Decolonizing Media on the Canadian Mountain Podcast, Part One

[00:00:11] Speaker A: Everyone loves hearing a good story. Maybe that's why audio storytelling has become such a big thing. So many people have picked up the microphone to share their voices, opinions, and experiences with a wider audience. But it's more than just personal expression. Podcasting connects people, and it can work as a bridge for groups that are underserved by traditional media. I'm Kelsey Arnett, and you're listening to the Community Podcast initiative. The goal of the CPI is to produce and promote podcasting as a way to amplify underrepresented voices through audio storytelling. This initiative is based out of Mount Royal University, which is located on Treaty Seven territory. The CPI is powered by Shaw. [00:01:13] Speaker B: We'Re. [00:01:13] Speaker A: Doing things a little differently. CPI co director Meg Wilcox is also a senior producer on the Canadian Mountain podcast. The show focuses on knowledge mobilization, highlighting research and important discussions from Canada's Rocky Mountains and across the world. It's produced by a team of students in Mount Royal University's journalism and digital media program. The podcast also has a unique approach to incorporating meaningful land acknowledgments into every episode, which they've refined and reworked over the years. This year, the show is wrapping its fifth and final season for part one of its last episode. Meg and co senior producer Kyle Napier, along with student producers Sherry Woods, Julie Patton, and Catalina Berguno, sat down to reflect on the show's evolution and commitment to decolonizing media practices. With that, here's host Sherry woods with decolonizing media on the Canadian Mountain podcast, part one. [00:02:25] Speaker C: Decolonizing media practices is a topic rarely discussed by professionals, but the Canadian Mountain podcast team has made it our goal throughout this course of this series to learn how we can adapt our practices to better incorporate indigenous people and amplify indigenous voices. Although it is not a perfect system and not necessarily the solution, it is a step in the right direction. UKI Itamiks Gunadani Nistukowics Nistuni Danigu Agangskiyaki I'm Sherry woods, and you are listening to the Canadian Mountain podcast. This episode focuses on the Canadian Mountain podcast team and the work we've done to decolonize our podcast and how we will continue this work into the future. But before we get started, I'd like to take a moment to appreciate the land we work on and the people we work with. This podcast is produced across the indigenous territories, now referred to as treaty seven. The Canadian Mountain podcast acknowledges the land we work on as the home to the Nisidapi Iyahe Nakota Sutina and the mates people as journalists, and media makers involved in indigenous knowledge mobilization. The collective responsibility of our podcast is to strengthen our relationship with indigenous peoples through storytelling and partnership. If you're a regular listener, you probably know that this is the fifth season of the Canadian Mountain podcast, and you may also have learned throughout the years how this series has changed with different hosts, topics, and formats. Some of this change happened naturally, and some of this change happened very deliberately as the team looked at ways to decolonize its media making practice. This included growing our production team, introducing land acknowledgements, taking part in training, and looking critically at our own practices. As we wrap up this fifth and final season of the podcast, I'm sitting down with some of our team members, may glaucox, Kyle Napier, Julie Patton, and Catalina Briguno, and to discuss these changes and to reflect on what we've learned making this series. Welcome, everyone. [00:04:55] Speaker D: Let's take a moment to briefly introduce our panel. [00:04:57] Speaker C: Please tell us your names, a little. [00:04:59] Speaker D: Bit about yourself, your connection to the land, and how long you've been a. [00:05:02] Speaker E: Part of the podcaster. Hello, my name is Kyle Napier. I'm from Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. These days I'm living around the mountains. Today I'm in Amisquachiwaskahigan, otherwise referred to as Edmonton, and very much looking forward to hearing from the insights of these other of the brilliant minds behind the canadian mountain podcast. So excited to join this discussion today. [00:05:38] Speaker F: Massi hi, I'm Julie Patton. I joined the podcast just last year, but I'm from originally, a little small town outside of Kindersley, Saskatchewan. I grew up on a farm. We farm the land and we also have a lot of cattle. So I've really enjoyed growing up in the prairies, but moving to Calgary has been amazing and being close to the mountains, I really enjoy. And that's why I joined the Canadian Mountain podcast. [00:06:01] Speaker G: Hello, my name is Catalina Berguno. I'm from Chile and I moved here to Canada when I was seven or eight years old. I've been in the podcast, I think for about two years. I'm one of the oldies, and been part of this podcast has been just a great opportunity to learn and be part of this team. [00:06:23] Speaker B: My name is Meg Wilcox. I'm one of the principal investigators, they would say, or coordinators of the Mountain podcast and the team here. I've been working with the Mountain podcast before. It was a project here at MRU. So I want to say 2016, 2017 and obviously here currently in Calgary and Mokinsis. But I'm actually from Kamloops and that's in British Columbia. And so there, Kamloops is actually on the unceded ancestral lands of the soepmic people. And one thing that you may know about Kamloops is you might remember in May 2021, when it was revealed in news media that the indian residential school is where they found 215 unmarked graves of children. And this is what really proved what had already been in conversation for years from indigenous groups that they were saying. But this, I think, really changed the conversation around truth and reconciliation. And so I know for me, this is something I carry as a sense of obligation. That was something that was found and happened where I was born and raised. So it's something that I carry with me as I work on this podcast. [00:07:34] Speaker D: Welcome. [00:07:35] Speaker G: Hello. [00:07:35] Speaker D: My name is Sherry Woods. I just introduced myself in my Blackfoot language. My traditional name, iskiyaki, which was given to me by one of the elders in my community. And I am from the Sikska Nation, which is a part of the Blackfoot Confederacy. I reside on my own traditional territories. That is my connection to the land. And I've been on the podcast for about a year now. I want to say, and I'm excited to be here. So the first question that I want to ask is, what is the importance of sharing space with both settler researchers and indigenous knowledge holders? What do you think is the most important? [00:08:21] Speaker F: I mean, for me, connecting both of these knowledges, you really learn a lot. I mean, growing up in school, typically, you're learned. You're learning from the scientific perspective, and it's all you kind of get. And you touch on some indigenous knowledge, but it's kind of like a storybook kind of history, and you're not getting into the depths of it, and you're not treating it like science. I mean, it'll be brought up in your sciences, but not at the same level western researches. So connecting these two knowledges together on the podcast has been really eye opening for me and to be able to share it, I really enjoy it, and I'm really glad that I can be a part of this movement, bringing the knowledges together and uplifting indigenous knowledge to the level that it should be held. [00:09:08] Speaker E: At in the consideration of sharing the space between indigenous knowledge holders and settler researchers. Often there's a fundamental disagreement between how knowledge is constructed, how knowledge is validated, even how mountain research is conducted. And so not just on the basis of inclusion, but recognizing the sovereignty of indigenous knowledge holders and the voices of indigenous ecological experts from community. It's critical that it's not just this settler colonial hegemonic paradigm that's featured, but rather the representation of the pluralisms of understanding mountain research and even ecological research. [00:10:01] Speaker B: And I think what's so important is that bringing indigenous knowledge to the table, making space for indigenous knowledge to the table, I should say extending that invitation transforms the conversation. How this podcast would sound if we were only going to researchers, or coordinating only from that more traditional academic point of view, knowing that we're all people in a university right now would sound completely different. The way that we would ask the questions and converse about things would be totally different. And I can say that as someone who started on the podcast before the focus actually was with the mountain network, it was to include indigenous knowledges, but not to center discussions around them. And so even seeing Kyle being able to come and join and co lead the team with me, and how our process has changed, even how our meetings change and how our conversations are focused, I can say that they are entirely different and coming from a very different angle than they had been previously. [00:10:59] Speaker D: When I think about sharing spaces with settler researchers, as an indigenous person, I feel like I'm still struggling with it a little bit, just because as someone who grew up not being able to share her knowledges in western spaces or in more predominantly white spaces, it has been hard for me to kind of open up and be able to feel like I coexist with settlers. In a way. I'm still struggled with it in a sense that I feel like sometimes there's places where I am getting talked down on, like I don't know anything in a way, or my knowledge is less than. Because they're like, oh, well, your knowledge is ancient, like it doesn't matter today. And sometimes I get a little bit riled up a little bit because I'm so protective of my culture and how people see it from the outside. So I'm still trying to learn how to work with other non indigenous people in non indigenous spaces and being able to see the importance in that. I know that for me it's important. I feel like if we are able to coexist together, then we're able to move on, right? We're able to build things together, be great together. But as someone who's still young and still learning, it's something that I am working on, but I believe it's important. [00:12:33] Speaker G: Throughout my journey working here, I've heard a lot of other indigenous people's experience, past experience working with the media, how their words have been misused and abused and just completely twisted in a way that was not intended. And so just being part of actively trying to be part of that space was not doing know. I'm not saying it's a whole solution. I'm just saying if being part of the solution, not partaking in that behavior, I think it's a step forward. [00:13:12] Speaker D: Thank you, Catalina. [00:13:13] Speaker C: So we're going to move on to. [00:13:15] Speaker D: The next question, and I want to know more about the journalistic practices on making a podcast. Does somebody want to chime in on that? [00:13:24] Speaker G: Suddenly, all the knowledge of how to make a podcast has fled my brain, even though I've done it for years now. Okay, we first start with our research and planning. We do a bunch of. Yeah, it's pretty self explanatory, where we do a bunch of research and plan, and we just contact our sources ahead of time. And here in this podcast, we usually contact them very well in advance because you never know. And then we do our Q line, where basically we do a bunch of, a series of questions for our interviewees before we go ahead and interview them. And then we do the official interviews. We'll set up a time in this podcast. In particular, we usually do panel discussions, so we'll schedule a time that works for all parties involved. And then we later go off and edit and vet our episodes. Yeah, we usually do a couple of rounds of vetting and editing before heading off to publishing. [00:14:34] Speaker D: Thank you. And then to add on to that. So, with the journalistic practices, how do you think our group as a podcast has moved away from those practices and able to be able to include indigenous knowledges and practices? [00:14:55] Speaker F: I mean, the first one that's a big one is doing the land acknowledgement in the podcast. That's not typically done in podcasting. We're going to talk about the land acknowledgement more later, but that is a difference for us. Then. Secondly, when making the queue line, we write it and then we send it to our guests beforehand. And as Adelina mentioned, you typically don't do that. You want to have authentic conversations without them seeing the queue line before. But instead we send it to them and we let them edit it and maybe add in questions or take out questions to make the conversation more about them and let them represent their knowledge in the way they want to with the questions we ask. Then when it comes to editing, we actually send them a draft of the podcast and we let them come back with notes. Sometimes they'll have notes, sometimes they won't, but it gives them the power to control the narrative. So we give them that opportunity and then we publish it. So typically, when you record the podcast and you edit, you'd publish without your guests ever seeing how they sound, what it's going to look like, and giving our guests the opportunity to help control it, help represent their work the way they want to, that's a really big difference in the way that we've been trying to decolonize our work. [00:16:11] Speaker D: And I'm going to add a question onto that. So why would you as a team, think that this would be important for indigenous people? [00:16:21] Speaker B: Well, I think part of this comes into what Catalina says, and we look at the history of how indigenous people have been represented in the media, misrepresented in the media. Right. And so part of this is about a lack of trust and quite frankly, a well deserved lack of trust. So how do we look at building relationships, regaining that trust, and also, quite frankly, making sure that we're accurate in what we're doing right. You could have heard, I'm sure, from an old school journalist years ago who got something wrong, saying, oh, well, that's how I saw it. Well, that doesn't mean it's accurate. Right. And if we recognize that as media makers, we might not understand certain meanings behind word choices, or maybe cutting something out of a sentence and not understanding how it might change the meaning, not giving a chance for someone to be able to respond and make sure that that's going out into the world as it was intended, I personally see it as verification. Right. So what's funny is some journalists might say, oh, well, now you're opening it up to bias because the subject can give input to which I would say, I would rather make sure that I'm accurate in what I'm doing. And also that we are building a relationship and trust, right. That that's more important than doing it all on my own, maybe making mistakes and saying, oh, well, at least it's not quote unquote biased, because that ignores the fact that I have my own bias as a journalist. We all have our own bias as storytellers and media makers, but it's also our job to work against it. So I think that's one of the biggest elements as I see it. [00:17:53] Speaker E: Meg, just to build off what you've just said, you're right, there is an inherent bias. As much as we, as media makers and podcast producers and content creators might want to avoid that bias, it's inherently an aspect of everything we do, just the very nature of reporting on mountain research. From a research lens, it assumes this one perspective of how well research is conducted. And so even just looking at the changes that we've done from the podcast perspective. And as has been raised, the idea that a land acknowledgment and how we've done a land acknowledgment moves from just a continual and reflexive review of land acknowledgments, but further into our commitments, like, so what? What are we doing about it? And that's a question that we as a team are continually asking ourselves, and a question that we encourage other folks that are listening or that are interested in creative outputs of their own research if they're to conduct land acknowledgments. A question that we would encourage you to ask yourselves is, well, what are you doing about it? And just on the basis of inclusion. Inclusion in itself is not a form of decolonization. And in fact, as a team, we've been moving past these inclusive politics of recognition and more into the shared editorial capacity, control, and creative liberty as exercised by indigenous members of the team. So not just that we're included, or that our voices are included, but as indigenous peoples, we're involved in the authorship and the production and the post production stages of sharing our words and perspectives as related to mountain research. [00:19:49] Speaker D: Thank you, Kyle. Yeah, that's all important. And decolonizing media practices can be very intricate, and just being able to do that as a group has been quite a journey. So, for the next question, I wanted to know more about a podcast team. How you share the narrative with the guests, and what does it mean when you give them the episode draft? Did you want to kind of break that down? I would love to hear more. [00:20:26] Speaker F: Yeah, I think Sid better explained this when we presented in Banff, but giving narrative control helps them tell their story better. And also, we are kind of the guests in their conversation, the researchers and indigenous knowledge holders that we're working with. They've been working together for years, and they know the story very well. So we just kind of come into it. We give them a way to share it, and that's kind of our job. I mean, we call ourselves the hosts, but we're not really the hosts. We kind of are a guest in their work, and we're just sharing it on the podcast. So it's really important for them to be able to share it in the way that they want to. [00:21:06] Speaker B: And I think it doesn't mean that there isn't a role that the researchers and everyone just hops in at the table and they already know what's going on. Because I think that one thing that we can really offer as media makers is that we're good at understanding, I think, how to explain stories in broad strokes to broad audiences. And I can say this as a researcher, that most researchers are not particularly good at doing that. [00:21:29] Speaker F: Right. [00:21:29] Speaker B: Sometimes you just get that narrow focus right in on your topic. You're highly specialized and you can't really see the forest for the trees. So we do come in with that viewpoint in helping broader audiences understand the story. But exactly as Julie says, none of us are experts in this. And whether we're learning about mountain goats or learning about aquatic ecosystems, I am very uninformed on those things. Until the interviews, usually, I would say. [00:21:56] Speaker G: I've always known this was important, but I think it was highlighted. We usually don't get too much feedback from guests, but one time, one indigenous source wanted me to tweak a little bit how she was introduced in the script, and it was a very minor detail, but it was very minor to me, if that makes sense. But obviously she brought that up and I changed it. And so it's just kind of those moments where we don't place value in certain things, but that doesn't mean other people may not place value in that, and that kind of just helps you learn. [00:22:33] Speaker B: And I think, I mean, I'm going to throw this actually to Kyle because he has better examples, but we've had discussions every year as we've revised our land acknowledgment for the podcast that language does matter, and implications for language does matter, and the perspective, if you're a settler, how you might see some words being used versus if you are indigenous or from a certain region of the country or from a certain background can vary quite a bit. And so being thoughtful where we can on language and how to be specific in our language is really important. And Kyle, I don't know if you want to add more on mean, I've mostly been learning this from you over the last few years. [00:23:08] Speaker E: Oh, we've all been learning as a team, and that's what it comes down to, I think, is the continual and reflexive learning. And the realization, in the same way that we do review our land acknowledgements with each iteration, is that we have more to learn and the space on the horizon changes. One thing that Julie raised was the aspects of narrative control. And I agree, while podcasting is a conduit to storytelling, these are not our stories to share. Right. We are in our aspects, the ones with the, how do I say? Yeah, the microphone power and the power for amplification and broadcasting. But ultimately it's not us helping to tell their story. They know how to tell their story, but rather it's an avenue for us to steward their stories to a broader audience, while at the same time evaluating our own practices and ethics as journalists to avoid those extractive practices that are typically associated with media gathering processes in and across indigenous communities, as Kat has just raised, too, we dive into the ethics of identity politics and how guests want to represent or be represented for the community, because as indigenous guests join their audience or who they might be speaking to could be different than the perceived audience from how a researcher would be speaking. So, for instance, a researcher might be speaking broadly to a research community, could be even globally, whereas I've noticed with the indigenous guests who join often, the audience, and the perception of the audience is home community. And so with the point around what Kata has raised around one particular guest wanting to just really correct it, to ensure that they are introduced properly, in accordance and reflective of their own community, that that's important. And things that might be perceived as just minor details are indeed critical. [00:25:26] Speaker D: So, for the next question. So the podcast team has developed a land acknowledgment in the second year. Does anybody want to explain how did that come about? And what was your experience? [00:25:42] Speaker B: I'll jump in on the land acknowledgment because I think I was actually the only one on the team at that point when it started. And what's interesting around the land acknowledgement is we had a season and had started doing some episodes before it came up, and it was Sarah Buffalo, who was one of our indigenous members at the time of the team, who I don't even think she suggested it in a meeting. I think she dropped it as a comment in a Google Document. It was a script that was being worked on. And she just dropped this little note about, oh, what about a land acknowledgement? And as soon as I saw it, I went doy. Like, why has this not even been talked about yet as a team? [00:26:22] Speaker D: Why we haven't? [00:26:23] Speaker B: And I will point out that Sarah was the only indigenous team member at that point. And so I reached out to her about it, but within context of the team, and she ended up telling me after that she'd kind of dropped it there on purpose, that she didn't feel confident bringing it up in a meeting that she thought it was important to consider. But she didn't know the team that well. She was pretty new and she wasn't sure how to do it. And so we sort of picked it up and I sort of saw that as a, you've dropped the hint. We need to figure it out now. So that was where coordinating with three of the other team members. So, Gabrielle, Eric, and Ethan, we spoke a bit about, well, do you agree with this? How might we want to approach it? And I ended up bringing in two individuals. This was all remote at the time for Covid, and so I brought in Patty Derbyshire, who is now a retired prof. From MRU who does a lot of work in reconciliation. She's a settler and spirit river striped wolf, who until recently was the MRU student president. And also he did a lot of research work with Patty, and they came to talk to us about their experience with land acknowledgments, how they saw them working, and also how it might work in podcasting, because the challenge we have, too, is that we don't hear a lot of land acknowledgments in podcasts. And in terms of audio formatting, it doesn't happen that way. So that's kind of how it all started, but it's grown a lot from there. From there, we developed our first land acknowledgment, trying to find a way to deal with it in audio format, because the challenge is, you don't want it to be too long. Right. In audio, we do tend to condense things. We didn't want it to be too formal because that also doesn't really work in podcasting. But also, what exactly is land in context of a podcast? I mean, currently, we have four members that are all sitting here in a room in person at Mount Royal University. And then we have Kyle, who's up in Edmonton, but we don't know who's listening to this, where they're based, where they're from. Often interviewing our guests, they could be as far away as the Northwest Territories or international. Right. And so how could we figure out what land meant? So we worked it out in a few ways to create a few different sections. And actually, Sherry, how you've started our podcast today by asking us our names a bit about ourselves and where we're from, became part of our commitment through deciding to have a land. Acknowledgement is that we should be asking our guests about where they're from and how they connect to the land. And that gives us a way to bring that in. Aside from a statement, which we do have a statement at the opening of the podcast, and we have one at the end. So instead of having one land acknowledgment, we kind of have three that all work in different ways. And currently we have the one at the beginning that speaks to the people of this region. Right. And we name them by name. We're not using anglicized names. Then we talk to our guests and we ask them to explain their connection to the land. And then at the end, we have a bit more of a statement that we might consider a bit more formal, but situating our production team that we're in treaty seven territory, as it is called, within a colonial governance standpoint, but also where we provide our commitment to working respectfully and continuing to learn with indigenous peoples. And it helps us take all those elements that make an effective land acknowledgment, but doesn't make it too long or too formal or feel like we're at the beginning of a meeting and someone's just reading out a speech for the nature of it. And one of the other elements that we do is revise our land acknowledgment. If you listen, between seasons two, I guess three, four and five, they will all sound different. And it's because we met as a team and we made changes. [00:29:54] Speaker D: Thank you, Meg. Just to go off of the land acknowledgements, I remember as a group, we were on Google meets and we were working on the land acknowledgement for our team. And I actually thoroughly enjoyed working with you guys because I had to do land acknowledgments for two other places, and I won't mention it, who they were. And I felt like it was thrown to the indigenous people that worked there. And we were kind of like having to come up with the land acknowledgment study and working as a group with the other employees, especially people who are high up in management. And I remember one of my previous, my boss, we were kind of sitting there looking at the company's land acknowledgment, and she was so disappointed because she was saying they spelt some of the tribe names wrong. They didn't even bother to fact check the land acknowledgment. And then I looked at it and I was like, oh, my God, it's spelt wrong. And so she was so disappointed and she just felt like, okay, well, I'm just going to fix it. And I felt like that wasn't her job. I told her, I was like, that's not your job. I was like, they need to kind of sit there and go through it. And actually, it needs to feel personal. It needs to not feel like, we're just going to check this off a box. We're going to do this, we're going to do that. And get it over with. And I kind of experienced that with two other places, and it was really daunting to me, and I felt really kind of sad about it because I felt like now that land acknowledgments are becoming such not a huge thing, but they're coming a more known thing in other places, that it feels like it's forced because they have to say it, because they feel like, okay, well, if we're going to be respectful, we're going to have to do this right. And some places I know it's genuine, other places I know it's not. With my experience doing the land of canon trial, I was thankful that I didn't really have much like you guys allow me input, but I felt like you as a group, were able to kind of come up with it yourself, kind of add in your input. And I just didn't feel like I was on sitting there looking at it and having to come up with it by myself. And I appreciated that. And just to go off for the next question, so when we're talking about land acknowledgments and how they shouldn't be a box of check like I spoke about previously, how, as a team, did you make it work to be meaningful? [00:32:38] Speaker G: I think you pretty much touched on it in the sense that we worked on it together. And I think that really helped. Honestly, if someone had told me here, make a land acknowledgment all alone, I would have been very lost. And being guided through and working all this together. Also, when we revised the land acknowledgment and kind of talking about why certain language diction matters kind of helped me. It was very insightful to me in learning how to do a land acknowledgment. I think going through that learning process altogether as a team very much helped be in that comfort zone. [00:33:23] Speaker F: Yeah. I mean, for me, when we were revising it, that was kind of one of the first things I had done on the podcast. And so I really didn't know much, and I didn't have much input to have. But being there and knowing why we selected those words, why we wrote the sentences that way, having that insight as to why we wrote it like that, I was able to feel more genuine in saying the land acknowledgment and that I was a part of it. Because no matter how genuine you are with saying a land acknowledgment, if it's just a script you pulled off the Internet, it's not going to be personal to you. And being able to be a part of the conversation and help build it together, it really made it more meaningful to be able to say, well. [00:34:00] Speaker B: And thinking back to the first conversation around a land acknowledgment, I think it was even more meaningful for the students and myself to think about it, because we were doing it online in the fall of 2020 in Covid, and this was a time where it felt like I try to remember, and all I see are Zoom screens, right? But the one time I would normally be spending time outside or connecting with the land was when you get outside, because it's one of the few places you could meet with people, right. Especially when we were all more under lockdown. And I know that chatting with the other students about how are we engaging with the land? Where are we? And I think many of us during COVID had a newfound appreciation for where we were and being able to spend that time outside and what it meant to, whether we were able to connect with our community or not through those outdoor spaces. And so it sort of evolved at that time, and I think it provided some comfort for some of the students, especially those of us that were able to get out to the mountains. We think about how popular it became to go out there at that time, but to be able to think more meaningfully about how we engaged with the land. [00:35:06] Speaker E: Yeah. We've had two land acknowledgment revision processes since I joined. And, in fact, right after I joined, that was one of the things that I said as a team that we would need to address pertinently before the release of the next episode. And I think it was before a launch of a new season. Most land acknowledgments these days. You could ask AI to write a land acknowledgment, and it would be quite similar to the land acknowledgments that you see written across various universities and institutions. And that speaks to how impersonal these land acknowledgments often are. And so we as a team, made the priority to embed commitment within our land acknowledgment. And through this commitment, and again, this reflexive revisiting of this land acknowledgment, it forces us to look at our practices, and then we become beholden to the commitment and processes within the land acknowledgment, not only for the personal aspects that are tied to our commitments, our relationship to the mountains, our relationship to the land, but again, what are we doing about it? And I feel kind of like looking to the truth and Reconciliation Commission's call to action 86. Call to action 86 specifically looks to journalism programs and their role in requiring education for all students on the histories of indigenous peoples. And then they talk about residential schools and undrip and treaties and indigenous law and crown relations. But critically, is that history is not just a thing of the past, it is current, it is ongoing, and it is through to the future. And that is an aspect I feel that we've embedded and embodied in our land acknowledgment process and also in our process of working with indigenous guests is recognizing the past, present and futures of the indigenous peoples that we have welcomed to join in as guest speakers on the canadian on podcast. So bringing it back to the meaningful impacts and processes of how we're going about a land acknowledgement, I do want to underscore that it is about commitment and even us committing to revisiting what that means amongst our own team. [00:37:46] Speaker D: Thank you, Kyle. And just to add on to that a little bit, so how I understood land acknowledgements as an indigenous person was my galaxy. My grandpa told me he's like the way he's. I'm trying to say it where it makes sense, but he said, in my language, he said the way that non Indigenous do land. Acknowledgments he's like, it's good, but it's a little bit funny, he said. And he's like, but it's a good thing that they're doing it. Because even back then, so historical wise, indigenous people, when they would move around on the territories of the land, they knew whose land or whose territories they were on, and they would acknowledge that. Especially like, say, my community, my tribes, they went to Cree territory, they would acknowledge that. They would know that that was their territory, and there would be some kind of agreement, like, okay, here and there. So looking back at it and looking now, that's kind of how I think about it, is like we're honoring the traditional territories of other indigenous groups and knowing that they've been the guardians and the caretakers of those lands. So my grandpa, he always stresses that's important, and I'm glad that people are seeing that because we've did that for a millennial. [00:39:16] Speaker C: Join us in part two to hear the rest of our conversation as we discuss the limitations and challenges of decolonizing media, as well as what the future of decolonized media may look like. In part one of our discussion on decolonizing media, we discussed how the Canadian Mountain podcast team has adapted their practice from traditional journalism. These changes included sharing the question line with guests prior to the interview so that the guests are allowed narrative control in the storytelling process. Another change is sharing an episode draft with the guests so that they have the opportunity to provide feedback before the episode goes live. Lastly, the Canadian Mountain podcast utilizes a land acknowledgement, a practice not yet common in podcasting. Additionally, the team revisits and revises the land acknowledgement each year, adapting it to a new knowledge and finding ways to make it more meaningful to the team. That is it for this edition of the Canadian Mountain Podcast in partnership with the Community Podcast initiative at Mount Rural University. Thanks for listening. I'm Sherry woods and thanks to producer Julie Patton, and thank you to Kyle Napier and Meg Wilcox for your guidance. The Canadian Mountain podcast is produced from the treaty seven territories with the goal of bringing together indigenous knowledges with settler research and sciences. Throughout this shared platform, we are committed to collaborating with indigenous peoples in respect of the contributions of indigenous voices and knowledge holders. We are actively listening and learning to decolonize our production practices throughout this series and encourage other media professionals and organizations to decolonize their practices as well. Be sure to join us again for more stories surrounding mountain places, whether that be in your own backyard or from around the country. Share and subscribe to get the latest episodes and be sure to tell your mountain loving friends and colleagues you can find us wherever you get your podcasts, and you can learn more about the Canadian Mountain Network at canadianmountainnetwork, Ca.