But it's the same thing with sex. You cannot you cannot ha identify or talk about sex unless you've actually experienced it. And the sad reality of it is a lot of our children, our teenagers, our young people have been introduced to sexuality unhealthy. The wrong way. Marina Crane (35:58.988) the wrong way because there's no narrative, there's no discussion between the parent and the child. There's no interaction. Like like twenty years ago when the girls were there were all these teenagers, I I had good intentions to help them heal. 'Cause I thought if the mums and daughters got together and it wasn't because of Nathan fucking chasing horse, it was because of the relationship I had with my mother as well. I knew and even other women, like I knew women who were able to put boundaries down could help other women. So my intent was there to establish relationship with the mothers and their daughters. But but when I used like, okay, let's all volunteer, let's make fry bread and tacos and You know, let's let's have a crew, a team do this and we'll r r raise the money so we can all go to a sundance as mothers and daughters. Yeah. They they they were so lazy. So lazy and and that's why when I talk about dismantling an ideology or a way of thinking, people are lazy. And I and I use the analogy of of Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose father was a Nazi, and he talks how hard it was to dismantle the values and beliefs of his father who was a Nazi and how hard it took him to dismantle it. So that's why for me as an indigenous woman who grew up in Soutina to it's it's not as difficult for me to dismantle these ideologies of like who is Soutina and who belongs who bel who can be buried here. I I don't I because again I chose not to be in a relationship with another Soutina man or to have any children that were Sutina. I again what however I was being dismantling things when it came to lateral violence and my defending myself, so when it comes to my sisters and my family, I can defend them. I can defend them and I and n and if they're not worth being defending and if they've done things that are unforgivable, like like my brother, he's he's he he he's he's a what they call it when you're Marina Crane (38:10.657) through for the rest of his life he's was sexual he's a sexual predator. Yeah you know, so he's got that on him. And that's why I try to say to people, this is my family. I you know, however, you know, we think there's a magic wand, abracadabra, you know, you see you see how what kind of bad medicine they're carrying. We don't. It takes skill speaking from a voice of experience and you know, like, okay We have predators. We ha like I I've got them in my family. I I didn't know that until recently. I've got one that comes to my mind that just blows me away. He's done his time, he's done what he needs to do, but in my world for my own personal safety and for my family's safety, the boundary is set, he cannot come close because this point I don't believe he's healed. And that's what we all need to do. We we all have to make decisions. So I'm sorry at this point I actually need to go. Okay. And you are as always, you just raise my awareness to the next level. And you're such a sweetheart. Bless your heart that you speak from your heart and you speak from your truth and Thank you for sharing with all of us today. Well I appreciate you listening because like it's it's triggering when I hear this from other women about things that happened like almost a decade ago. You know, that and even even the fact like why is it so important for them? There there's nobody hurting them. They you know, they have a home, a roof, they their children are have jobs. Why why be so vindictive to you know what people have done in in the in the midst of grief? But before I let you go too, also with grief, like I I did one of the podcasts I was I tape recorded somebody off of TikTok who was talking about being a single female and how as single women we're constantly in grief. And I don't think it's just single women, I think it's single men too. Marina Crane (40:42.176) And even the person that we're grieving over didn't choose to be in that position. It's because we can't shut up our libido. And so we live with it. And and that's healthy human sexuality. There's no shame attached to it. There's no coercive control attached to it. The again to Emmett Crowchild was published on CBC. And he's got I think ninety days or six months. There's probationary period. He's got to complete the court direction. And if he doesn't complete it, then he will have a criminal charge against him. But so far because they've slapped his hand on the wrist and this childhood friend that I'm talking about, she says, it was a it's a conspiracy, it was a setup and I said, No. This this this man has had a history within the community, the men know him. I said, so any woman out there who's had a history, like even reaching like he reached over and tried to kiss this woman and she she charged him. So my childhood friend in Edmund, she she says, Marina, she says, the there's a law for coercive control now. And I said, Well this is the whole point. When w women don't realize that that like men are crossing boundaries, who's educating them? Like who's Who's saying to them this is inappropriate? Who's saying that you you can charge this person? And I I said to my childhood friend about about Emmett, I said, anybody for the next five months that has had any kind of sexual interference by this man can bring it in front of the courts and they could charge him. I said and I told my brother, I said it's the same thing now. People know that he has been, you know, s he had been charged. Even though he doesn't get away he gets away with not having a criminal record, he he is still it's still public because he wasn't el he was an elected official. And on top of that too, Chief Roy Whitney is going to be going to court in February in Edmonton with those those two historical sexual as assaults. So so that's why I'm saying when when when and I and I and it's sad that it's indigenous women who are keeping quiet. Marina Crane (43:03.874) Like you mentioned, that silence, silencing so that they think that they're safe. But really that silence and that lack of opportunity to exercise their narrative, their freedom to to talk, becomes intergenerational and it becomes like it's just a way of life. And I'm going, No, it's not. Un unless you put boundaries down and you say, I will not tolerate this. If you have the courage to live like in in such a way that You you know, I I like I I really appreciate the conversations we have because it it it helps me to understand that the boundaries I've placed this past year i are is important and and that I keep them up and and just keep doing the best I can to inform people of my like how what it is to live in First Nations or an indigenous community, w what it what it is to you know, be living in in systemic racist society, the impact of white supremacy that has that has an impact on all indigenous people. And like I like I said in a previous podcast, my friend in Hong Kong, she said a black American black Americans go to Ghana and they're there for about a week or two when they start to real when they feel human. These are black American people going to Africa finally feeling human because they're on the motherland. They're in the place where where their their ancestors came from. And she says, But Marina, your Canada is your motherland. I said, That's my point. I said, you know, when you have p young people say land back, I said they they want to have that sense of the motherland because the s systemic racism and the colonial constructs are so enmeshed that that even people who are educated who who have worked in within the system, like you said, even within the Metis community, as indigenous people we have so much in common. But because because of this colonial construct, we just don't feel like we're in the motherland. And it's and that's the r it stock reality. So we have grief of sexual abuse, we have grief of someone actually dying, we have Marina Crane (45:29.07) grief of aging. And I recently spoke with my friend and I said to her, How do you feel now that you've turned sixty five and you're retiring? And she's a First Nations woman, beautiful woman. And she said to me, Out of everybody that I know, you're the first person to recognize that I'm going through grief overturning sixty five and retiring. So grief comes in many, many forms. And you, my friend, are just awesome. So I look forward to learning from you more because, you know, y you're teaching me, right? You're an elder to me. I might be an elder or a knowledge keeper in this community, but I keep right on learning with with with everyone. So thank you so much, my friend. You're you're quite welcome. I hope you start feeling better and we'll talk to you to you again. Like I said, I I really appreciate it. Bye bye. Okay, bye-bye. So, that was my caller. I like I said, I was triggered by a childhood friend who was discussing my late brother in law and you know, just the the things that my sister and her children had to go through with his family. Because like with grief and dying, it changes your whole perspective and your the direction that your life is taking. And and I'm grateful for my caller because, you know, yes, aging aging is grief. And I think for me, it's sort of like a compound interest thing because like I'm gonna be turning seventy five in January and I'm still single, but I do have this propensity to realize like I've lived fifty years without a partner, without children or any kind of trigger w in terms of t testosterone or estrogen to to mate, to find a partner a sexual partner. That that like I don't have that experience and as much as I think when the aging mind, the brain, like how it wears down the synapses and the lack of boundaries and even like understanding dementia and Alzheimer's. Marina Crane (47:56.688) those things I struggle with and I I know I will continue struggling with them, but that's okay. that was part of the nature of doing the podcast in the first place this year. However, like twenty years ago, that was a different agenda. That was a totally like that like I said, the intent it was a good intent. I had good intentions. And even when I took the fellow who was a serial rapist to court, again it was under good intentions because I didn't know there was no statute of limitations in reporting sexual assault. And and nobody had educated me. There were no women in my community who were educating other women. And the amount of people who were attra at attracted to the court case, you know, took it on their own their own selves to to champion, you know, this this whole thing, like let's let's down like n like like no more sexual assault, all this. That was that was like almost thirty years ago. And and some of these women are notoriously horrible, vindictive women who are still championing and still think that they're doing some sort of justice to helping young people when they're not. And I and I truly believe like a lot of young people see that. because it's it's like I like I said, it it's unless you've gone through it, then you don't dare have the you have the o you don't have Like how dare you have the audacity to to mimic what healing is. I mean I mean that's that's the whole thing when I talk about experience. And I'm grateful for my caller because because she she I I I enjoyed listening to her stories and and and then I like just the whole notion of what it feels like to be alienated, even in public. Like for her she says, no, Marina, she says, I I s she says, some of the Metis people I'll say they don't want us here. And and it's that same thing, like me as indigenous female elder woman, some people just don't want me there. And even though I might have this insight that you as my audience will see and look at and from coming from an educated point of view or even understanding the psychology behind of what I'm saying, a lot of people in my community aren't ready for that. Marina Crane (50:20.833) And and hopefully younger people will be, and not just not just in my community, but I'm hoping all over i Indian country. And I jokingly say as the fry bread burns or as the bannock burns, because this this has gone on for generations. I mean, I'm an elder now and I talk to my childhood friends who have stories from their grandparents, and the same story like as the fry bread burns, like The humor in in talking about violence in in saying the narrative in in a cautionary tale, so that you're you're being educated. Like like my childhood friend said, you know, her her relative came and you know and said, you know, those women, be careful, they chase men. Like how many sexual partners have they had? And they're in their late fifties and sixties. And and so this emeshment, this this this in enabling and limerence and all this sexual jargon, what do you call it, eroticism, what Marina Crane (51:32.953) Just self defeating, self defeating thinking. trying to eliminate how you think because it it's so ingrained. How to dismantle that self defeating thinking. And and who has the who do you trust enough to have you have allowing them to critique your thoughts? See understand this. Allowing and trusting another human being to critique your thoughts. That's why I say shop around. There are people who are trained to to critique people's ways of thinking. And it it's it's it's not easy. Even mena horses. Marina Crane (52:18.06) I'm sorry that you had to hear that. I I I do I do try to not not like not to have anything interfere with my my podcast. It's 'cause it it you know, d all of a sudden I'm going I've lost my train of thought. So Marina Crane (52:47.171) When I when I think about when I think about the things that I have to understand or even what I try to put in my podcast, it it's it's a question of like the narrative. If again, when I'm talking like just like you heard with my caller, she's indigenous. And so so when I'm talking and and my audience isn't indigenous, I'm talking from one indigenous person to another. And and so so when I when I try to use psych psychological words or religious words like evil evil versus good or or God versus the devil, I don't use those words. y like just saying those words right now i is the reality, the stock reality. If you look at through all my podcasts, I have not once said those words. Because again, that's not cultural. It's just like swear words. i in Sioux there is no swear words. I think when you're calling someone down, you're saying, well you're lower than a snake's belly. There's all it's all metaphor. And and so it's it's the beauty of the language or the the beauty of the storytelling or the intent of the cautionary tale. And and so even in literature and analytical literature and critiques and classical just the whole nature of how to analyze what a person is saying is is critical. And and whether or not a person is mentally well in even how I talk to people within my community and if I offend them, you know, I give them time to you know, get back to me and if if not, that's fine. But but for me for me, I've had to really put some boundaries down for my own mental health. And like I said, I I was saying to my sister, I said, you know, my our father took care of our family and when there was a huge owl, a giant owl outside the house and I was just a child under age ten I think and these Sutina men came to the door and they were like it was cold out 'cause they were all dressed in winter gear. Marina Crane (55:09.064) and there was an owl that had been visiting the house, the outside of the house, and a few hours later they came back and they had this owl and it was so huge, this man was holding it like you how you hold a chicken upside down, and the head of the owl went right past his knees and he came and he showed my dad this owl. And I I've always been a sickly child. I'm amazed that I've lived this long. But my father gifted me a glass owl and I he used to put money in in the glass owl and he broke it. He broke like I think I think he was, you know, the intention was to protect me and and to gift me money. but he had a drinking problem and he smashed my piggy bank and took my money. But bless my father's heart, when he did drink, I used to just hate the fact that he drank. Because I knew him as a sober dad too. And but in hindsight I realized he stayed away from his children. He didn't want his children to see him when he was when he was drinking. I really appreciate that for my father. my sister, when my mother my late mother passed away, my mother didn't want anything taken from the house, but when my sister came and her children came, they took what they needed to. And one of them was a huge piggy bank. And so my sister said, I used to put two dollars and one dollar into this bank. She says, And when we went on a holiday, I I I I took the bank, it was eight hundred dollars. She said, I should get back into doing that. So certain things that we forget that we've done as siblings or even as as family, you know, it's it's important to to have have these hit the the the memory of it and why it's so important and why that connection to our childhood. See, as an indigenous person who's lived in like I know over two hundred and thirty people my whole life that are elders now. And and and so I might take for granted anybody who I meet who's who's a friend who wants to connect with me. I might be very flippant with them and they might not understand Marina Crane (57:34.69) The capacity of what I have, even though I don't have a partner that I sleep in bed with every night, even if I don't have children who cook me a meal or take me out to eat, even though I don't have grandchildren that that come and show me their Halloween outfits. There is something to be said about having people in the community where anywhere I go they'll acknowledge and say hello to me. And and that's what making relatives is and it's important to be a good relative. Like my caller said, like how she my this caller is such a such a grace gracious woman t always paying me compliments and I'm really grateful that I met her. She's a retired social worker. That that is her background. And and I'm grateful because I I you know, I chose not to go into social services or into psychology or even to be a teacher. I you know, that's I I I worked in those areas, you know, not as a professional, but I but I, you know, I was trained in like to be a psychiatric aide. I've worked with youth. I have worked in education, different different areas in education, not as a teacher, nor do I have a master's, but I but I do have my lived knowledge in what it's like to to grow up and go to university and actually study in mainstream studies rather than pushed along under an indigenous program. Understand that this too. The the the reality of what's out there in terms of quality education and and for you as young people, if you're listening to me and you're young, i it just like a therapist, shop around for a good therapist. Shop around with some a therapist who knows how to put boundaries down. Shop around because if you've if you've had issues with trusting people, you've got to try and trust your therapist. And even if they let you down, there's still skill sets where you've learned to trust. Because you can meet strangers who might be in your life just for a short while, but again, establishing trust and boundaries is important. Marina Crane (59:59.732) It's it's not something easy. It's not an easy thing to to let down your guard and show pe show another human being who you are. A a lot of people don't even know the life I've lived. All they see is a indigenous elder. And and that's like I said, I do my podcast, I try to keep myself alert and alive alive. okay, I'm I'm dragging on. I do hope that you have learned something from this. again, I I do I I have had some guests on. I haven't gone I haven't really gone back into my interviews with other people to even critique them, but I I sure appreciate anybody who participates in my podcast. that being said, I hope you continue listening to my podcast and understand. I I met a fellow years ago who used to babysit for Ronald Reagan. was able to pay for education, got a degree in engineering, then a master's in management and then PhD in clinical psychology. He was he had consolidated all his companies into ten when I met him, helped me get my green card, despite the fact that immigration in Salt Lake City refused to accept my green card. just the reality of having some stranger help me and to have conversation with him in what it what it's like to be an indigenous person. And this fellow who's indigenous, he says, I have my status card, a Native American from a reservation. He says, but I don't use it to go onto the reservation and access money for companies or anything. He says, I I just use my status card to say that I'm proud that I am my lineage is associated with this tribe, this reservation. And and so that's why for for me, having this narrative in in in him, like this is a Native American, another indigenous person talking to me. He's like a professor, an academic, saying to me, I don't know what it's like to be to have been you. Marina Crane (01:02:22.925) because I know you've lived in indigenous community. I can never understand what it's like. And and so with my podcast I say, yes, I've I live in a community where s whites what what is white supremacy, how is it shaped by community? No, I and I and I say I don't know what it's like to have been brutalized by white people. I don't know what it's like to be sexually assaulted by like in terms of incest or like to be a child to have all this horrific stuff done to you or them. I don't know. I I really truly believe that I've lived in a very sheltered life, all based on fear and and lateral violence. But in this whole process I made that sh conscious choice over fifty years ago. And and for some reason, whatever my mission in life is, and however I try to come across as what it's like to be an Indigenous woman, and have gone and have lived through the system, have educated myself, have lived alone and have never depended on anybody. That's why when somebody makes a critical remark about my sisters, and I know how hard i they've had to live in like one in the United States and one, you know, like like the reality of it is like a lot of indigenous men they it's safe to live in in their communities. It's a safety thing. But yet we have some indigenous men, like one young men in my community. Who's a millionaire because he didn't rely on Ben Funds, he went out and he made his millions. And and so, like, even with my sisters, they lived off the grid. We'll call it the grid. And and there are a lot of indigenous women and men who are out there. But when you have limitations for non indigenous people, white people who are mythologizing, s have some sort of mysticism or Marina Crane (01:04:41.506) stereotype or our o only intentions are to dig away at my brain, dissect my thoughts, my feelings. go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, because in in the bottom the bottom line is always and I keep on telling white people this the bottom line is is it's really difficult. And if and if a white person understands that then so be it. 'Cause I've had white uncles that I've never met. I have white cousins who are so ashamed to be indigenous. I have some some cousins who, you know, do reach out, my first cousins from Manitoba. But but it's really difficult. you have to be a good relative and and what I mean in terms of good relative is to to learn to respect yourself. That's a hard lesson to learn. But but but for me, understanding that this year I've had to put boundaries down and I've had to stop acquainting myself with certain individuals. I have a select few of people, few people that I do connect with on a daily basis. And and you as my audience are one of them. Now understand this. I know I don't know you. I know you're from all over the world. The majority of my audience is from the United States. I I do have people from all types all types of backgrounds from the around the world. I I don't know who exactly is reading my blog on on Google but but you know, like last last month I had over ten thousand people reading my my blog. So so whatever information or whatever the narrative or whatever you're studying and you're dissecting my very narrative, go ahead. It's there for it's there to for the critique. And and your honor you honour me in that, whether or not you see it. I I I I just appreciate the fact that I'm able to do this with with all this technology. With that I will let you go and in the ways of the Sioux people, Wopida Midakya Piywasana. We're all related. We are all related and someday we will all take our journey home. Marina Crane (01:07:07.426) Wopida midakya piyawasana, creator, grandfathers and grandmothers, thy will be done.