Season 3
In this season, Host WuWas Ulwat, Jada-Gabrielle Pape (Saanich & Snuneymuxw Nations), creates space for storytellers Michelle Good, Jenna Breuer, Wendy Stevens, Valerie Nicholson, Kat Dodds and David Ng to share unique knowledge on their lived experiences. Community connections, Indigenous solidarity and personal resilience become the forefront of conversations throughout this engaging series of podcasts. Explore the videos as Jada guides us through sit down, dinner-table style conversations with the speakers, accompanied by visuals of Vancouver’s community.
S03E01: A Thing For Trees - Conversation with Michelle Good : Part 1
- Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Michelle Good
- }33 mins
Jada has a conversation with writer and friend Michelle Good about living in connection with the earth and others. Michelle shares her knowledge about finding a sense of healing amongst the trees and the importance of understanding that we are equals with the nature that surrounds us. The concepts of spirit and love are acknowledged in a way that reminds us to practice respect and humility.
Episode Credits
Collaboratively Produced
by Drawing Wisdom
Hosted and Written
by WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations
Producers
Jada-Gabrielle Pape & Kat Dodds
Co-Conspirators
David Ng & Kat Dodds
Director of Photography
D’Arcy Hamilton
Edited by
Kat Dodds and D’Arcy Hamilton
Original theme music
by James Junger
Additional Music
From Artlist
Thank you to Michelle Good for sharing your story!
S03E02: About Writing & Seedlings - Conversation with Michelle Good : Part 2
- Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Michelle Good
- }35 mins
Jada continues her conversation with writer and friend Michelle Good, focusing on Michelle’s writing. Specifically, Michelle’s book “Five Little Indians” is based in the 70s and expresses the resilience and strength amongst the community living in the Downtown Eastside (DTES). Michelle speaks about the importance of community and the universe through the creation of her book.
Episode Credits
Collaboratively Produced
by Drawing Wisdom
Hosted and Written
by WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations
Producers
Jada-Gabrielle Pape & Kat Dodds
Co-Conspirators
David Ng & Kat Dodds
Director of Photography
D’Arcy Hamilton
Edited by
Kat Dodds and D’Arcy Hamilton
Original theme music
by James Junger
Additional Music
From Artlist
Thank you to Michelle Good for sharing your story!
S03E03: Come With Love - Reframing the term trauma informed
- Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Jenna Breuer
- }45 mins
Episode Credits
Collaboratively Produced
by Drawing Wisdom
Hosted and Written
by WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations
Producers
Jada-Gabrielle Pape & Kat Dodds
Co-Conspirators
David Ng & Kat Dodds
Director of Photography
D’Arcy Hamilton
Edited by
Kat Dodds and D’Arcy Hamilton
Original theme music
by James Junger
Additional Music
From Artlist
Thank you to Michelle Good for sharing your story!
S03E04: How Not To Be A Jerk 101 with Wendy Stevens
- Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Wendy Stevens
- }30 mins
Episode Credits
Collaboratively Produced
by Drawing Wisdom
Hosted and Written
by WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations
Producers
Jada-Gabrielle Pape & Kat Dodds
Co-Conspirators
David Ng & Kat Dodds
Director of Photography
D’Arcy Hamilton
Edited by
Kat Dodds and D’Arcy Hamilton
Original theme music
by James Junger
Additional Music
From Artlist
Thank you to Wendy Stevens for sharing your experience!
S03E05: Word Warrior, Healing Gardener with Valerie Nicholson
- Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Valerie Nicholson
- }33 mins
Jada has a conversation with Valerie Nicholson, “the one the eagles watch over”, about the power of words and the importance of respecting those who you are in conversation with. Valerie highlights the value of being in a circle of wisdom, where “as teachers we are learners and as learners we are teachers”. Listen to explore Valerie’s story and creation process behind Running Free Wildflower Gardens; an Orange Shirt Day inspired project series of community gardens.
Episode Credits
Collaboratively Produced
by Drawing Wisdom
Hosted and Written
by WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations
Producers
Jada-Gabrielle Pape & Kat Dodds
Co-Conspirators
David Ng & Kat Dodds
Director of Photography
D’Arcy Hamilton
Edited by
Kat Dodds and D’Arcy Hamilton
Original theme music
by James Junger
Additional Music
From Artlist
Thank you to Valerie Nicholson for your beautiful story!
S03E06: Trust, Community and Art
- Jada-Gabrielle Pape, David Ng, and Kat Dodds
- }29 mins
Jada has a conversation with Drawing Wisdom’s co-conspirators Kat Dodds and David Ng about the process of creating the podcast’s third season. In this episode, Jada, Kat and David make space to reflect on the growth of the podcast and their personal highlights of the most recent season. Themes of community and collaboration are explored in terms of building trust with one another and cross-cultural solidarity.
Episode Credits
Collaboratively Produced
by Drawing Wisdom
Hosted and Written
by WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations
Producers
Jada-Gabrielle Pape & Kat Dodds
Co-Conspirators
David Ng & Kat Dodds
Director of Photography
D’Arcy Hamilton
Edited by
Kat Dodds and D’Arcy Hamilton
Original theme music
by James Junger
Additional Music
From Artlist
Season 2
With her wise guests, WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Saanich & Snuneymuxw Nations, looks deeply at storytelling, Indigenous generosity, reciprocity and Land Back. Conversations embody the decolonizing/Indigenizing process as an act of love.
S02E01: It’s what I was Taught - Conversations with my uncle Te'ta-in, Shane Pointe
- Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Shane Pointe
- }32 mins
In this episode, WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Saanich & Snuneymuxw Nations, originally from Vancouver Island, now living in East Vancouver takes a walk around the Museum of Anthropology in Musqueam Territory with her uncle Te'ta-in, Shane Pointe. Their meditative conversation covers the meaning of his name and thunder-beings, as he generously shares his stories as he was taught.
Episode Credits
Collaboratively Produced
by Drawing Wisdom
Hosted and Written
by WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations
Producers
Jada-Gabrielle Pape & Kat Dodds
Co-Conspirators
David Ng & Kat Dodds
Director of Photography
D’Arcy Hamilton
Edited by
Kat Dodds and D’Arcy Hamilton
Original theme music
by James Junger
Additional Music
From Artlist
Thank you to Te'ta-in, Shane Pointe, Musqueam, for your storytelling generosity.
S02E02: Generosity - Walking in Two Worlds With Anhluutuukism Gaak, Sherry Small
- Sherry Small, Jada-Gabrielle Pape
- }34 mins
Sherry Small talks about making The Generous Spirit Project with Jada, and the emotional labor of walking in two worlds.
Episode Credits
Collaboratively Produced
by Drawing Wisdom
Hosted and Written
by WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations
Producers
Jada-Gabrielle Pape & Kat Dodds
Co-Conspirators
David Ng & Kat Dodds
Director of Photography
D’Arcy Hamilton
Edited by
Kat Dodds and D’Arcy Hamilton
Original theme music
by James Junger
Additional Music
From Artlist
Thank you to Anhluutuukism Gaak, Sherry Small, Nisga’a Nation, for your warmth and for permission to use clips from The Generous Spirit Project
—---
Generous Spirit Credits
Written and Directed by
Jada-Gabrielle Pape
Saanich & Snuneymuxw Nations
Illustrations by
Andrew Dexel, Nlakapamux
Vision Maker 2020
Original Music & Sound Design
Matthew Cardinal, Nêhiyaw
S02E03: Listen First with Co-Conspirators Kat Dodds & David Ng
- Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Kat Dodds & David Ng
- }49 mins
Jada and her co-conspirators, Kat Dodds and David Ng talk about belonging, compassion, and deep listening and life during a pandemic.
Episode Credits
Collaboratively Produced
by Drawing Wisdom
Hosted and Written
by WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations
Producers
Jada-Gabrielle Pape & Kat Dodds
Co-Conspirators
David Ng & Kat Dodds
Director of Photography
D’Arcy Hamilton
Edited by
Kat Dodds and D’Arcy Hamilton
Original theme music
by James Junger
Additional Music
From Artlist
Thank you to the Co-Conspirator team for your ongoing collaboration
S02E04: Decolonizing Birth With Biiwashikwe, Danette Jubinville
- Danette Jubinville, Jada-Gabrielle Pape
- }37 mins
Jada speaks with Biiwashikwe, Danette Jubinville, the founder of ekw’í7tl Doula Collective, about navigating birth in a colonial world. They also share their own personal birthing journeys.
Episode Credits
Collaboratively Produced
by Drawing Wisdom
Hosted and Written
by WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations
Producers
Jada-Gabrielle Pape & Kat Dodds
Co-Conspirators
David Ng & Kat Dodds
Director of Photography
D’Arcy Hamilton
Edited by
Kat Dodds and D’Arcy Hamilton
Original theme music
by James Junger
Additional Music
From Artlist
Thank you to Biiwashikwe, Danette Jubinville, Pasqua First Nation on her father’s side, with Cree, Saulteaux, Jewish, and mixed-European ancestry, for doing your birth-work in such a good way
S02E05: Beads and Stories With Xwacú?, Auntie Allan
- Auntie Allan, Jada-Gabrielle Pape
- }46 mins
WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape in conversation with Xwacú?, Auntie Allan, who talks about their journey into language reclamation, land, and non-binary traditions. All while beading up a storm.
Episode Credits
Collaboratively Produced
by Drawing Wisdom
Hosted and Written
by WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations
Producers
Jada-Gabrielle Pape & Kat Dodds
Co-Conspirators
David Ng & Kat Dodds
Director of Photography
D’Arcy Hamilton
Edited by
Kat Dodds and D’Arcy Hamilton
Original theme music
by James Junger
Additional Music
From Artlist
Thank you to Xwacú?, Allan Lindley, Syilx, Nlaka’pamux, Mistawsis Cree, AKA “Auntie Allan,” for your beautiful sharing.
S02E06: Reflections amongst/with/between co-conspirators David Ng and Kat Dodds
- Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Kat Dodds & David Ng
- }37 mins
WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape in conversation with her co-conspirators as they reflect on the season's guests and talk about assimilation, assumptions and the problems with holidays and land acknowledgements.
Episode Credits
Collaboratively Produced
by Drawing Wisdom
Hosted and Written
by WuWas, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations
Producers
Jada-Gabrielle Pape & Kat Dodds
Co-Conspirators
David Ng & Kat Dodds
Director of Photography
D’Arcy Hamilton
Edited by
Kat Dodds and D’Arcy Hamilton
Original theme music
by James Junger
Additional Music
From Artlist
Thank you to the Co-Conspirator team for your ongoing collaboration
Season 1
After a long year of preparation, producer and host Jada-Gabrielle Pape (Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations) and co-conspirators, Kat Dodds and David Ng are excited to share their new Drawing Wisdom podcast series.
S01E01: Our Origins - Star In Your Own Stories
- Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Kat Dodds & David Ng
- }59 mins
This episode explores the origin story of how Jada, Kat, and David began their decades+ collaboration through the Star In Your Own Stories project and how that connection led them to start this podcast.
More...
Jada shares, “I think it's such huge courage for young people to say, "I'll not only share my stories with you; I'll share my dreams with you." I think that's something that exhibits incredible resilience. And that's part of what the history of Star In Your Own Stories is and then that led us to be able to do this.”
S01E02: Decolonizing Distribution - Listening to Peers in Healing Inner Voices with Martin Morberg
- Martin Morberg, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Kat Dodds & David Ng
- }60 mins
Martin Morberg, Northern Tutchone & Tlingit, project creator of HIV: Healing Inner Voices, reflects on his activism journey and talks about his collaboration with Drawing Wisdom.
More...
Martin explains, “It was people like Doris Peltier and Albert Beck who would reach their hand down to me in community and they would pull me up to the table and teach me about the language that was happening and the concepts we were learning and in partnership with Drawing Wisdom that allowed me to elevate other Indigenous and Two-Spirit folks.”
Additionally, Martin talks about the distinction between Indigenous ways of knowing from decolonizing: “This is just us. Our existence and us doing this work is in active resistance to colonialism.”
S01E03: The Land is our First Grandmother - A conversation/meditation with Norm Leech
- Norm Leech, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Kat Dodds & David Ng
- }59 mins
Norm Leech (with ancestry from the T’it’q’et community in the St’at’imc nation) explores what it means to live in relation with the land as well as the reciprocal and familial nature of land-based relationships.
More...
Norm shares his experience working with The Circle of Grandmothers; whose goal is to bring more grandmother love to the Downtown Eastside.
Norm explains, “Seeing it in action and understanding the power that has like to imagine having a grandmother hold you and [tell you] that things are going to be okay and how amazing that is, especially for people who haven't felt that maybe ever or for a long, long time and how transformative that can be.” As well, Norm shares insight on the interconnectedness of familial love and the land.
"The land is our first Grandmother and she has given everything to the people since long before we were people… without limit, without condition, without interruption essentially that unconditional giving is the greatest definition of love. To understand that the land loves ... makes you understand that the land is with us and loves us more than we can ever imagine and we can never really repay that; but we do [have] a duty of responsibility to honor it in a good way.”
S01E04: Truth Before Reconciliation: A Time of Reckoning
- Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Kat Dodds & David Ng
- }61 mins
Producer and host Jada-Gabrielle Pape (Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations) in conversation with her co-conspirators Kat Dodds and David Ng reflect on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in light of the confirmation of graves at residential schools this summer.
More...
"There is a real liberation and freedom in knowing the truth because once we’re really talking about the truth, we have the opportunity to do something different; but if we can’t’ know what we’re working with, we can’t make any changes, we can’t have a concept or idea or a pathway forward into this notion of reconciliation.”
With excerpts from Na'tsa'mat A Healing Journey and a cultural safety workshop.
TRC Calls to Action
We call upon federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments to fully adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the framework for reconciliation.
We call upon the Government of Canada to develop a national action plan, strategies, and other concrete measures to achieve the goals of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
We call upon all chief coroners and provincial vital statistics agencies that have not provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada their records on the deaths of Aboriginal children in the care of residential school authorities to make these documents available to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
72. We call upon the federal government to allocate sufficient resources to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to allow it to develop and maintain the National Residential School Student Death Register established by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
73. We call upon the federal government to work with churches, Aboriginal communities, and former residential school students to establish and maintain an online registry of residential school cemeteries, including, where possible, plot maps showing the location of deceased residential school children.
74. We call upon the federal government to work with the churches and Aboriginal community leaders to inform the families of children who died at residential schools of the child’s burial location, and to respond to families’ wishes for appropriate commemoration ceremonies and markers, and reburial in home communities where requested.
75. We call upon the federal government to work with provincial, territorial, and municipal governments, churches, Aboriginal communities, former residential school students, and current landowners to develop and implement strategies and procedures for the ongoing identification, documentation, maintenance, commemoration, and protection of residential school cemeteries or other sites at which residential school children were buried. This is to include the provision of appropriate memorial ceremonies and commemorative markers to honour the deceased children.
76. We call upon the parties engaged in the work of documenting, maintaining, commemorating, and protecting residential school cemeteries to adopt strategies in accordance with the following principles:
The Aboriginal community most affected shall lead the development of such strategies.
Information shall be sought from residential school Survivors and other Knowledge Keepers in the development of such strategies.
Aboriginal protocols shall be respected before any potentially invasive technical inspection and investigation of a cemetery site.
S01E05: Loving the Land - When a Rock is a Buffalo: Conversation with Kamala Todd
- Kamala Todd, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Kat Dodds & David Ng
- }60 mins
Kamala Todd, a Métis-Cree community planner, educator, curator and filmmaker talks with Jada-Gabrielle Pape (Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations) about her experience growing up in connection with her own culture while simultaneously finding her sense of place on someone else's territories.
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Kamala talks about the transformative nature of Indigenous ways of knowing and the importance of land acknowledgment within an urban context. Kamala shares, “I know so many non-Indigenous people who [have] a love and appreciation for the land but it’s still devoid from the sense of who it belongs to and what that means. [Acknowledging the lands you live on] is not something to be afraid of or to feel like oh well if I acknowledge it it's no longer my home, but it is just the truth of where you live and hopefully it also transforms your relationship to that place and to the people who are the hosts nations.”
S01E06: Lift Each Other Up - Self Care for Young Indigenous Land Defenders with Taylor
- Taylor Lee, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Kat Dodds & David Ng
- }56 mins
Jada-Gabrielle Pape (Saanich and Snuneymuxw Nations) talks to Taylor Lee Koble, a Cree Michif multidisciplinary artist educator from Saint Laurent deGrandin Métis settlement, Treaty 6 territory Saskatchewan, about self care, supporting her peers, and skateboarding.
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What is one thing that you do or know or feel that is really, really good medicine in your life?
“I definitely want to say skateboarding because I was doing it yesterday and [it] allows me to tap into my inner child a lot, which is something that I have been disconnected from for many years. So I'm very grateful for the opportunity to play in skateboarding.”
Taylor also shares, “There were a lot of community connections that I didn’t necessarily grow up with that makes me love being able to be a part of that for a different generation. It makes me think about how it is so radical to be able to create community care structures within cities and within deeply colonial spaces.”