All My Relations Podcast

The Sound of Mato with Mato Wayuhi

All My Relations, sits down with Oglala Lakota artist Mato Wayuhi for a conversation that moves through sound and story.Mato is known for composing the music behind the award-winning series Reservation Dogs and stepping into a new acting role in The Lowdown, Mato breaks down how he builds story across mediums, from studio to the screen. Mato being selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 marks his growing impact on Indigenous representation in film and music.Matika and Temryss get into Mato’s musical evolution from early projects like Stone Cold Lover and Indians in the Cupboard to Stankface and the Rez Dogs Theme, Mato takes us through the journey of his sound. He shares insight into his latest album Bygoner and its lead single “Leftovers” (2025), along with his work on the Free Leonard Peltier soundtrack (2025), grounding his artistry in both personal expression and political commitment.Throughout the episode, Mato speaks on his creative process, the responsibility he carries as a Lakota artist, and the intention behind every beat, score, and performance. Featuring compositions from Mato's growing discography and deep conversation, come with us into Mato’s world—where sound becomes expression, resistance, and connection.+++++++A/V Production/Video Edit by Francisco “Pancho” Sánchez @videosdelsanchoMusic by Mato Wayuhi @matowayuhiProduced by Matika Wilbur @matikawilburEpisode Artwork by Kitana Marie @creatortwahnaSocial Media by Mandy Yeahpau @dontguacblocText us your thoughts!Support the showFollow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon.  Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now!  T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.

Theory of Water: World-Making with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

What can we learn from water?In this live conversation from Tidelands in Seattle, Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer, musician, and scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson joins All My Relations to discuss her new book Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead, our second selection for the All My Relations Book Club.Leanne invites us to listen to water as both teacher and theorist, “Water changes forms from a solid to a liquid to a gas. It expands our understanding of time. It always escapes the container, and it connects us all.” Instead of centering land as the primary orientation point, she turns to water to imagine how we might build beyond the limits of the present.Together we explore grief, creation stories, Indigenous resurgence, and the difficult work of world-making in a time shaped by colonialism, racial capitalism, and ecological crisis. As Leanne reminds us, “Listening to water and thinking through world making means that we have to collaborate with each other… building against this present moment. That’s a struggle, but it’s a relational struggle to give birth to something different.”At its heart, this conversation asks what it means to create futures rooted in Indigenous intelligence, care, and responsibility—and what water might already be teaching us about how to begin.A/V Production by Francisco “Pancho” Sánchez @videosdelsanchoMusic by Mato Wayuhi @matowayuhiProduced by Matika Wilbur @matikawilburEpisode Artwork by Kitana Marie @creatortwahnaVideo Edit/Social Media by Mandy Yeahpau @dontguacblocText us your thoughts!Support the showFollow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon.  Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now!  T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.

Creation Histories

Do you know the true narratives that shape the people, animals and lands of the Coast Salish People?This episode of All My Relations explores Lushootseed creation histories as living knowledge. These stories anchor us in the past, guide us through the present, and prepare us for an uncertain future.Host Matika Wilbur (Swinomish & Tulalip) leads the conversation through the origin story of the new exhibition, Coast Salish Creation Stories, opening at Tidelands, and shares why this moment calls all of us to learn from Indigenous knowledge and come experience the show.As elders teach, “make yourself still and engage your five teachers.” With that invitation, we sit with Puyallup Tribal Language Director Amber Hayward (Puyallup and Salish) and Tidelands Assistant Curator Ashley Frantz (Makah). Amber traces how colonizers recorded Lushootseed creation histories in English, often stripping them of meaning, and how today’s language revitalization movement restores their depth, power, and accuracy. Through her teachings, we learn why these stories matter, how to listen in a good way, and what it sounds like when creation history lives in Lushootseed itself.Ashley joins the conversation to share how artists and language keepers co-created the exhibition with the Puyallup Language Department and eight other Tribal Lushootseed language departments (and Lummi), bringing creation histories into visual form through contemporary Indigenous art.The exhibition opens February 7th at 6 PM. All are welcome to the opening reception and to experience the show through July 2026. Tidelands Gallery welcomes visitors Wednesday through Sunday, 11 AM–5 PM, with full step-free access throughout the space.We can’t wait to see you, relatives.++++ResourcesCreation Stories Exhibition Opening Reception: https://www.thisistidelands.com/event-details/creation-stories-exhibition-opening-receptionThe Puyallup Language Programhttps://www.puyalluptriballanguage.org/ptlp/ +++Credits:A/V Production by Francisco “Pancho” SánchezMusic by Mato WayuhiProduced by Matika WilburEpisode Artwork by Katana SolText us your thoughts!Support the showFollow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon.  Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now!  T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.

Lessons from Trickster: Story, Humor and Survival

What does it mean to survive—and who carries the story afterward?When writer and filmmaker Julian Brave NoiseCat talks about survival, he does not begin with abstraction. He begins with a story. On this episode of All My Relations, Julian joins us to discuss his new book, We Survived the Night, a father–son narrative shaped in the tradition of a Coyote story—layered, funny, painful, and exacting in its truths.The book traces Julian’s relationship with his father through ancestral structure rather than Western memoir form. Coyote appears not as metaphor but as guide: a trickster forefather who teaches through contradiction, humor, and refusal. Julian describes dark Indigenous humor as a survival strategy honed over generations and carried forward through oral tradition.Throughout the conversation, Julian challenges the language often used to contain Indigenous knowledge. These stories are not myths or folklore. They live and change, told differently depending on who listens, who tells them, and what the moment requires. Multiple truths coexist within them, held in relationship rather than resolved into a single meaning. Indigenous languages, Julian explains, do more than preserve these teachings—they shape how knowledge moves through the world.That insistence on truth also shapes Julian’s filmmaking. The episode turns to Sugarcane, his award-winning documentary co-directed with Emily Kassie, which investigates the legacy of St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School. The film refuses easy closure, instead asking what responsibility looks like after harm, and how survivors and descendants carry grief alongside love.Across writing and film, Julian returns to the same question: how Indigenous people endure without flattening pain into spectacle. Basket Lady and Coyote emerge not as figures of the past but as living teachers—offering guidance for a present still shaped by trickster energy, rupture, and repair.These stories survived attempted erasure.They survived the night.May the stories of Basket Lady and Coyote live on.++++Resources:Purchase We Survived the Night today:https://shoptidelands.com/products/books-rooted-in-fire-copy?_pos=1&_psq=We+Survived+the+Night&_ss=e&_v=1.0 Watch Sugarcane on Disney+ and HuluNational Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition:https://boardingschoolhealing.org/Tribal Boarding School Toolkit for Healing:https://acf.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ana/NPAIHB_Thrive_BoardinSchoolToolkit.pdfText us your thoughts!Support the showFollow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon.  Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now!  T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.

Change Everything, Feed Your People

What happens when food becomes a blueprint for liberation? On this episode of All My Relations, we’re joined by Chef Sean Sherman (Oglala Lakota) and journalist/co-author Kate Nelson (Tlingit) to talk about Turtle Island—a cookbook, a history lesson, and a future-facing manifesto for Indigenous food sovereignty. We get into what it means to remove colonial borders (and colonial ingredients), why Indigenous foodways are global and relational, and how Sean’s nonprofit model is moving real resources back into Indigenous communities—from Native producers to Native jobs. Along the way: moose stew, fir tips, colonized palates, seed keepers, Buffalo Bird Woman’s garden, and a clear-eyed conversation about ICE, labor, and who actually feeds this country. Food is the entry point—but sovereignty is the goal. Just change everything. Feed your people.++++ResourcesPurchase Turtle Island Today:  https://shoptidelands.com/products/books-whereas-copy?variant=47505083924728 To learn about Sean’s work and North American Traditional Food Systemshttps://natifs.org/ https://seansherman.com/  Kate’s Work: https://www.kateanelson.com/ Esquire Article: https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/restaurants/a36474711/chef-sean-sherman-owamni-indigenous-minneapolis-restaurant-profile/ Text us your thoughts!Support the showFollow us on Instagram @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon.  Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now!  T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.