Intimacy is a form of trust and trust is an emotion that is attached to memory

This was Mike's apartment.... I don’t think so. I ran away with other high-risk teenagers. We met one person from Toronto who was my age and seemed honest. When we got to Vancouver, I was the only one with money—about $200. We checked the want ads and found a place for $50 a month, so we went there. It was basically a hippie commune house. The guy from Toronto had already been living on the street, and the people in that house were selling drugs. I was naive and didn’t understand what was going on at the time. But to get to the story: we were panhandling when two men walked by, one blond and one dark-haired. They were tall, and the dark-haired man had striking blue eyes. I noticed them and, in my mind, wished he would turn around so I could see them again. He got to the corner and did turn around. Then he crossed the street and looked again. After that, he spoke to his blond friend, who was very tall. The dark-haired man’s name was Mike. He looked to be in his mid-twenties. They both kept glancing toward me, then crossed over. I remember thinking, at least he looked back, and that was enough for me. We went into a restaurant with the other teenagers I was with. We had just enough money from panhandling for something small to eat, maybe fries, gravy, and a Coke. Then Mike came in with his friend. I could see them through the glass entrance. When he saw me looking toward the door, he looked startled, turned as if to leave, and bumped into his friend trying to get out. I thought maybe I had surprised him, but since he had come back, I also wondered if he had been curious about me. A few days later, everyone had moved out of that hippie house because they were being evicted. A few of us were still sleeping there on a mattress. Then the guy from Toronto came in and asked if some friends could come over. We said yes. Right behind him were Mike and Dave, the blond and dark-haired men we had seen before. I was shocked by the coincidence. At the time, I didn’t know they were dealers, and I didn’t know they were deserters from the Vietnam War, though they carried themselves like military men. Mike ended up sleeping beside me on the mattress. Nothing physical happened, but I could tell he was interested in me. He pulled me close, and there was obvious sexual tension between us. The next morning they left, and I thought that was the end of it. Later, Mike and Dave came back and invited us to their apartment. I agreed to go because I knew Mike was interested in me. We took the bus down Main toward Kitsilano, then walked along Vine toward 4th Avenue to a brown apartment building. The apartment itself was very nice, clearly not really theirs. There were certificates, degrees, and books everywhere, and it looked like it belonged to an academic, someone educated, maybe a geologist who was away in northern B.C. At that time, many young runaways, draft dodgers, and deserters from the United States were passing through Vancouver, so arrangements like that were not unusual. That night I slept with Mike, and the experience affected me deeply. In the morning, after not really sleeping, I felt an urgent need to say something to him. The only words that came to me were “I love you.” That moment stayed with me. A couple of days later, my friend and I were arrested for shoplifting. She was sent to William Roper Hull, and I still did not fully understand what it meant to be considered high risk. I ended up in a halfway house. The women there knew a bar on Hastings where everyone gathered. It was huge, almost a whole city block, with a long glass front where you could see the police wagons arriving on weekends. You could smell marijuana everywhere. It was an intense time, the kind of atmosphere people talk about when they describe the hippie movement. I was right in the middle of it. Sometimes someone would light a joint, the police would come in and drag someone out, and the crowd would actually clap. It was chaotic and surreal. At one point, a man approached me, but I did not want to go with him. I just wanted to go home. I went to the bus stop, and he followed me. When the bus arrived, he still kept asking me to come with him, and I said no. Then he stuck out his thumb, and a car with two doors pulled up behind the bus. Because I was with another guy, I assumed it was safe to get in. I was wrong. They drove past my street and over the Granville Bridge toward Kitsilano. I realized something was wrong and told the man beside me that we were being kidnapped and that he needed to help me. Instead, when I tried to grab the wheel, they shoved me back. The man with me did nothing. A few blocks later, police cars appeared and blocked the vehicle. Everyone jumped out, and there was chaos. The hitchhiker later wrote his phone number on my hand and told me the officer who had stopped us was a friend of his brother’s. Years later, I looked back on that and questioned everything. By then, I had realized Mike and Dave were dealers. The last time I saw Mike, he was standing with several other young men who looked military. He was about twenty-five, and I believed he was part of a network of Vietnam deserters trying to survive however they could. I also came to suspect that the man who attached himself to me may have been an undercover officer trying to get access to Mike and Dave through me. That showed me how deeply caught up I had become in Vancouver’s drug scene without fully understanding it. What stayed with me most was the power Mike seemed to hold and the way people responded to him. When he wanted something, others moved around him. I had never experienced that kind of male attention or influence so directly before. What remained in my memory was not only him walking away, but the charge I felt from that first moment when I noticed his blue eyes. Later, when Wichasta waste triggered that memory in me, I realized I needed to deal with the feeling itself rather than project it onto someone else. I didn't realize I did this for decades. Never acknowledging the profound effect Mike had on me. I also think there was a deeper layer to all of this: misogyny, trauma, and the toxicity Mike may have carried from Vietnam. As a brown-skinned girl, I now wonder how much of what happened had to do with what he had already lived through, including his experiences with Asian women during the war. At the time, I did not understand any of that. I only sensed pieces of it. I noticed his military duffel bag and belt, and because my father had been in the military, those details meant something to me. It all suggested he was carrying a past he had not left behind. I experience a truama bond with Mike never realizing I needed to release whatever sexual energy I attached to him. I never unstood trust until I had none. It was one thing to think I was experiencing Limerence but I really wasn't. I was okay to remember sexual desire but I never acting on it as one would be considered promiscuous. What I take from all of this now is that intimacy matters, but so does letting go. It is one thing to experience closeness; it is another to release it emotionally and physically. That is especially true for women, including Indigenous women, who may carry intimacy long after the relationship itself has ended, whether through separation, death, or trauma. Even when physical intimacy is gone, the emotional imprint remains. The challenge is learning how to hold that truth, process what it triggered, and then let it go. Even when the memory is decades old. Those emotional feelings are important to feel as the are the very foundation of the healing process. That is also why I think women often need space to process these experiences together. When someone has survived male violence and is preparing to speak, especially in a legal setting, the presence of women can create a different kind of safety, closeness, and strength. It is not about excluding men out of spite. It is about protecting the emotional space survivors need. I felt strongly about that when supporting the survivors of Nathan Chasing Horse. I wanted to respect what they needed, and I believe I did the right thing. In doing so and in understanding so, I was also able to release a truama bond created 55 years earlier. If I hadn't trusted Wichasta Waste knowing this was different. Knowing this energy he carried was something he dealt with on a daily basis; however, since I hadn't been around such energy trust was essential. It's the stubborness & my efforts to understand truama too that I felt compelled to trust him. It's not him, rather what he represented, Mike. I didn't need to pursue Wichasta Waste cause I had already experienced a masculine man in Mike. I just was triggered by Wichasta Waste to fully embrace the memories I had of Mike and to totally release Mike from my memory. It seems surreal. Yet, trust stemming from 55 years ago established a trust in the present. It's not doubt why so many people don't allow themselve to trust because they have not embraced and release this fear of abandonment, fear of violence, fear of intimacy and fear of being alone for the rest of one's life. Understanding, I am constantly alone so I am not nor do I feel uncomfortable about being alone and lonely. When I used to disclose what had happened to me, I often did it with women. Even when they brought their own experiences into the conversation, what mattered most was the nurturing presence they represented—the mothering, grand mothering, and validation that helped me feel held. I think that kind of witness matters deeply. It helps people speak, heal, and feel understood. Its amazing what one experience can have such a profound effect on the entire length of ones lifetime, but it is what it is. I knew Mike changed my life forever, but I just didn't realize I needed to revisit this memory for the rest of my life. It's a good memory of love. He is constantly in my mind and memory. I can not ever imagine what I consented to in allowing myself to love such a masculine man as Mike. Life is worth living and life is worth loving, so be mindful. I think without ever knowing such a masculine man I would surely have surcome to Nathan Chasing Horse's charm, but I didn't. I didn't cause I knew he wasn't to be trusted. He just didn't have thatis masculine energy, this masculine male energy that creates balance. Wichasta waste has this masculine energy like so many other healthy men whatever their pronoun are. Stay healthy and stay well..... People are depending on you...

The courage to heal is a saying but it's more than courage it's TRUSTING

In life, my life, I've learned more about myself than what I was taught in university classrooms. Of course, this process is called Knowledge and we become knowledge keepers as we age providing we learned. I didn't really grasp this concept until I allow myself to trust. I am only writing this down as its important for you my readers to understand my process. A few days ago I was asked about 'trust.' I repied, I only recently started trusting people and to their response was that of disbelief. therefore, for me there is this explanation of what trust has done for me. It made me more out of my comfort zone. sometimes we become so frigid that we don't know how we became who we are. the following podcasts deal with trust and understanding about human behavior. If your not a student of human behavior than I am not your cup of tea. some of my readers have engaged with my podcasts and other social media sources so your familiar with my interest in finding closure over Nathan Chasing Horse. I wish to repeat myself here saying not in the sense of sexual appeal rather in the case of his abilities to manipulate and control so many people for decades. I only spoke with him for a brief time and yet people assume I trusted him. I didn't! When you trust someone in ritual and ceremony one give tobacco. It's a sacred practice knowing the trust is established between you and your creator. the people who is the catalyst is who convegs your message to the Creator. I didn't trust Nathan Chasing Horse to believe he could conveg my messages like my grandfathers and grandmothers. Our memories are so great and powerful I tended to forget or surpress my own. I had an acquaintence for over thirty years thinking I trusted him, but it wasnt. Until a few years ago, I trusted him thinking it worked both ways cause what I am talking about is how two people establish trust. My interactions with this acquaintance what only one sided and of course he thought it was both. I'll explain. As I ended my situationalship with this acquaintance I transferred this false sense of trust to another man. I didn't understand what exactly was happening cause I've never ever had a partner or sexual partner to discover gender differences. I know it sounds unrealistic but true in the sense of the word TRUST. you've heard of transference well its familar yet not as intense if voilence were assocated with it. This why its important for me to define what it was that i was transferring all these years with different male acquaintances. Its better late than never, for my understanding. As I ended one transferance, one that I held onto for thirty years without any growth or movement becuase he felt safe, not realizing it was serving his own purpose for whatever that was. Wichasta waste is a dakota name I've given this man who came into the scene of my life as I released my 30 year old connection. It was one where I felt I was being used. The encounter I had once the story of Nathan Chasing Horse revealed my connection with this blog I got attention from Wishasta waste. I put boundaries down by saying to Wichasta waste that if this former acquaintance was to become involved in his invesigations I would not get involved in his research. He said he still needed to contact him cause he had reached out to Wichasta Waste without my consent. I explained this man never met Nathan Chasing Horse nor did ever attend any ceremonies. I explained what his main purpose was initially to help me with my nieces and nephews and their sibling relationhip and that was it. As he was instructmental in determining Roberta was a danger to herself and others, especially her half-siblings. This was essential when I went to the courts to get a restaining order against Roberta having contact with me or her siblings, nothing more and nothing less. Understand that I knew this acqaintance a decade before I met Nathan Chasing Horse. it may seems redundant but I didn't realize I was stagnant in my situationalship with is acquaitance. Wichasta waste had this male energy. I call it animal magnetism cause I've never been a situationalship. I was safe or thought I was safe by not beig in a relationship with men or women. I mean sexual as all situationalships are not all phyical sexual. I had learned to trust white women and did have indigenous friendship my entire life; however, this to revolved. During the establishment of trust with the invesigators regarding the history surrounding Nathan ChasingHorse's cult mentality, I became captivated by conveying my story. I started projecting my emotional memory onto Wichasta waste. This difference being I did understand my propensity to want to be around his male energy; however, not limerance. There is a difference in that I started remembering a lover some 55 years earlier whom Wichasta waste resembled through his male energy not his physical appearance. As this memory was of a Vietnam deserter who I walked away from and never dealt with my feelings for him. Being around Wichasta waste I was constantly reminded of this deserter, Mike. Health human sexuality meant I visited these memories knowing that Wichasta waste triggered this sexual energy in me. I didn't realize until after finding closure with Nathan Chasing Horse's sentencing and my efforts to support the victims of who I had direct and indirect contact with them over the years that I felt this connection. Of course, I gifted Wichasta waste a gift. Just like I gifted two of Nathan's victims there in Las Vegas. So, what does this all have to do with violence towards indigenous women one may ask. Well, I thougth I understood trust but really didn't cause I never allowed myself to openly feel what Mike did to me. I never thought this was a truama bond I surpressed all these lifetimes ago. It blocked me from feeling sexual and that I do have a right to my private life. I explain this in my podcast interacting with other women talking about lateral voilence and how we participate without knowledging the damage we created from our own lack of trust. We surpress our sexual feelings thinking we should have such thoughts and yet these are emotional memories. My memories of Mike was not of violence and I do believe that if I had such horrific memories i know I would not be who I am today. So, this is my story of recovery and relapse. It's my story I share hoping I reach a certain audience who need to know that healing energy occurs throughout our entire lives. My letting go of one man whom I knew for over 30 years to letting go of another whom I've only know a few years was healing. As these situationalship were all conversational. The majority of indigenous women in general do not trust men cause their history with men is where they've only meet men who were unfaithful. I explain people are good and that sometimes people grow apart not because of being unfaithful. It's really interesting. As the majority of women like myself have chosen to remain single without any sexual activity; whereas, men are in constant need of sexua gratification. We are all built diffently and we must learn to respect the life choices of those we meet. I hope you will listen to my podcast. I know its next to impossible to listen to the eldery indigenous female prespective. The following is such a discussion: part one of two with conversation with Michelle (00:01.89) Good morning, it's May 19th and I published a podcast earlier on systemic racism and that was with an audience of immigrants who wanted to know some history about Calgary. So they invited me. Now, I do a few things within the community, not within Sioux, Tena, but within the city of Calgary. like tonight, I'll have a meeting with artists. We usually have, this is going to be our last dinner and it's been amazing. There are so many things that... I try to keep myself as active as I can. And at the same time, too, I want to make sure my podcast is insightful. So a lot of times, you know, I've met various people and again, too, when I'm talking to victims of violence, unless they're willing to disclose personal deep information, then I'll publish it. (01:35.758) Over the course of time, I've never really given names. Sometimes, too, when I started writing on my blog, I was asked if I could keep the names of the children private, so I've done that. But a lot of times, too, they need to have that privacy. You know, people want to know who the victims of Nathan Chasing Horse are. And even within my community, like I know these young women, but I haven't talked with them and I don't feel like it's my place to talk to them. Like I said, I'm not a therapist or a social worker and I don't think you need to know their names as well. I could briefly talk about their connection with Nathan Chasing Horse and how they first met him. that's, I think, the guilt in the sense because I did set up the Wulwipi ceremonies for their moms and them. like, again, I couldn't help. I couldn't help or say anything to even rescue them because I keep on thinking and seeing Ren Leone as an eight-year-old in our elementary school gym, standing there with Nathan and his entourage and her mother. And what I knew then, I couldn't even approach them. Like I just... I knew he'd lie and there'd be an argument happening. So I think that's the majority of what I think I've heard over the years is that when people did confront him at powwows or at community gatherings, there was like, there were like fights, like arguments and yelling and screaming. And he even got kicked out of one of the powwows in Saskatchewan. So there's been a lot of angst or lot of anger and conflict. (03:54.328) when it comes to people trying to get people aware of what Nathan Chasing Horse was doing in our indigenous communities. It wasn't for the lack of trying. I think it was just the whole nature of conflict or that fawning. People didn't want a cause of ruckus. Like I said, when I saw him with that child, I didn't want a cause of ruckus because I knew I wouldn't. even stand a chance arguing or anything because he was invited. So that means he had a crowd in our community supporting him by then. And the thing about it is like, don't know anything about what happened to Ren and her mother afterwards. I can only speculate. And again, I think if people were actually at the trial and listened to her testimony, her witness statements, even her mother's, I think you'd get a gist of what she went through. And again, too, that's what I'm saying with the victims of Nathan chasing horse. the children that left with him and came back as women, unless they publish it or unless they've been interviewed and it's a public notice, then anybody can look that up. And from what I understand too, is like there have been other people who have put podcasts out there prior to me. (05:38.358) The information is out there for you to grasp and take in, but it's the nature of the beast. It's like politics and politicians and you want to ask them for help or something and you have to go through this whole gambit of questions and... people and it becomes public and then you're going, why did I even bother? I think it's the same in the same sense too. It's harder for victims of violence because you're going to be running up against a lot of people who have their own opinions of, you know, what actually happened. I don't know if I will ever be able to talk personally about like some of the victims that I met, like Sierra. I can only say that she's a beautiful young woman and has a lovely family. And the first time I saw her was at the courthouse. And after the sentencing was delayed, I saw her crying in her mother's arms and it just broke my heart. And I have talked with Lynette, her mother, and we've had long discussions. I'm just amazed at... And I've said this to the two women, just feel overwhelmed at just the process and the connections and the networking they've had to do for the past 15 years. it, it, I like, I didn't know the extent of the timeline and, but I, but I did know, Lynette had tried to reach out to me and we did eventually connect. So it was important for me to actually meet her in person as well as get a gist of exactly like, where I stood or how people saw me in, in like, or even if they even knew who I was. (08:00.686) So those were burning questions for me as well as just the whole nature of the relationship or the community that they made. It's like they say like he had 300 followers. like that's a pretty well organized indigenous community. Mind you, I think the supporters were all over the place, so I don't think it was in one group. I don't think he had that much power over people. But I do... know that it's important if you really wanted to find out further information about the victims, it's on YouTube. can go on YouTube and you can listen to them. As well as I think there are about three or four documentaries out there, American, Canadian and So you can actually Google it or search the internet or YouTube and find this information for yourself. So that's up to you to do. My podcast has been just about my experience with systemic racism, gender violence, just the whole nature of why we got into this situation or why is it that for Indigenous women that we have to battle, like we get this battle fatigue, like about justifying who we are and why do we have to justify who we are? This is our personal lives and yet for some God forsaken reason we've been pushed into a public light. When we become victims that's what happens. You've had a private life and all of sudden, wham bang, you're pushed into a private, you're pushed into a public spotlight. (10:08.44) but it takes courage. And even being pushed into the public means you're going to be ostracized, you're going be criticized, you're going to be, there's going to be so much that you're going to be combating. And that's, that's, I think the nature of my podcast is just the reality of how hard it is for indigenous women to come forward and lodge a complaint against the perpetrator. And even though you think you have support, it's the quality of support that you have that's vitally important. Now, I don't know if Lynette will ever hear this podcast, but for me, I just want people to realize, like, this woman is outstanding. When I talk about the quality of support that Indigenous women need, I think Lynette is the expert on this. I mean, the quality of support she gave her daughter, not only that, but to Melissa and Wren and other people, other women, like from in California, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, Lynette networked. As much as I can say, I have my podcast. I don't think the dynamics of just the nitty gritty of having some discourse and dialogue and just the support because it's not easy. mean, my own personal experience is nothing compared to the dynamics of what Lynette had to do. And kudos to her. The reality though is like a hard lesson. This is a hard lesson. And for anybody who sees Lynette, go up and give her a hug or just be there and just be grateful that... I don't know how to express it. I just know that the lateral violence that this young woman has experienced continues to experience and still remains supportive. And that's the whole point. (12:33.462) I think when you have a group of women who support each other, no matter the, we'll say the tornado or the storm or the angst or the bombardment of lateral violence, the verbal roughage or call it tripe that comes out in the discourse of who said what she said, they said, all that gossipy stuff, like I just can't even comprehend. I mean, I know I'm not saying I'm perfect and I'm oblivious to this. I've had to make my own sacrifices too, all because of this learning lesson, this learning curve about lateral violence. That's why I'm praising Lynette for the support she gave her daughter and just the fact that after the sentencing, the other women from the different... areas did a Zoom with Lynette and again the integrity and just the moral support they gave each other is vital in just healing, the healing process because a lot of times therapists and social workers and psychiatrists are they're not indigenous. They don't know a damn thing about what it's like to live in a on a reservation or on a reserve, they don't know what it's like to live in indigenous community. And I think that's the same thing too, when people say, well, why did it take so long for people to catch nascent chasing wars? Like I said, I don't think people realize just the struggle, just the conflict, just the perseverance of trying to get this man caught. Eventually he did get caught, but it had to be done in Las Vegas. Numerous places, like even in my community in B.C., Saskatchewan, Ontario. It was just a matter of time. mean, were leagues of Indigenous women in Saskatchewan who were rallying to try and go to Ottawa to get this man banished from coming into Canada. (14:55.596) Like that's how much Indigenous communities knew how much of a predator he was. Like, can you believe that? I mean, like, you look at, you look at Sierra, she reported what happened to her to the police and, and they just like turned a blind eye. Like it took 14 years for her to get her day in court in Las Vegas. Like imagine that. Like, you know, I think, people immigrants or non-indigenous people or whoever who aren't indigenous don't realize the the the cusp of it like the reality of of advocacy or like the What is it that? Battle fatigue it's not just indigenous women. It's the men to her were fighting to get this man caught I just, like I said, I don't think people get the gravity of what it took to have support and to be there for each other. I'm not saying people are perfect. There are conflicts with anything. again, my hat's off to Lynette for... just being a strong individual who, like she knew Nathan since she was 14 years old. I made a comment to her about his psychic abilities and don't get me wrong, all human beings have psychic abilities. That's just my point of view. I know some people are skeptical because maybe for religious dogma or some, I don't know, for some reason people are close to their own abilities but I just believe that (17:01.314) There's a great mystery out there. Why deny it? So I had a cousin talk to me about bad medicine and good medicine. And see, this is the superstition, or call it superstition from a non-Indigenous point of view or colonial point of view. But yet, I think in religious dogma, think religious people do have some sort of commandment where it's like, like the whole commandments are all like, cured to, you know, treating each other with some compassion and humanity. But in the whole gist of it, there's the reality that there are people who are jealous. There are people who will pray for bad things to happen to people that they're jealous about. Or even if, you know, to pray bad for people who they can't control. So there's so much, pettiness. But the reality of it, it's also based on trauma or some illusion or delusional thinking of somebody that, like because it's unrealistic, but yet they still have this notion that they need to pray for, you know, something bad to happen to another person. Now, I wasn't raised that way. I think most Indigenous people aren't raised that way. I do think that somehow, somewhere, someplace, people got the notion that they could pray for bad things to happen. And again, maybe you can see it in, you know, like, we'll even look at the religion, you know, like they crucified, they crucified a person. They crucified a person, what, because they were jealous, because they were praying bad for him? So, you know, history does have its historical moments, and we haven't changed much. We haven't, I mean, that was just what, couple of thousand years ago. But you know, we're still, we're still not as evolved as we think we are. And I think that's why, like when it comes to what people do to other people at a psychological level is very critical. That's why when... (19:23.03) I talk about good or bad medicine or I talk about hung prayers and things that might seem really abnormal. I'm talking in layman's terms. I'm not talking in psychological terms or jargon, but I do try and slip in the odd academic word once in a while so that I am reaching non-Indigenous people. So the whole point that I'm trying to get at is that You know, when my cousin says to me, she says, Marina, do you believe in bad medicine? She says, she got injured. Okay. And she was saying that her former daughter-in-law said, somebody put bad medicine on you. And she said, do you believe in that? And I said, it's when people talk bad about you. I said, if you believe that. If you believe that and you take it into your being that you're that bad person they're talking about, then yes, you are succumbing to those bad or those prayers, how people pray bad for you. I said, if you succumb to that and you hear it and like lateral violence, then what is it that... What is it that you're trying to understand? Like my cousin, said, you've heard that people pray for bad things to people. And she says, yes, but I don't believe in good or bad medicine. said, you do understand that people can get jealous, right? And she said, yes. I said, well, it all depends on how you. how you interpret it. said, you know, if you believe that you know your foot is injured because someone prayed bad for you or you just accidentally hurt yourself but yet the healing process of what your body has to go through is determined on how well you look after yourself. all these, again, why am I talking about this? Okay, (21:45.346) I use an example, I said 20 years ago I didn't give Nathan Chasing Horse tobacco because I didn't trust him. But at the same time too I didn't know how much he was intimidated by me. But just the mere fact that I was writing something on a blog and the fact that for all those decades that people would once in a while go on my blog I had people saying, is this blog still active? And I'd say yes. I mean, there were some years or months that there was no activity. But the reality of it is I could sense that people didn't trust me, like within my community. understand this, there were a lot of followers in my community, members of my family, members of my community. So basically, if they chose to not interact with me, then I was wondering, what's going on? You know, I never questioned the followers. I never questioned like, okay, you know, they're collecting tithing or they're donating thousands of dollars, like $10,000 for his prayers. I mean, it's one thing to give him a 6,000 for a WP ceremony, but just the reality of how many people he was able to manipulate money from. And here I am in my community. advocate, against him. You know, like I'm going, you know, take modern medicine and take spirituality and find balance in both. Don't just gravitate to one. Do your homework and go shopping. Like even when you go to for a therapist, go shopping. Just don't pick one. Feel, pick one that's comfortable with you, that you're comfortable with, that you can trust. But for my cousin, I said to her, people do pray for bad things to happen to people. I said, it's not only that, it's the lateral violence. I said, for 20 years, Nathan Chasing Horse was laterally violent to me. (24:05.356) just the reality of the impact of those women coming up and giving me a hug and shaking my hand because they knew who I was. That's how horrible this man was that they knew who I was because he told them not to read my blog. And even though I try and tell people in my community or even you as my audience, even my cousin, I said, you can sense when somebody just hates you when someone just wants to hurt your reputation. You can sense it. It's just out there. It's like, you know, it's just this energy. And I use the word energy because if I took, if I believed what he said about me, yes, it would have really like I would have, said, yeah, this is, you know, he, don't know. I like, like that's why I'm trying to advocate and just praise Lynette because No matter how hard and no matter what he said about her, I don't know. I don't know how he turned his followers against her or all these women who came forward to try and prosecute him. Like, see, I have my community. I have people who can talk about me behind my back, try and get information from me. petty stuff. And I say petty because I want you to understand the gravity of what these women had to go through, the courage that it took for them to do what they had to do. And like Lynette had said, she says, I feel like I was obligated because I knew there were other victims out there. And for me with my blog, was publishing that there were other victims out out here. And I just want to say that if you're advocating and you're looking for justice, because throughout the years I've met various women who were so angry at their perpetrators and advocating this and that. And again, they're angry. They're going through a process. They're reactive. There has to be some point where healing takes place and you have a sense of closure. (26:30.76) And that's what I hoped with Lynette and Sierra and the other victims. I know for some, it's going to be a little harder. It's going to be a hell of a lot harder because again, I can only relate to something that happened to me, geez, 49 years ago, almost 50 years ago. And even that, like that's how old Nathan chasing horse is. Okay, when I talk about trauma and intergenerational trauma, I'm coming from a point of view where I've talked to a lot of women and men, and I've seen the actions of individuals. I've seen the repercussions of what happens with high-risk children, high-risk teenagers. the reality or the denial that, well, we don't want them to learn the hard way. yet, you know, life isn't easy. And I do believe if we take a look at how we learn to trust or not trust. Now, why am I going around in circles talking about stuff? Well, I think a lot of times when people come into Canada, or just non-Indigenous people who may have just come across my podcast, are wondering about Indigenous people, and they just think, well, they're Canadian or they're American. yes, but there's a history. And it's because of that history that... There's certain notions of privilege that people think Indigenous people have. maybe, who knows? just know there's a crisis out there. And it's a crisis towards Indigenous women and girls and children. (28:39.918) I try to talk about it, I try to pinpoint it, and yet unless you're actually within a community, a collective holistic community, like it's one thing for me to talk about Lynette and her community, but her community is so scattered like in California, like I said, different parts of the states, but yet it's impactful, okay? I don't want to minimize it. This is impactful. She had to have that and people need to have that. But if you can have that within your own community, then it becomes a very powerful tool in healing. It's a matriarchal society. I I sensed it with my grandmothers, I sensed it with my aunts, and their Dakota Sioux. So my definition of matriarchy, to be born and raised in it, is part of that healing process. So when I talk to immigrants about just life, like what it meant for me to be proud to be an Indigenous person. I say, you know, if my parents hadn't gone to South America and my father hadn't talked about Machu Picchu or my mother hadn't talked about, you know, being shot at by rebels while they were trying to show a movie at a university, all the dangers of life that they took traveling on trains with 250 Americans and other people in the world going into South America were... some of the airports all they had was a tower, wooden tower. Just the reality of the hunger and the filth and the poverty and the thousands and thousands of Indigenous people who all spoke Spanish. So it was just an adventure in itself. But hearing that and knowing, like my mother describing, seeing seven foot tall Incas. (30:47.638) in the museums like they're skeletons and seeing like they were doing brain surgery. Just the reality of the contributions of vegetables and food products that's been based off of the agriculture of Indigenous peoples that have contributed throughout the world for the past 500 years. This is why I can't understand like white privilege. What, you had the Roman Empire and all these marbles and coliseums and hey, what did you contribute? Sure as hell it wasn't tomatoes. Or rice? What was it? You just contribute grain? See, corn, beans, like you do the research. The indigenous populations of the Americas contributed so much to agriculture in the world. And yet, for 500 years, it's been silenced. It's been oppressed. We've been looked down as our culture being matriarchal. It is less than. Why is it less than? You know, as women, we try to look after our communities, feed our children, and in society, that's the whole nature. (32:13.045) I even, like even when they went to India, when my parents went to India and the stories of when John F. Kennedy was assassinated and my mother said, she said, I looked out and I just saw all of these people just falling to the ground and praying. They were so scared it was the end of the world. They were just waiting for the bomb to drop in their city. Just like that. Just like that. I can't even comprehend that. Just the nature of what's happening in the world today, the thousands and thousands of atomic bombs that every country has, almost every country, which is mind-staggering. This is what it's come to. And because of that, here we have patriarchy, very fragile. We have... white privilege just very fragile. The world is so much smaller. it's like white privilege is being absorbed by brown and black skinned And the fragility of like, oh my goodness, we're going to lose this. I'm going to lose what? What are you losing? You know, when they say, our history, well, what history? You know, this is why, like, when I hear the modern news about, well, how many Jews were killed in the Second World War, I'm going, you don't get it. Look at Portuguese, Dutch, French, Spanish, French. The five conquering races in the Americas killed over a million people. the first 100 years, five generations of children. Is that in the history books? Can you imagine how many, that's like what, for 100 years, that's like over million people dying every year, every year for 100 years. And yet all we focus on is World War II and six million Jews. (34:26.124) What? How many years was the war? Even before the World War II started, they were already killing Jewish people. So, look at South Africa, or look at, you know, how many black people they murdered. So, when it comes to humanity and us having our ability to press a button and have an atomic war, because why? we want to prove that we're better than another person or that we want to pray bad for another person. You you get a sense like, what is it all for? And so when, I think in matriarchy, when you say, well, what is it all for? It's for the children. Patriarchy, it's like the woman serves the man. In matriarchy, it's the other way around because it's the woman who is creating the society and the woman who's nurturing the children. And it's also the women who go through menopause and who have lessons to teach the younger ones. So in the fragility of patriarchy and just the things that are happening in the world today, See, this is the whole problem, even when it came to Nathan Chasing Horse and the fact that he was so patriarchal. Like here is a Dakota man who was supposed to be raised in a matriarchal society, Sundance, a weepy ceremony, all those rituals and ceremonies that were handed down by a woman, white buffalo calf woman, thousands of years before the white man even came to the Americas. That's why in my own opinion, as much as white people and other indigenous people who've lost their identity, who are patriarchal, not matriarchal, want to say that white buffalo calf woman is still coming or the signs are here. I'm going, no, that's no. I believe she already came. The signs were there. They killed over a million every year for 100 years. (36:44.098) How diabolical is that in terms of prophecies or foretelling about ritual and ceremony and holding onto these so people like me could be alive 500 years later? People like me could be alive 500 years later. I have 6 % European blood in me. 6 %! The bloodline, my bloodline, 93 % indigenous came from all the ceremonies and rituals that my ancestors were taught thousands of years ago. That's why when I talk to immigrants, I'm going, we have been practicing matriarchy for thousands of years. And just for people to gravitate to white buffalo calf woman now. Just like, like it's like who discovered it? White privilege in the academic books of the universities, like in the past, 150 years? Like, like how insinuate, how diabolical, how critical, like the privilege, the like that they can do this, they can change the history, they can rewrite everything. And, and to what? You know, it's up to our young people to have critical thinking skills. And that's why I think it's important for me to do a podcast so I can have people actually do some critical thinking in what is it that we're doing and why are we doing what we're doing. It's not just a question of, well, you need a job to survive and food on the table. Yes. But you also need to live. in a community to function and help each other. When I was a teenager, the first time I ever heard about suicide, one of the young men that I grew up with, he was 15, killed himself. At the same time, that same year, my uncle shot himself, killed himself. So as a teenager, as a kid, I never knew people. (39:08.044) would kill themselves. Now today, like even within the year or just in the past 10 years, the amount of young people who've died and continue dying from accidental overdose, alcohol and drug cirrhosis. Like sometimes when I hear about it and I think and I know these people and I'm going, I didn't know they were drinking that bad. You know, I think sometimes I'm naive about things too, like that the addiction is so overwhelming that people will even hide what they're drinking in front of you. I've had that done to me before. I've had people who've had addictions and I didn't even know, you know, how enmeshed they were in their addiction. And again, maybe... Maybe that's the whole point of the podcast too, is that for people to understand, I'm Indigenous. Don't think like, don't think like every day there's alcohol in my life or, you know, that I'm panhandling on the streets or whatever stereotype people have about Indigenous people. Don't think that way. Please don't. Because really, when people immigrate into Canada and they go and they see Skid Row and they see homeless Indigenous people, like that's just a small percentage. The majority of Indigenous people that are actively working and contributing to society, it's like I kept on saying at the beginning, maybe a couple of years ago, even when I was doing (41:01.802) some social media was saying there's a renaissance happening with our young people and then there was an influx of TikTok influencers and then this past week there was, I was on Instagram and I had met some classical indigenous musicians and composers at the BAM Center and one of them died in a car accident on Saturday. 45 years old. Just devastated. Just... Like the contributions this young woman had made and would have made, and just the impact of what it is to be who she was. Like that's the hope that I have for the people who listen to my podcast is to carry that young woman's life, who she was and how she lived her life. is the renaissance of our young people. Her name was Chris Dirksen. (42:15.566) Part of the group was like Ian Cushions, Jessica McMahon, Sonny Ray Daychief, and what's his name? I keep on forgetting his name and yet at the same time, he's, anyway, they're, It's like, just, like even when I say verbs and non verbs and pronouns and all that, like transparency, diversity, equity, you gotta live it. And this young woman did that. She lived it. I like it's, it's heartbreaking that she's gone. I know all the people who, like Jeremy Dutcher is one of the other group members that I had met. I don't know, it's sad, really. Just all these young people and what they're contributing to Indigenous culture because they have allies and cohorts. I'm trying to get across, I'm an elder. That was, we didn't have that when I was a teenager or in my 30s. We didn't. So the fact that there are young people doing the work they're doing is immense and you can't undo it. As much as, as much as people still spew hate to indigenous people, as much as people pray for bad things to happen to indigenous people, we are still here. We are still here and we've been here for thousands and thousands of years. The prayers of our ancestors has power. The prayers of our ancestors are here so that we can understand how to treat each other. You got to trust your gut. (44:22.638) Listen when people talk about you know people if you if you generally respect yourself and Like my my my uncles and my aunties they you know just tell the truth Tell the truth and and This is what my late mother said she says you know when when the Sioux people traveled she said they came into Alberta and they encountered the Tsutina. This is where I grew up. They encountered the Tsutina. She said, the Tsutina were fierce people. They had rings in their nose. Now the Sioux people knew when they came into the Dupu-Turu tribes of Blackfeet Cree Tsutina, when they come in and they introduce themselves with sign language, because they don't speak the same language. But they had to address themselves. And they had to stand up and say who they were and where they came from. And they knew, even if they said who they were and where they came from, that they could be killed. They still had to stand up and say who they were. So you've got to be honest. That's how integrated, that's how much Like the effort, the effort to reach out and help each other, the effort to connect to another human being, even if that human being is going to kill you just by addressing who you are. See, I, the genocide, the amount of killing that took place, it just... The whole impact. So that's why, you when people talk about good or bad medicine and how people pray bad for people. Yes, for 500 years we've had Europeans, like I said, French, Dutch, Portuguese, English. Did I say French? French? Five anyway. Spanish. Praying for bad things to happen to us and actually doing it. (46:46.518) We're still, there are still people out there praying bad for us. Especially praying bad for Indigenous women and girls and children. And they take them into their foster homes, teach them their language, whatever language it is in that foster home. Never thinking that these Indigenous children are not, you know, like that they're less than. No, we don't have sovereignty over our children. We don't. And as much as Indigenous people wish to think, well, I'm a social worker, I'm working for child and family. Yes, but you're working for the province. You're not working for the chief and council. You're working under an agency that is governed by the authority of patriarchy. So again, how much of our traditions and values are being honoured? by non-Indigenous people if they refuse to even listen. Just look at what happened. Just look at what's happening in Alberta. What, 300,000 people wanting to separate from Alberta? Why? Because they feel they're being treated unfairly? Why? Because what, somebody killed all their families and put them in communities that they don't like and they can't leave those communities? Like how outrageous. Or like what? They're not allowed to vote or have a voice? (48:27.732) All the problems and the historical evidence of, we'll say, religiosity, praying for bad things to happen to Indigenous people, has been going on forever. And I truly believe that, you know, if we believe them as Indigenous people, if we believe them, then we succumb to them. And I hope we're stronger than that. And I do hope. You know, if you have thoughts of suicide or just wanting to end your life through drinking or alcohol or gambling, I'm susceptible to that. That we have the strength. we have the ability to stop when we're overreactive. I mean, it affects us every day. It affects us every day. I know some people are so passionate about giving advice to Indigenous women and saying, you can walk away from those womanizers, those white men who are womanizers, who blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, I... Even that's like mansplaying, isn't it? You know, when somebody says, you need to live this way. It's a choice. It's a freedom of choice. And sometimes I think people just don't like it when you choose not to live or make the choices someone else has made. (50:06.518) So again, like I said, if you wanted to know more about victims and the impacts they've had. (50:28.248) You know, mean. (50:34.542) Throughout my podcast and throughout, I tried to prepare as much as I could before the jury and even during the jury and the trial and even speculations on things. know, a lot of things that I'd speculated on haven't even been dealt with in terms of the trial. Like, no, there's just so many things. Like, Nathan Chasing Horse can appeal. But at the same time, like look, he's even saying he's innocent. So of course there's still gonna be a hell of a lot of people who think that he doesn't deserve life in prison. (51:20.8) I don't know, I think... I don't, the words coping and resilience seem to be coming up quite a bit. And I don't know if the, like for me, how do you cope with living with somebody or knowing somebody for decades? And how do you become resilient knowing that you're enmeshed in this behavior of this person? Like it'll take a lifetime of deconstructing and analyzing like your own self-reflection. You've got to have self-reflection to heal. And I'm grateful, like I said. You can go on YouTube, you can do whatever, you can go on social media, you can research and you can find out like the people who followed Naysan Chasing Horse. It's important for them to write books, it's important for them to tell their stories. It's important for them to just be angry. You know, like be angry. It's okay to be angry at me, to be angry at other people. It's a process. It's a process of healing. And I can see it, like I saw it when I went there. I wouldn't have, if I hadn't gone, I wouldn't have witnessed it. I wouldn't have seen it and I wouldn't have felt it because I'm the observer. I can relate because I've gone through that night and again, indirectly, I've been exposed to (53:08.78) to his lies. But yet at the same time, there's an underlying common factor of what we as Indigenous women have gone through. And we have to stop projecting lateral violence on people. We can't fit people in a heterosexual framework of patriarchy. The diversity and the healthy human sexuality of being binary. Like... You know, I just grieve. the renaissance of our young people. (53:58.274) the reality of the loneliness of getting older and not having support. See, when I listen to non-Indigenous women who've been married and have raised their children or they've been divorced or they're widowed, and they come from a patriarchal society, they either gravitate to religiosity or try to find some community that will support them. But yet they've spent decades serving their partners, doing the dishes, washing, raising their children. They've been serving their partners. And then once their partners are gone, like they feel lost, anxiety, they're going insane. (54:55.158) See, I don't have that because I'm matriarchal. Sometimes I don't think people understand that, for me, even with the chief and council, and because they're 50 % female and 50 % male, and just the respect, I don't know how to explain it unless you've actually lived it or embrace it. When I went into a community of immigrants from Africa the other day, and they were all speaking their language. You know, I'm going, they spoke their language. You know, I'm going, yes. I said, do see why I don't speak my language? Do you understand the history of genocide, the history of gender apartheid, the history of trying to erase the identity of Indigenous women and children that we don't even know our language? Like I... I walked into that room and could just feel respect. could just feel respect. Even the majority of the audience were men, but I could feel that respect because I'm matriarchal. That same respect that I get within my community, I felt it in that community that I visited yesterday. I don't know how to explain it. I just felt it. My white friend in Montreal, she said, what do you mean? How did you feel it? I said, I just felt respected. I said, even like they came up and shook my hand, like it was like a warm embrace. It was like, I don't know, that's the only closest thing I could get to the realization. Even it was like a glow. If energy had a glow, I'd say the room was glowing. (56:59.874) But that's my analogy of respect. And I've never felt that in... Like I've never felt that before when I go to meetings in the city. So it was a unique experience and I'm grateful that there's a potential that they're gonna invite me back, which I will accept. (57:30.572) But again, I'm not trying to minimize patriarchy. It's all over the world right now. I I grew up in it. I grew up in it in the sense that I had to go to school in it, come home at night into matriarchy, go into the city patriarchy, back and forth, back and forth like that as a child, as a child. And some people say, well, it's one eyed or two eyed. And I'm going, no, you don't get it. born in it and you're raised in it. I know a lot of Metis people, mixed blood people who have just lived in the city under patriarchy try to identify with their indigenous roots, yet there's the identity of like this is how it is. Yes, this is how it is for mixed blood people who are raised in patriarchy. It's not the same for Indigenous people who've been raised in matriarchy, who are male and female, who follow the traditions of their family, their individual family group. And just to have that respect for that family, I think it's a deeper connection. Matriarchy has a deeper connection. Some people might see it from me as being like, oh, well, she's ordering me around. I got to get her tea. But she wants this or she wants that. And I'm going, that's... And they get tired of it go, I'm not going to treat you like that. And I'm going, okay, well, that's fine. You can go and do what you want. But, you know, if somebody wants to give me, get me tea and all this stuff, then... and show me that kind of respect, okay? See, it's like volunteerism. (59:32.654) I've served people my whole life. (59:41.134) See, matriarchy comes with a price. But if you see it as a price and if you see it as a burden, then, you know, like patriarchy, you know, when individualism where female services her husband, raises his children, and then he leaves and she's wondering, like, she's all alone. Most older women too now are finding that they just don't want to ever be in a sexual relationship anymore or even date or just It's a different world, I think, for older women in any culture, in any situation. But I do find myself in a unique situation because I'm in my own home. I have a beautiful view of the mountains. (01:00:46.414) I don't know how I am happy. I mean, I'm lonely and alone, but I'm happy. And again, you know, I have my own community and I have my own support and this is my life. I hope that anything that I can contribute to my podcast or have people give some sort of insight in what it is to be Indigenous. and to be an elder, and to be a vocal elder. Understand that too. See, this is the whole point that I'm trying to get across. Even when I talk about binary and I talk about art and culture, just the creativity that's out there. I can see it and I can embrace it, but I want you to understand a lot of people my age don't and can't because of past trauma. The beauty of Indigenous renaissance is lost to some Indigenous people because of our inability to not heal. our inability to suppress our feelings so that we aren't unable to heal because we're too scared to feel. (01:02:19.136) as hard as it is and as hard as it was. (01:02:25.654) I'm just grateful. (01:02:29.728) I am so grateful. (01:02:38.518) It's important to protect your heart, mind, spirit and soul on a daily basis. As John Trudell had said, he's a Su philosopher. We live in a time where people are eating our spirits, our energy. So protect yourself. (01:03:02.806) Encircle yourself in a bubble of protective, reflective, healing energy. (01:03:10.574) Embrace it. Feel it. Feel that respect and love. At the same time release whatever is not serving the higher good that you have a difficult time to release. But you're protected so you're able to do it without anybody criticizing, violating you, condemning you, trying to guilt you into something that... They want you to fit in. Release that. Self-defeating idolization. That's self-defeating illusion or delusion. part two of two in converstation with Michelle (00:05) Well, thank you very much. I'm also well with respect that I received coming through the door. I'm originally, I actually am from Sioux, Tinnah, which is located in the southwest quadrant of the city. I've gone to school my entire life here. And in order to sort of make you feel comfortable or to make myself feel comfortable. My grandfather was David Crowchild, named after Crowchild Trail, and I'm 74 years old. So 74 years ago, they started putting up fences around Sioux Falls. We had many of the agents and we couldn't leave the reserves. Now, part of the discussion that they asked me to talk about was why is it important to understand Indigenous history? And the challenges that Indigenous people have faced through people not being empathetic or even wanting to understand when they come into Canada. I think a lot of times when you all come into Canada, you have preconceived notions of us probably living in igloos and teepees and that we're very uneducated and that we rely on welfare. You're going to hear a lot of that on social media by various Yemen nation as people because there's a lot of anger in terms of systemic racism. I'm what they call the knowledge keeper. And I wanted to just let you know that when I was 10 years old, well, first of all, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, Rajmohan Gandhi, came to me from India when I was like about eight to 10 years old. And I was looking for a lover in BC. and he met my grandfather, who was chief at the time, and ⁓ he was impressed with my father. My father's name was Leonard Crane, and he had served in World War II. He invited him to South America and India, and so my father and mother both traveled at that time when I was eight and ten. And because of that, the stories that they brought back of the world, you have to understand that ⁓ Indigenous people here, we only we did like I saw my first white person when I was five years old. I mean to understand like the city of Calgary is over a million people in the 70s in the Sioux Falls, the cultural shock of people coming into the city and the way they were treating our men. go with race and you have to understand too my father and my uncles were cowboys. and but they took a lot of really hard jobs in the city and a lot of there's a lot of alcohol and drug abuse because the majority of my parents with my mother which was five years old was from the residential school and my father as well and also my grandmother so in punishment they ⁓ my father ran away and in punishment as a child they caught him and they put him into an addict in the cold sleep with the dead bodies of Indigenous children. My mother could read and write the Dakota language because we originally came from the United States of America and she was part of the mass execution of Dakota people from Abraham Lincoln. They followed 38 Sioux people and they chased the Sioux to Canada. So in Canada you have nine Sioux tribes that are exiled from the United States. Now, I'd you to understand too that 500 years ago, when the settlers first came in here, there were millions of Indigenous people. They estimated that for the first 100 years, they killed five generations of Indigenous children. That's 125 million children that were killed by the colonizers and the Americans. And that's the Portuguese, the French, the Dutch, the English, and the French. Now, again, What was the contribution of Native Americans in society here? Well, we contribute at least 60 to 70 % of the vegetables that you consume today. Corn, ⁓ beans, like you can Google it, you'll find it there. So my parents went to South America when I was eight and they went to the Los Angeles Machu Picchu and they saw these huge monuments that Native Americans had built. And just to understand now, Only in this past 20, 30 years have they started to talk about the contributions of Native Americans in the society here. A lot of the times there was no curriculum in schools. So for me, a lot of the things that I've learned and a lot of the responsibility I had to show my own self, my own self-respect, my own identity was because of the stories my parents brought back from South American India. the thousands of people they saw. When my father and mother were in India, ⁓ John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And she said that there was a huge crowd in the market. And she said the Indians just fell to the ground and started praying because they thought it was the end of the world. So the impact that the United States has had on the world in itself is phenomenal. Now, that being the case too, understand this. For generations, they've been trying to kill indigenous people, especially women. In South Dakota, the United States, there is a town that was created just by settlers to hide Dakota Sioux women were pregnant. And they would track them down and gut them and take out their unborn babies and take their scalps as well as the bones. When you see a Sioux woman dancing in the powwow, you will see her wear a knife. and you'll see mom since the little babies. When I worked on the movie, said very my heart and needed me and the whites and Salts were asking about the oral history of the Dakotas and people. I had to tell them how my parents, my great grandparents, my great grandmother was like five years old and her parents were in their mid thirties. When they came across through Montana up until Alberta, into northern California, into Saskatchewan, down into Manitoba. They took all the Sioux people out of the state of Minnesota. There were bounty scalps on their heads. Now, when people ask me about customs and traditions and the loss of identity, we ⁓ as matriarchs, I was raised a matriarch because I lived in Western Canada. The majority of Indigenous people who live in the Eastern Canada have 100 years more experience with systemic racism. So when we say in Western Canada, we're very family oriented, it's because we still believe in community. We still believe that we're not individuals, we're holistic and collective. And because of that, we have a chief and council. And because of that, we try as a community to heal ourselves. And through all the genocide and through all the propaganda to make us ashamed of who we are, we've healed ourselves. We continue healing ourselves. much of the practices that I do talk about, ⁓ I could create like a really nice fairy tale story, but see, Disneyland has already done that for you. And probably when you came into Canada, they weren't that much. many people who could educate you about the Indigenous peoples in Canada. There are hundreds of us, thousands of us, and we have different languages, and again, different ways that we were raised. Now... ⁓ The problems as Indigenous women for what I've grown up in ⁓ is called misogyny, is called gender apartheid. Indigenous women couldn't marry who they wanted to marry. They would have to lose their status. Because we're tribal people, when the women married white men or any other man that wasn't Indigenous, we would lose connection to our communities. So when I talk to a white man, and in my Sioux language it became a wasichu. When I talk to a wasichu, and I say to them, do you know the history of Indigenous women? I said, do you know in Canada, the Indigenous woman couldn't marry who she wanted if she married a white man? And if he was racist, she had to put up with him? I said, and she'd have children with him? And then if she wanted a divorce, he'd take her children. She'd have no community, no family, because she was disowned. The government set this up to destroy our family units. And so when I talk to a white man and I say to him, those children, mixed blood children, they grow up being ashamed of being indigenous. And some of them will admit that their fathers are racist. And some of them will admit that their fathers will be racist until the day they die. Now those young people are advocates today and they try to connect to their Indigenous communities. So a lot of times when you see Indigenous people in Calgary, most of the time you'll probably see them downtown homeless. Understand this, the largest population of Indigenous people in North America is in southern Alberta. You don't see us because we go back to our communities, like at Sixth of Cup, Sudina, Stoney's. and then take it like down south with blood research. The majority of us who come into the city come in to work where they go home at night. Those 40,000 or 50,000 indigenous people who live in Calgary or across Canada are the people that you see. They're not from within the community of the land from here. They've come into the city just like you. Now the majority of times when You meet Indigenous people, you have to understand that they come from different backgrounds, different languages and different customs. ⁓ I just finished coming back from the United States last week, two weeks ago. I had for 20 years, I had written on a blog and warned somebody about a medicine man who had come into our communities who was sexually assaulting our girls. We traveled through Alberta, BC, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Ontario, California, and it did these horrific things to our children. And because there were a lot of people, Indigenous people who live in the cities who had no connection to their communities, he prayed on them. So they wanted to know whether it was Indigenous. That means our Indigenous children lost their identity and wanted to know who they were. And you will see that I grew up in Sudan and there were a lot of mixed blood people who were ashamed to be indigenous. It wasn't until like until the 60s, couldn't, indigenous people couldn't And indigenous women couldn't marry who they wanted to marry. I think until the 1990s, the 1980s, that women could start. making applications to move back home onto their reserves. This gender apartheid is still entrenched in our communities. It's called ⁓ infantilization, but the Indian agents, the white people who came into our communities and monitored us, we couldn't leave our communities unless we had asked to leave. the denial of all the children that they killed in those residential schools is still there. Now, I'm a survivor in residential school, but I'm also a survivor of day school, Indian hospitals. You have to understand the segregation that took place in Canada. I may sound like I'm well-educated, but I've been in places and I have been there. But sometimes... A lot of people who are my age as elders will not speak up. And so you will very rarely find someone who's Indigenous around my age who has this knowledge that I'm talking about. But because of that, I'm really honoured and grateful to have been invited here to talk because as people who have a whole country of your own, who have a rich background of where you lived, the villages and communities and towns that you came from. You understand your culture, you understand your language, you have families, you have connection, you have something. And for you to understand how fragmented Indigenous people have been for the past 500 years. Like, understand this, this country was based on stolen land. And it was taken from us. at a very big price. Do you know, with an Indigenous moment, because we don't have sovereignty over our children, our programs for child and family are based on provincial standards. So in our communities, we don't have sovereignty. So when a mom, a single mom, who has five kids, she dies, all of her children are put into the social services system and are brought into the City of Calgary. for foster parents to raise who aren't Indigenous themselves. The average age for Indigenous children to be trafficked in the city and in Canada is 14 years old. They target our Indigenous children, they target our girls because the people who are trafficking, and it's mostly women who help traffic our girls, and they're not Indigenous, and some are. The reason they do that is because we are able to dress up as Mexican, Chinese, you know, any ethnic background, Indigenous people can be ⁓ dressed up to play in trafficking. The horrors and the understanding of what it is to be like a process of Rooming and trafficking is horrific. I know there are children here, so I won't describe that process. But I will tell you that we're not allowed, we don't have money to have group homes or shelters for our children when they're apprehended. So the majority of the things that we try to do and what you hear on the news in terms of people say our children are falling through the cracks. That's because of systemic racism. The government has set this up and even though you may think that, well, they're getting educated, ⁓ a lot of times when our children come into communities, they learn Vietnamese, they learn Italian, they any other language the cost of parent has. And so when they want to come back to our communities, it's really hard for them. So even though you're in a free country and you believe in the Disneyland or the Hollywood Wild Wild West, it's very hard ⁓ for me to sit down and talk to someone when they're asking me questions about privilege because I know what white privilege looks like. I know what it is to try and find a white ally. The majority of times any stories Indigenous people have to say means nothing if it's coming from other Indigenous people supporting us. The story I'm talking about happened three years ago. The show, CBC did a program talk where they arrested ⁓ Medicine Man and they put it on the Fifth Estate, which was a national TV. And I was featured in that. Twenty years I had warned people in Canada and the United States. They took a white organization like CBC to put on the news before people listened. That's what you call systemic racism. If a Native program, APT, were to broadcast that same story, it wouldn't have the same impact. So for me, as an Indigenous woman and a person of colour, when it comes for me to make a point across, I have to go to a person who's white-trigliged for them to validate my story and for them to get something moving. My entire life, like I said, my grandfather was David Crochall after the Crochall Trail. My father worked with the mayor of Calvary. My uncles and them took part in the Calvary Stadpede. You know, when the Calvary Stadpede came in and when they first started, they used to dress me up. I was like a zoo animal. In the Indian village, they'd take pictures of me. It took a long time for me to even want to my photograph taken. the oil rigors in northern Alberta. Understand, Alberta is the third largest oil producer in the world. So when we had oil workers coming in from northern Alberta to come to the Kelmish Stair to rest and relaxation, they came in to be with our indigenous girls. So prostitution has been quite historical. because we did not have social services. We didn't have anything to feed our children. And so whatever means we could to make sure our children were protected, we did it. So every time when you have a Calgary stampede, think out of every doll that's being spent during the year, 75 cents of it is made from tourism that comes into the city to celebrate that Wild West show. produced by oil companies and those oil companies understand to the Indian residential schools, when they first started to do this was in the 1860s on the cloud trail of Dearfoot, you'll have an industrial school where they recruited young boys to educate them into farming, husbandry, anything. Then they realized, they're gonna go home and they're gonna marry indigenous girls and those girls are gonna turn them back to savages. So they said in parliament, it's written in parliament that we're going to educate Indigenous girls who will start in residential schools. So in southern Alberta and Alberta has the largest Indian residential schools in Canada. You've got to understand big business and big oil. They did this to us. My late uncle died 50, no, 49 years ago and he was quite radical and quite proactive. He says the white men created this problem, let them solve it. So a lot of the things that you see in Indigenous people on the streets in Calgary is only a fraction of what we're living with. For me as an Indigenous woman, I've never married, I've never had children. The majority of the women that I've grown up with I've had to bury, either from drug abuse or on the streets. The systemic racism and the gender apartheid is still alive. The majority of our women are missing and murdered. Last year, the Suchina police opened a sting operation and they went online saying they were 15 year old girls, 15 year old native girls. Within a span of 24 hours, they had 5,000 hits. Can you imagine that? 5,000 VIN. went online trying to buy sex from a 15 year old indigenous girl. And out of that they arrested 10 men. So however you think, however you see indigenous women and however you think that our lives are not worth it, believe me. We are matriarchs. We are matriarchs and we are respected. Whether you come into my community and you ask people who I am, they will tell you. Why? Because they know I have a voice. They know I've been advocating my whole life. I try and educate people. I grew up my whole life with white people. You know, it wasn't easy being called a squaw, like, and burner. Wasn't easy, you know, getting good grades and then jealous of being because they thought I was too stupid to be intelligent. I did a presentation in front of some academics at the University of Cal. And I was saying when my mother was having children, she was having a litter of puppies. And one of the white academics started laughing in the audience. And I said to her, you know what, my mother thought that? She because she was raised by white people in those Indian residential schools. They never hugged her, never praised her. They treated her lower than a dog. A dog was treated better than a dog. They treated my mother like a father. When my grandmother used to try and visit my mom when she was just a child, she used to braid her hair. She says, it broke my heart when they took my grandmother into the basement and had her sleep on the bed of straw. You know, throughout my whole life, the systemic racism and you'll feel it and you'll sense it. You've probably already experienced in the hospitals, the police system in Calgary. I'm really grateful. That that you've come into Calgary. When I was growing up in Calgary, I said just wait. There'll be people with dark skin people coming in to the city who will hear and feel the way I felt. And it makes white people, they call it fragility because they feel uncomfortable because they're not the minorities. And in order to educate people that cause a ripple effect of what systemic racism does, I'm grateful to have been invited and to talk about the history. The history that you probably have never heard. And unless you Google it or you meet somebody like myself who, ⁓ I'm going to lie about it. I'm just going to tell you the truth. Because I'm a matriarch. My, the whole system, the whole system of a woman and how we raise our children has been handed down for thousands and thousands of years. You know, we're whatever colonizers of patriarchy in the European culture has, it's not as valuable as being matriarchs and being tribal. I just wanted to say that message to you again, I'm very grateful and humbled to be in your presence. ⁓ I don't know where they got my name to come and talk, but thank you very much. And if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer.

In my opinion, Fawning is historical trauma unresolved

Okay, so I'm not going to mention your name. I'm just going to say what today is. What may the... What's the date today? (00:09.922) 19th? 19th? Well, it's a Wednesday the 20th. We're a day behind. Okay. Okay. So what I was saying is like, haven't the chief and council, like my tribe, my domain, my dominion, my everything, they've never helped me with rent, nothing. You know, when I lived in the United States, I worked full time and I went to school full time. paid rent. I had to make sure that if I had a whole bunch of roommates, so the cost to rent was so that I could live and pay my tuition. And then 20 years ago when Nathan Chasinghors comes into the community and he takes these child brides, and at the time he wasn't passing them off as child brides. You know, like claiming he was a youth worker and that he was helping these young women and they were going to be like supermodels. You know, like his like I think his one of his children, one of his many children is a supermodel. So back in the days, that's what he promised. And and the thing is, one of the girls and I won't say their names, one of the girls, she ended up with Steven Seagal and and just like Jeffrey Epstein, you know, she was He had these women in his home, like doing massages and shit like that. And how I know that is when I went down to Las Vegas and I met some of the survivors who also know these young girls from Soutena. Like that's, you know, I know. And so like, I think just the fact that he was trafficking, like I think one of the ladies just had it. because she was the one who had been introduced to Steven Seagal. think she just had it. And she moved back and then she was instrumental too because it was one thing that Nikki, one of the girls from Sioux, Tennessee, she was 14 when she met Nathan and then the following week when he started picking her up at the school, she turned 15 and he videotaped her. When he took her to a motel, he videotaped her. (02:35.95) And the police had all the records, like the text messages he sent her. Like very provocative text messages. And so Nikki had, and again, out of all the victims, Nikki is the only one who at the very beginning tried to charge him. it did, like she, I think for about five years, she collected all the information. And so by the time the other girl who he had taken, see, he didn't take Nikki. She wasn't part of this group of young women that... She was just a student because he was going to school out here talking. And so he had a different audience as well. Any place he put his creepy little hands, like that's where he would... find his victims. yeah, when he took these young women, various leadership made sure that their rent were paid for. if management disagreed, they would be threatened with their jobs. Like there were a couple of band counselors that went into housing and said, you have to pay their rent or you're going to lose your job. And this went on for years. Like I said, by 2015, when the one young woman came back because she wasn't, obviously she was, the whole dream about being a supermodel was just like a hoax. She came back and then I think the story she brought along with what Nikki had presented five years prior was instrumental in getting him banished. And so our chief, our chief today, Back then he was working with corrections. And so the chief and council were in the process of banishing him. But understand this, this really divided a lot of people because the leadership, even, know, like the head leadership was still paying for the rent and for these people because their last names were one spot. Okay, so. (05:02.518) It was really like, almost like the likes it polarized the community. And for whatever reason, bless the, the chief and council at that time, they were able to BCR do a band council resolution to get Nathan banished. And they did, but that's because of the two victims that came forward, Nikki and the other lady who had left and, know, had been jilted and coerced into like being trafficked, allegedly trafficked. Like I said, the survivors said, you know, she was treated like how Epstein treated those women in his compound. Well, this was with Steven Seagal. But then everybody was just like so proud that she was with this actor, like he was going to take her places. And that's the guys that Nathan Chasing Horse used. Like he had connections. Like even when he left, there were photos of him in Hawaii. You know, he'd... ask, he'd have his children, the children who he had still connection with, their mothers, fly his kids to meet him. And then once they found out what kind of person he was, because they were reading my blog, they made sure that anytime their children were with him, that there was an adult where they were accompanied with, they accompanied their child with him, with them, to visit him. So everything was really guarded and even like one of the survivors, says to me, Marina, she said, for decades, we were drinking the Kool-Aid. Everything he told us about you was a lie. And I said, well, I sensed he was sabotaging me, the lateral violence. I got a lady from Oregon telling me she was going to hack my computer because Nathan wanted her to hack my computer over my blog. And so the effort to stop me from publishing anything online had been going on for decades. when I went down on November 11th, not November, March 11th, and I met the ladies from California and Montana, like they were Arizona and New Mexico, and they were grateful. They shook my hand, gave me a hug, and elder, thank you for putting this blog out because we read it. (07:27.374) And so they used my blog as a reference to other people warning about Nathan. And that's the reason I did my blog was to try and get my niece to read my blog because she was so infatuated, so in love, so manipulated by men and family members to think that she was going to eventually end up being Nathan Chasing Horse's wife. For five years, she believed it. And then when she realized it was a guy's sheet, tried reporting it to the police. Now every effort to track down what happened or if it went anywhere was lost. Like she died about four years ago. So every effort she had, any documentation was lost. Cause I know when her mother was dying from cancer, she was telling me that my niece had reported him. And so I knew there was Talk about it. But it was so hard. It was so hard because she was already, she was a high risk teenager and she went into a high risk young woman. And it was horrible. was, she was, like when I say she was a danger, but she tried to, she tried to, like we're talking, you know, really bad stuff and attacks with a machete trying to kill. almost killing my brother, attacking her mother with a golf club, like just angry, just anger at adults. I, like, again, she fell through the cracks. She was being trafficked out of a halfway house in Calgary. And then when my brother was sentenced, she was also in the newspaper in one of Calgary's largest drug busts. This is this is a child, this is a child that was. supposed to be protected under child and family. You know, like to me, to me, like really, when I tell people we do not have sovereignty in our communities because we don't have all the money we make, we should be able to afford a group home for children, different age groups or group shelters for children. Instead we have a shelter for men and a shelter for women. What about the children? (09:49.314) You know, when a woman dies and her children have no, like their dad maybe have some problems, can't look after them or hurries out of the picture, those children immediately end up in foster homes in the city. If there's nobody in the community as extended family to take them, they go into the city. And like I said, the average age to be trafficked is 14. So the reality of exactly, you know, what's out there for the kids. Again, I go back to the Chief and Council here and this is like 20 years. Like how blind are they? Like really, you know, whatever is happening right now with the Chief and Council, with the survivors of Nathan Chasing Horse and however they pay them, like even to go to the courthouse in Las Vegas, anything, like they paid for them to come back. One of the women who was following Nathan, They paid for her entire family to move back from Las Vegas. Like they paid for people who were living in Las Vegas, who were nation members, thousands, like almost $200,000 in rent. Okay. So when they banished him and they're totally trying to wean them off this codependency of, you know, having their rent. See for me, you know, like I said, I've a couple of decades. lived away from my community. Not once did Chief and Council ever pay for my rent. Now, I don't know for what reason, were they afraid that these victims of Nathan Chasing Horse were going to sue them because when he took them, they were children? Again, I think if we were sovereign, yes, I think the Chief and Council would have been sued by the family members who go, why are you paying rent for these children? You're there to protect our children. I don't know for what reason, like for me, I think if the nation were sovereign at the time and right now these girls are like in their early 30s, I'd say sue the chief and council. Don't blame the parents. Parents gave their daughters up to this man. no, chief and council paid for their rent, paid for everything. (12:15.862) It's like even on the fifth estate, one of the ladies who married into suit in a, she wasn't raised here. She was married in divorced her band counselor husband. They paid for her rent and her daughter's rent in Las Vegas. So you can understand how enraged I am that I've lived in suit and I'm like, I'm a suit and a nation member didn't marry in nothing. that when I ask for help, I don't get nothing. Why? Because I don't have children to vote the chief and council in, or I don't have any prominent person. Like I said, various leadership had gone to housing and threatened managers with their jobs if they didn't pay the rent. (13:04.75) And when Nathan Chasing Horse was arrested, they paid for like an entire family to be moved back from Las Vegas. Would they have done that for me? No. Would they do that for me today? No. Do you see what I'm saying? You're talking about nepotism and lateral violence. Well, yes, lateral violence. And when I talk about, when I tell people gender apartheid, it goes over their heads. What? Gender apartheid? I'm going look, look at my life. You know, I ran away when I was 18. I was 17. I turned 18 in Vancouver and I was sexually assaulted when I was 19 in my community, not in Vancouver, in my community. And the men who sexually assaulted me were serial rapists. Okay, so understand this. When I was 19, from what the RCMP told me, I was like the like I was like the 14th victim and I was the youngest. So where the hell were all these older women who had been sexually assaulted by these men? And these men were related to leadership. Okay, leadership who enabled Nathan Chasinghorse to stay in our community. Okay. You know, like one of the serial rapists died when he was 27. And the other one, like 30, I'll say 31 years ago, he started serving time for what he did to me. And when I talk to people about it, like they go, Marina, you're emotionally scarred or traumatized. I'm going, look, I said, no. I said, I was compliant. I told them, don't hurt me. I'll do whatever you want. Cause I thought they'd kill me. Even though I had people, my own age group with me, when they took, when those men, when that man grabbed me and pulled me upstairs kicking. (15:07.316) Since my peers didn't even come to run and grab me, when I was up there by myself, I knew that they could hurt me really bad. And so I said, don't hurt me, I'll do whatever you want me to do. And then afterwards, when the sexual assault was done, they dropped everybody off, including one of the predators. And so when we went back to the house, the guy, he's alive now, he's an elder, really, he's been shunned from the community. So he's, lives here, but he, you know, he's, he's paying the consequence like it's karma or the circle of life or the natural law, call it what you want. But, you know, he said to me, get upstairs. I was in the car. He says, get upstairs. And I said, if you thought you, if you thought I enjoyed what I did, you've got to be kidding. Cause I was, I complied because. They could have killed me. he punched me. were a victim. He punched me. The first punch I was knocked out. And that's what I explained to people. I said, I have about 20 scars in my head because that first punch I was knocked out. didn't feel anything. He was so enraged. This man was so enraged. Understand this. My father took this man as a nephew because his auntie raised him. So he was like extended family, adopted extended family. And the fact that I didn't want him, the fact that his own mother and extended family in Sutanid didn't want him. And because here we were an adopted family of his who was rejecting him, he was so enraged, he kept on hitting me while I was unconscious. When I woke up, I was in a pool of blood. And I heard his wife. and his sister-in-law looking at me in the car, look, supposedly unconscious. And they said, look at what they did to that poor girl. And I heard them go in the house. Then I heard them coming out screaming because apparently they had confronted him because I was in their car, the unconscious in one of the women's cars. The other sister, they got into the car and they took off. (17:27.924) I didn't realize he took a baseball bat to them. It wasn't until, I think, a couple of years after I went to court and he was charged as he was charged and guilty and sentenced that a friend of mine who I'd known for 30 years, she says, Marina, that morning, this is before I knew her. says that morning, his wife, his sister, his his sister-in-law dropped off his wife at my place and I kept her for two weeks. She's the one who explained to me that he took a baseball bat to the two women. See, they were like, like they were there. They were going to rescue me. I know that. So I never really thought of lateral violence. I never thought they were malicious enough to be laterally violent to me. But, but for 20 years, the family, the community, they ostracized me. And, and like when I talk about lateral violence, I'm talking about people who aren't even asking questions. Cause I, tell people my story in my community. didn't realize I was just feeding the lateral violence. It wasn't until I met a white woman who was working with mental health, like she'd come out to visit people with like they were bipolar, schizophrenic. And she says, this person, did you ever tell him he hurt you? And I said, yeah. I said, I told him if he thought what I did to him, I enjoyed it. She says, Did you say to him, you hurt me? I said, and I thought, no, I didn't. So that's why I thought, okay, I've got to make a report. I've got to face him in court and I've got to tell him he hurt me. So I did that. It took six years. And I went through three RCMP investigators. I had to finally go to the head supervisor on 16th Avenue, Northeast to make a complaint about the investigation. And within six months they had issued a warrant, but he was living in BC. And as soon as he came into Alberta, they arrested him. And that's like after 20 years. Okay, now understand this, during the six years of the investigation, that's when the RCMP reported to the judge that I wasn't his first victim and that they approached these women, either they'd been married in or raised here, if they would come forward and also charge him. And each one of them, over 10 of them, refused. (19:55.926) Now, the only reason I could say why they were like fawning, know, fawning where they don't want to make cause any ripples or have any conflict directed to them is either because of their jobs or they were related to to the perpetrators. So, so, yeah, the the two girls that Nathan chasing horse took were the granddaughters of the serial rapist. How's that for paradox or irony? Which to me, you know, like, dude, like just the lateral violence and the, like, like the reason I'm saying that is, like as, indigenous women, need to tell, tell our stories. We need to validate and support the victims because if we don't physically do it, then we're not protecting our own children. And so because, because those women who were laterally violent towards me, projecting all that hate they had towards their husbands. Understand this, those men were violent to their wives. Violent. I could understand why they were so scared. And I can understand why a lot of battered women will refuse to testify against their husbands. now get this, when I lodged the complaint, the RCMP also questioned the two men. There were two men and two women, like boys, two boys and one girl. The girl had died, but they questioned the two young men who were now men and had children. They had questioned them about, because they were in the house when I was sexually assaulted. And of course they're going to deny it. But the one tried to run me off the road during the investigation. And I had to report them. So I went to court in Okotoks. He had, lost his license for a whole year. But at the time that I was in the courthouse in the courtroom, there was the, woman before me, she had reported her husband who was a police officer. She reported him for spousal abuse. And so when she got up there, the judge, the lawyer, and like everybody said, she's not, she's not a friendly witness. She's refuses to testify against her police husband. (22:24.14) So they have to dismiss that or just leave it on record that her police husband had been reported to have been assaulting his wife. So the history of spousal abuse and the lateral violence isn't just with Indigenous people, but it is important for women or victims of any kind of violence to report it. Now, that being said too, I have a friend, when she was a child, Like she says, my mom didn't really look after me. And this is a white woman. She said, did, I hitchhiked, I cut myself into things that I shouldn't have gotten into. She said, I have a vague memory of being in this truck. He took me down into this valley. She says, I don't remember what happened there. She said, I just remembered I was leaving the valley. And so now as a 66 year old woman, she says, I don't need to deal with that. Because like again, this is my whole premise is when you're older, it's really difficult for like disclosure and narrative and healing in order to deal with triggers needs to be done when you're younger. Like my friend needed to do this when she was in her 20s or 30s, not when she's 66. And she says, I, she says, I know that that's why I'm not dealing with it. She says, you know, she can be a therapist, but not deal with sexual abuse cases. And I said, yes. I said, because they don't teach certain things in university, in social work or in therapies. I said, they don't. And so if you fail the course and you're out there as like an unhealthy therapist, you know, like, excuse me, I think. Indigenous people have gone through so many unhealthy therapists coming out like being like what privileged or what they call it that you know when you have that God complex Where you think you can heal everybody? (24:35.33) But you also have to remember, there's a number of people that go into psychology or go into social work because they have problems themselves. They've been victims. Maybe they don't have to be Indigenous. They could be non-Indigenous. Yes, of course. That's why I'm telling you the story. Like I'm saying... That's exactly right. I'm saying like, look at the former chief. You know, this guy, when he was in high school denied he was indigenous. You know, when these white kids would ask him if he was indigenous, says, no, I'm Mexican. And this is coming from suit and the people who actually heard him say that to these white kids in high school. Then he, then he becomes a milkman. He marries a white woman. have, know, and again, there he is, you know, messing around with indigenous girls in suit in a, but we're not good enough to be married to him. you know, because he's so ashamed to be indigenous. And then because he's Catholic, okay, because again, all this is coming from Catholicism. You know, and he's passing himself off as being this healthy person, just like a healthy therapist or a healthy social worker. Here's a healthy politician. My goodness, the amount of therapists, the amount of people that he tried to get to come into the community who were frauds. He had this lady with a PhD. Progillant PhD. I had to report her to the psychology association It took three years for the Calgary City police to raid her office in Calgary She took off like a bat out of hell back in the United States Now that's how vulnerable that's how much if you don't deal with your shit as a leader as a therapist or anybody a youth worker It's you know natural law catches up like look just like like now How much money has this former chief spent on medicine men, on therapists, for what? To hide his perversion? When this forensic psychologist who I'd known for 30 years, was this leader's therapist, I called him into my home because I needed to make sure (27:01.432) that when the police came, the tribal police came after Nathan Chasinghorse was arrested, I wanted him to validate that I had asked him to interview my niece. I needed proof because she wasn't under child and family. I wasn't under child and family with Sutan at any time. That I wanted somebody to validate that, yes, I tried to get help from my niece, that she was high risk, she was a danger to herself and others. So I invited... And this the forensic psychologist had interviewed my niece. And so I had him, I had him here when the tribal police came so that they could, you know, valid so that he could validate. Yes, Marina has been trying to help her niece. That's why I wrote the blog, because I knew she was on social media. I thought if she's on social media and she looks up Nathan chasing horse because she's obsessed with him, she hopefully will find my blog and she'll. realize like what I'm trying to say about him. So that was the impetus or the catalyst to start my blog was to reach out to my niece. And that's what I explained to the tribal police. The meantime, this forensic psychologist, he discloses that he was the therapist to the former chief, the former chief who's been now has now been charged with two historical sexual assault cases against men. Here's this forensic psychologist telling the tribal police that this former client of his had a propensity for boys. Okay, and he never told me this. He disclosed this in front of the tribal police. And I'm just there going, what? Because for years he was saying, he's the reason why Nathan Chasing Horse is thriving in Sudina. I couldn't understand it. I didn't understand until he disclosed to the tribal police of this leadership's propensity for boys. So whatever reason he was attracted to Nathan Chasing Horse and for whatever reason he supported Nathan Chasing Horse and Nathan's followers, understand this. This is two decades of Nation members collecting tithing every month to send to Nathan. (29:27.136) Some people even gave him $10,000 just to pray over the ring road. Some people, you know, like some people bought him a whole entire camping set for his Sundance. Thousands, thousands of dollars came out of Soutena from nation members to this man, all because leadership was supporting him. One of the ladies like I said one of the ladies who wasn't even married here when she was interviewed by the fifth the state She says I spent over two hundred thousand dollars on him. I bought him a new vehicle saying that he bought Nathan chasing horse a new vehicle You know half of that money that she spent had to have been on rent that the chief and council had been paying for in Las Vegas for Nathan to live in like the amount of Like this man, this Nathan Chasinghors had his wives establish companies in the States, in Las Vegas, for hundreds of thousands of dollars as startup costs for their companies. I don't know if there was five or six false companies. So you can imagine like the amount of other tribes like Sutena that he scavenged money from, from people that he knew he could manipulate funds from. Like how strong is our leadership when they couldn't even stand up and say no to him, but yet they can stand up and say no to me. Somebody who's grown up here, somebody who's been warning them about this man because he is a man and what am I? I'm just an indigenous woman. What? yeah, she's got a lot of anger and shit like that. I'm going, what? You know, they project all that hatred towards indigenous women. to indigenous elder women, to grandmothers, to aunties, to moms, to sisters, because of, for some other, for some reason, which to me is laterally violent in its gender apartheid. This is what the Indian agents set up. This is what has been going on for 500 years and to deconstruct it in modern times and saying, you think it's modern times, but we're still living under a colonial system. (31:53.74) where women are not understood or even the fact that when we become elderly, if we haven't dealt with our shit, then how good are we to even advocate for the protection of our children or even the protection of our own sisters, mothers, aunts and grandmothers? You know, that's the stark reality of Indigenous politics in our communities. I have friends who have... homes where their adult children are living with them. I have friends who are grandmothers who are raising their grandchildren. Yes. And where are the men? (32:35.982) Where are the brothers? are the ex-husbands? Where are these men? I know when my cousin says, it's slim pickings, I'm going, yes, but you're shutting yourself off to all men. And that's not right. I said, that's not fair to you. I said, because you're a sexual human being. Lateral violence. by community standards should not restrict women's sexual health. (33:16.418) Well... (33:20.034) know what to say but this has been going on for generations and I don't see it stopping anytime soon. (33:32.44) But the reality of it is to talk about it. know what it actually is? That's the starting because what have our women done in the past? They've been shamed into silence. But it's not just women. This is what I want to get across to Indigenous men too. The Indian Agent, Indian Residential School, They groomed our people, children, to be what they call infantilized. To fawn, to fawn and make sure, you know, the more you fawn is like, I don't want to say anything because I don't want to get people in trouble. I don't want to be in trouble because they know if as a child, if they got in trouble, they get punished. Either they'd be deprived of eating or sleeping or, you know, or they'd run away. Like I say, my father ran away. They caught him. as punishment, they put him in a cold attic with the dead bodies of children in Edmonton. You know, like just the horror stories of, you know, people, girls and, you know, just boys like the like I can't even comprehend how scared my parents would have been or even my grandparents to have some white person threaten them with their lives if they spoke their language. I spoke to a Nigerian community a few days ago, and they all spoke their language. They all spoke their language. Immigrants in Nigeria. And I said, you know, here I am speaking English. And they're listening and I'm telling them about the history of colonialism, the history of oil and gas and the greed for land and possession and how to... try and kill the indigenous soul, the spirit of our children. I said the largest amount of residential schools in Alberta. I said the grooming, just trying to make sure our children were ashamed to be indigenous. I said, you know, growing up and going to school at Fairview School and having these kids wagon burners squaw, I had to fight them. You know, I mean, mind you, you know, they're kids. So I think some of them are just (35:57.934) probably infatuated with, know, wanted to have some physical contact like little boys. But the reality of it is they, by the time I was in high school, they just shunned me. know, boys that I was friends with in elementary school, all of a sudden, you know, I'm untouchable. So, you know, growing up like that, as well as being around white girls who, you know, I had a white friend right from elementary school. right up until a few, maybe 20 years ago. And I went to a meeting in Calgary with Arts Development and this woman was there. She said she was Métis and she was using some Dakota name, Eagle something woman in Dakota. I'm Dakota. spoke, you know, my mom spoke fluent Dakota, my grandmother, my aunts, my cousins. So I'm saying to her, where did she get the name? Okay, she's passing herself off with the Calgary City Police, with the Calgary School Board. I can't even remember her name now. And so I contacted my friend because she's this woman, the so-called Métis woman, mixed blood woman, because obviously she's not Métis, but she was passing herself off as one. She said she knew my childhood friend from elementary school, my friend from elementary school, junior high, high school and university. That's how long I knew this white girl who's a white woman now. And so I contacted her and I said, I met this lady, this Metis woman. She says, she knows you. She yes, yes. She lived in Ontario. Her father was white, divorced her indigenous mom, took the child into BC, into the United States and raised her there. Now she's come to Alberta and she's reconnecting with her indigenous side. I'm going, really? See, the thing is that what my high school, my childhood friend doesn't realize, like there's a lady who does a really good podcast. Her father's white. She is an advocate. She says, my father's white. My mother's in Inuit. She says, I know my father is a racist. He'll be a racist until the day he dies. (38:25.058) He says, I know how he treated my Inuit mother. I said, yes, when you come from matriarchy and you marry a white man, you're cut off from that. You're cut off from that community of women. said, and she says, yes, my mother had to suffer through anxiety, depression, no community. I mean, even my aunt who lived in Calgary, my mom used to say, join the Métis community, other indigenous women who live in the city. because again, she was raised matriarch. So anyway, I'm talking to my friend and my former acquaintance, and I said to her, yeah, your friend is saying she, you I saw her at Arts Development. And so the next time I went to the meeting, her so-called friend confronts me. Marina, heard you were talking to so-and-so about me. And I said, yes, I have every right to. She says, no, you don't. I said, yes, I do. (39:25.864) Especially when you're claiming to be, you you have you got a Sioux name. I'm Sioux. Because I told my friend, I know these people in the Dakotas where this name comes from. I said that woman has stolen a name, a very famous name of a very famous Dakota woman, and she's passing herself off in the city of Calgary with this name. I said I could I could make trouble for her by contacting the family of origin. I said, this woman thinks this woman can say she's indigenous and doesn't understand matriarchal law. And that was like one of the last times I was ever invited back to the, again, that took a couple of years and then they started inviting me back because I don't know where this woman disappeared to. I contacted tribal police and they said, oh yeah, we're familiar with her. I said, she's not indigenous. She's not indigenous and she's not Métis. I said, and even the story of her living in the States, no connection with indigenous people. She's not even owning that her father is racist. At least you have people in Calgary who have mixed blood, whose mother is indigenous, that are telling the truth about their racist dad. I said, that's the reality. said, I have uncles that are white. My cousins, again, the Sioux have been mixing for decades. My great grandmother had blue eyes. spoke fluent Dakota. So when I talk about mixing, I'm talking about the reality of racism. I was talking with my cousin, we were talking about our cousins. They said, know, their father's white in those ranch, those farmers in the plains in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Some of these white families didn't like the fact that their son had married a savage, and all their kids would have their own house. (41:31.682) They would be segregated from within their white families. That's how racist they were. So indigenous people who have mixed blood relatives, we know, we talk about it. Look, I have first cousins who have never stepped in my home, never. (41:55.522) Really. But what's so hard to believe? When you talk about lateral violence and the, like I said, we can talk about it and we have to talk about it because, you know, shame has a lot to do with it. Even like whatever emotion. The only thing for me is that's a red flag is when people try to guilt trip you or when people say you're trying to make you feel guilty. Anything like that has nothing to do with healing. Guilt has nothing to do with healing. Shame, frustration, know, just loneliness, any other emotion. You have to face it. You deal with it. You have a support system. You come in place and you heal from it. That's why, like when I talk to people about, like when people were, even when I came back from Las Vegas and how I was shunned. Marina, why'd you go down there? I said I went down there for the victims, not the victims here in Sudina, but the victims of the ones who had contacted me for 14, 15 years, those who'd been reading my blog for 20 years. I said I went down there to support them. I'd never met them. They never met me. It was closure for me. It was closure for me to support them. (43:28.342) I said, I said the fact is it, I'm not there to listen to their stories. If they want to share, they can. I'm just there to hold space for them, to let them know they're not alone, that there are thousands of other victims out there that they don't even know about. That's the fact that people are the victims of Nathan Chasing Horse are listening to what's happening, the outcome. of them getting justice. I said, for me, I had to be present because my niece died. What happened to her, she morphed into this person that was a danger to herself and others. I worked with high risk teenagers in Utah. I saw how they became predators. And for me, as a teenager growing up in my community, and with parents who were raised in Indian residential school, they didn't know about high risk behavior. I was in the thick of it. And yet, you know, learning about it and stepping back and saying, I can't participate in this. And I didn't even know, like, if I stopped doing things, even if I tried to have a goal, a G-O-A-L, to accomplish things, even if it was based on a faulty narrative of illusion or delusion, it got me, it helped me survive. And like I said, when I moved back and I was sexually assaulted at 19, I wanted to have my own place. So I did the proposal for the first daycare center. I think it was 50,000 and we hired a director and some staff and it was just a small little daycare, maybe 10. 20 kids at the first, but to oversee the renovation, just, they had a social worker, the money came in and I asked the chief and council if I could be the janitor in the basement of this little rickety old agency home. And they said no, because I was a single female. (45:46.144) Okay, so la-di-da, you know, they said you can be a bookkeeper after you come back from high school. I went back to high school in my twenties, early twenties. And then, and then my mother, my father passed away and then my mother was an alcohol drug abuse counselor. They, there was some lateral violence towards her and she was under pressure to get a detox treatment center going. So I helped her, volunteered, wrote the submitted it over 100,000 or something renovated this two story old agency building. And again, hired staff like the management hired staff. The money came in based on my proposals, right? Again, submitted it like I wanted to move into the basement so I could be the janitor. And again, they said no, you're a single female. Now understand this because of what I did, the chief and council back then. passed a policy that no woman who's a soutina could ask for a house. The only time a single soutina woman who had no children could apply for a house was after the age of 55 years old, which restricted me from ever applying for a house. Understand this, I lived away from my community for two decades paying paying rent, paying for my own education. Not once ever getting help from chief and council. Why? Because I was a single Indigenous female. As the Indigenous men live in the community, get voted into the community, get their own homes, get ranches and whatever they do, I and Indigenous women were at the bottom of the totem pole. Unless... Unless you were married or married in The majority of times I think I think the women who married in were so laterally violent of whatever they lived with their communities they brought that shit into our communities and projected it onto people like myself and Whatever dirty gossip they created about me. Like I said these two women who initially had wanted to rescue me (48:09.086) as they saw me unconscious in the car were married in. And for all those decades, just to save their asses from getting the hell beaten out of them by their serial rapist husbands, they protected themselves. Are they still living? Just one is. Just one woman is. The one perpetrator is still alive. And the reality of it is nobody, he has no friends. He goes to a car dealership every day, sitting there just to meet strangers. I guess, much like if I go to the casino and just sit and meet strangers, maybe I'm in my own little hell. But that's the reality. You know, that is the reality. Like I said, I was shunned for going down to Las Vegas because they thought I was going there because I was obsessed with Nathan Chasing Horse. Even though I'm saying, I'm there supporting these women. The whole context of why they can't comprehend what I started 20 years ago. Yet those women who I met, who told me about their lives with Nathan Chasing Horse, like some for 35 years, some for 25 years, like that's a long time to be drinking the Kool-Aid. And for them to own that, yeah, they were laterally violent towards me until they realized like what he was doing. You know, like the empowerment or the validation those women gave me was life altering and life changing for me. And the very fact that these women who ostracized me in can't even do that for me? Shame on them. They don't deserve me to be a friend to them. (50:18.83) How's that for awakening? They don't. And that's okay. And that's all right. All right, my friend, I need to go. Yes. Well, thank you for listening. like I I do hear healing in your voice. Healing? Yeah. Oh, I appreciate that. You're much calmer. You're much more relaxed. And I know you're healing. It's been a long time coming. Yes, it has been, but you're there now. Okay? Yes. So I will see you soon. Okay. Yes. Take care. Okay. You too. Bye-bye.