Happy Beltane Witches! This May Day we get to be in conversation with two brilliant and beloved friends of the pod, Granddaughter Crow and Amanda Amour-Lynx. This episode kicks off our month-long fundraiser for Native Women, join us in a joyful community act of reparations! Let's be caring and curious together as we way-find the future!
CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE DETAILS OF OUR 2023 FUNDRAISER FOR NATIVE WOMEN'S SHELTERS!
Your curiosity is your internal compass to lead you to your authenticity.
"Granddaughter Crow (Dr. Joy Gray) holds a doctorate in leadership. Internationally recognized as a medicine woman, she comes from a long line of spiritual leaders as a member of the Navajo Nation. She is an international award-winning author. Her books include The Journey of the Soul, Wisdom of the Natural World, and Belief, Being, and Beyond. Additionally, she is a member of the Delta Mu Delta Honor Society due to her academic achievements. Voted in as Woman of the Year 2015 by the National Association of Professional Women. She is truly a conduit for wisdom and transformation between the western and native worlds. More than that, she has dedicated her life to inspiring, encouraging, and empowering individuals to be their authenticity."
You are doing what you need to do, just do it. We'll all do it one step at a time.
"Amanda Amour Lynx (they/she/nekm) is a Two Spirit, neurodivergent, urban L’nu (Mi’kmaw)-Scottish interdisciplinary artist and facilitator currently living in Guelph, Ontario. Lynx was born and grew up in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) and is a member of Wagmatcook FN. Their art making is a hybridity of traditional l’nuk approaches and contemporary painting with new media and digital arts, guided by the Mi’kmaq principles netukulimk (sustainability) and etuaptmumk (two-eyed seeing), Lynx’s artistic practice discusses land and relationality, environmental issues, navigating systems and societal structures, cultural and gender identity, (L’nui’smk) language resurgence, quantum and spiritual multiplicities. Their facilitation work focuses on designing community spaces committed to creating healthy Indigenous futurities, guided by lateral love, accessibility and world-building.
Amour-Lynx’s recent projects include Spark Indigenous(2023), a collaboration with Meta and Slow Studies Creative, an augmented reality creator accelerator that amplifies Indigenous cultural expression and storytelling through using emerging technology and AR. Virtual Beginner Two Spirit Regalia Making Skills (2021-2023) with Canadian Roots Exchange, a program for Indigiqueer, two spirit and LGBT+ youth, that provides access to regalia making workshops, genderfluid ceremonial teachings, pow wow culture and rooted in peer-led community and cultural practices. Their curatorial projects include 2S Digital Constellations (2023) a short project incubator and augmented reality virtual exhibit highlighting the works of emerging two spirit textile-based artists using new media, and Shapeshifters(2019) exhibit at Beaver Hall Gallery (Toronto) part of the annual Bi+ Arts Festival, which featured and highlighted the work of Two Spirit artists in dialogue with the Bi+ festival showcase. Their writing was published as part of grunt gallery’s Together Apart anthology (2020), and revue esse (2020). Lynx also worked as program assistant at Xpace Cultural Centre, a cultural programming hub and art gallery serving emerging artists (Toronto) from 2016-2018. Their artwork has been featured in gallery spaces, festivals and publications nationally."
Full Transcript
Indigenous Futurism - GDC + Amanda
Hi folks. It's Risa and Amy here from Missing Witches, inviting you to get involved in our annual raffle. In support of the native women's shelter of Montreal and indigenous run nonprofits wherever you live, we have a ridiculously fun witchy heap of prizes donated by a whole community of folks joining together to make a magical wave of reparations magic.
There's a prize pack from Jinx Monsoon, a one-on-one Terra session with. Sarah Goddess Diener Magic classes from Pam Grossman. A full year of writing workshops with Kate Belu in the Bardo Art pieces, jewelry pieces, readings, books, and so much more. Check out all the details at missing witches.com/reparations and uh, bless fucking me. Bless Fucking be.
[00:01:01] Risa: Welcome home to The Missing Witches podcast. I feel like elated and joyful and so thankful to get to be in this conversational container right now with two people that over a series of conversations now that span years. I've had the privilege of learning from our guests today and feeling like I fall in love with them, with their vulnerability and their wisdom. And so I hope you, if you are missing witch's listener have had the opportunity to be in Headspace with these voices before.
If not, go find them. Today joining us, we have granddaughter Crow, and Amanda more links and we step back into circle again to think together today about futurism, art, and work and ritual work and community work that conjures a future, a real future. I refuse to give up on the fucking future.
And especially indigenous futurism. What does that look like? How do we call it forest? What does that feel like for two artists, writers, thinkers, workers, leaders who are indigenous and are a badass, and are here with us today? So that's sort of my introduction. Welcome, Amy. Do you wanna, before we start, tell us about our annual fundraiser podcast?
Pod prizes,
[00:02:32] Amanda: blah.
[00:02:35] Risa: Those words.
Podcast prizes.
[00:02:36] Amy: Podcast prizes. Thank you so much, Amanda and G d c for your patience while I read this prepared speech of instructions. You both have done this before, so you know you have a minute to sit back and relax while I deliver these instructions.
Of course, it's Beltane. Happy Beltane, which means for us in the missing witch's coven. It's time for our annual fundraiser in support of First Nations women. As always, Risa and I will be contributing our prophets for the month of May to the native women's shelter of Montreal. And as in the past, we are asking our listeners and cup mates to make a donation, a reparation.
Wherever you are in the world, we encourage you to find a local native women's shelter to support. And we understand that some places don't have First Nation specific orgs, so we'll also accept donations to shelters for vulnerable women and children for sex workers or victims of violence.
But we at this time would appreciate a focus on support of indigenous people. And this year, ooh, we've got 20 prizes. Thousands of dollars worth of classes, art, jewelry, readings, books, and more donated by our covenant large and they're waiting to be yours. Please stick around to the end of this episode for a reading of the full list of prizes or head to our website now for full descriptions.
So here's what you're gonna do. This is the important part. Everybody. Make your donation of $10 or more. Take a screenshot of your receipt and email it to missing witches gmail.com with the subject line reparation what country you're in, plus the amount of your donation. The amount is important because for every $10 you'll get one entry into the raffle for these prizes.
So if you donate $50, you'll get five entries and so on. All of these details will be on our website and our socials. Winners will be chosen at random and announced on June 1st. And as always, every year, this fundraiser is an experiment in what we can do together. So if you think it's a cool idea, please help make it successful by making a small reparation or a large one to First Nations women who have been systematically marginalized and disenfranchised both socially and economically together.
Let's raise some real money, make real change, win prizes, and be blown away by what we can do when we work together. Thank you so much, Amanda and G D C for helping us open this fundraiser.
[00:05:29] Risa: You can just go straight to missing witches.com/reparations. We'll have all the information there on the details of the prizes and a link to the native women's shelter of Montreal that we support here in Montreal.
And if you can't figure out who you wanna donate to, send it to the native women's shelter of Montreal. Send some love to our hometown crew.
[00:05:49] Amy: last year the native women's shelter got donations from all over the world. So we're grateful to those of you who chose our, our our heartland to make your
reparation.
[00:05:59] Risa: Yeah. Anyway, on that note, I wondered if we could start with a reintroduction. We know each other, but we're always new. Who are you today? How are you today? What are you thinking about? What are you passionate about right now? What are you working on? G D C, you wanna start us off?
[00:06:25] GDC: I would. So nice, nice to see you too.
Oh my goodness. I love the missing witches audience and both of you. I, and I am just so happy to be here with Amanda. This is gonna be great. So what I will say is, let's kick it off by, Thinking together, feeling together and sending that love out into the world. High vibration. We are in sacred space in a sacred time, let the divine, as it reveals itself to you, come through any and all of our dialogue today.
And if it does inspire you, feel free to reach out and tell us what that looks like. You can, of course, write the Missing Witches and they can forward it onto both of us so that we can have this dialogue together. So who am I? Well, ya A, they call me Granddaughter Crow. I am born to the Bill Clan for the Ta Chini clan, a member of the Navajo Nation, as well as Dutch heritage.
And I am here to inspire, to encourage, and to empower you to be your authentic self. And I know what that struggle is like because it took me a long time to figure out what that was. And I do understand the impact, not only on First Nation Indigenous, because my father, full-blood Navajo. And, and me growing up bi culturally and in, in the seventies, which wasn't as open-minded as we are now, but we still have a ways to go.
So in my learning on how to be authentic, I not only reach out to the indigenous people, I also reach out to the LGBTQ plus people, to females, to anybody who feels as though they might be considered quote unquote other. And it's like, this is the opportunity for you to step up, be authentic. It is feeling like you're coming home.
So that's who I am. Granddaughter Crow. And I will turn it over to
[00:08:47] Amanda: Amanda. Wow. That energetic intro, just Inspired me so much, I gotta like, live up to that energy now.
Delk Amanda Armour links Nina two Spirit. My name's Amanda. I'm Laura Links. My spirit name is a, is jk, the one who leaves footprints and links in my language is a books again. I am Mima First Nations with membership at Wauk First Nation in Unama territory in Nova Scotia. However, I'm an urban native person who always grew up off reserve.
I have mixed heritage with some Scottish and Irish from paternal side of my family that I don't really have strong ties to anymore. It's a complicated history. Um, A two-spirit neuro divergent individual who works in a variety of mediums and sprinkles myself across a lot of them including arts and mysticism and cultural practices with community engagement.
And what else was I answering? Who am I today? Huh? I, that's a good question. I feel like sometimes we're shapeshifters and we're temporal and float in and out of spaces, but I came into this day, really present and aware supercharged. And I was trying to tap into some of that like energy of renewals and endings at the same time being a little bit plugged into the spicy.
So while we're also tapped into that lateral love and understanding of welcoming ourselves back into our bodies I'm also. Thinking how we could be badass bitches as well, and bringing, putting that energy back once it came for things that um, we're, we're done with and ready to transmute it into something that could be regenerative and bring us into spaces that leap and bound us into the future.
I guess, which maybe ties into that whole futurism talk in a way because
there are a lot of teachings around seven generations and always being mindful of what's happening in this quantum reality of who's come before us, who our ancestors are, how do we honor them? Who are we today? Who are we in relationship with? Whether that's our ecologies, the land that we're on, our friends, our lovers, our family, chosen family, the plants and animals.
And without sounding corny, of course, but the future as well. So the choices that you make today influence and are informed by everything that's come before is happening now and will happen. It's kind of, it's kind of wild, but it's a, it's a practice in mindfulness, I think. And it brings us into that territory of us being very.
Adaptable or ingenious people. We work with our environment and what it tells us. And sometimes that means that we adapt with it through a lot of changes, even dark and unfortunate changes. And we've learned how to be very resourceful with what comes our way. So in thinking about the idea of futurism, you'll see these heads butting around tradition and the new and how you find yourself in the middle.
How do you honor all of those states to pass the present in the future?
[00:13:10] GDC: I love that because I think you hit the nail on the head. With the respect of the past, the traditional ways, whatever culture or system you have lived in or generationally in, some of us are here in this generation. To be that change agent, to break those cycles, generational challenges and things like that, to open our heart, to open our mind, but to know where we came from and know who we are, and then where we're headed.
The balance that we really feel like we are stuck in the middle at times. All of us stuck in the middle between the past and the future. And that mindfulness is so perfect because we can learn, respect, honor, and make change. Generational curses, et cetera, but we do that respectfully. And b, like you said, mindful making choices and decisions authentically and mindfully.
That is more of the futuristic idea. So I just wanted to tag along and agree completely with what you just said.
[00:14:27] Amy: Amanda I really feel like your art, your visual art especially is like a very much an examination of this urban indigeneity. It's like fueled by like your, your desire to be in touch with your traditional. But also you, you know, are using like motion design and doing, you know, animation online.
I mean, I think you already covered this, but I really would love for you to just like, say a couple more sentences about like urban indigeneity and what that means to you and how it comes across
in your art.
[00:15:07] Amanda: Wow, it's really complicated. We think we're living in a time where we're actively unraveling our inner truths and healing from intergenerational trauma across our you know, across our generations.
And what this ends up looking like is trying to deconstruct what's a colonial narrative and what's our way of caring for each other and looking at the world. So one thing I'll say right off the bat is that the aparthied that is the reservation system. The ways that governments have forced us into these community pockets that kind of isolated us from our our resources and the ways that we ancestrally know the place that we come from and having to restart and rebuild has made that way of looking at our community's complex and sometimes a bit
Challenging to disseminate when it comes to cultural and social acceptance and what we see as cities and urban development. These are also our traditional territories. These are places that were very rich with our own land-based knowledges as well. It's just been developed upon so much, I think particularly about all the time I've spent in Toronto and how that entire infrastructure is developed upon the waterways there.
And in addition to that the first buildings and developments happened along that waterway. And so a lot of the contracts in that place. The agreements that are made around what's to happen in a place, it's still there. But it looks different now. And so when I think about being urban indigenous, I think about having feet in both worlds in a way, but also that distinct separation that you can feel from your home community.
And coming back into that and feeling like you have a direct channel or source to talking to the place that you reside and finding your own personal connection can get a little bit staticky. You, you aren't able to See it as clearly because of all of the things like they built on top of it.
There's a Starbucks there, there's a winners now. There's a parking lot where there used to be like, I don't know, a trading post or a lodge or maybe someplace that like somebody lived or burial mountains that are in parking lots that get unearthed whenever landscapers get hired to do a contract.
So when it comes to that, I feel like treading gently because people have very varied and distinct lived experiences living in either place. And neither is more valid or invalid than the other. And we're all actively trying to do that work of just trying to feel okay and being connected to the things that we need to, to carry us in our journey.
Thinking about the art piece and the, the mediums I use, I think I might have like segued very far into place rather than the process of making art. But it's a, it's a new medium that I've been trying and it's been it's been nurtured in me by some very helpful people in my life to push me into learning, to work in the digital learning, to work with things like extended reality AR and vr and.
I am not the best at it. I'm just a baby. I'm just learning. And I just kind of get amused by the tiniest little thing that ends up like working out visually, but often they're kind of incomplete thoughts or mistakes or accidents, but in a way that sounds, and feels quite a bit like that experience of coming back into your identity and finding that path and trying to hear that louder in yourself.
[00:20:07] Risa: G D C I was thinking about you when Amanda used the phrase um, the staticness of being between. Do you wanna think out loud about your own experience of that? I mean, in leadership spaces, in academic spaces, spiritually, religious spaces, your own culture? You seem like someone who's deeply navigated that, that staticness in a way that sort of resonates gently from you, like you figured something out about it.
[00:20:39] GDC: Sure. So when I hear that, I really do feel once again that we are sitting in a space between the past and the future, and the now is right here. And when we feel the static, it's almost like this resonance from the past and this anticipation for the future and wanting to make clear, decisive choices in order to make sure that you're proud of what you do tomorrow.
You know? But in that, I would say that the static could also be kind of like how I would when I feel that. You know, it, it also feels like life. It feels like something that I am creating, not predetermined destiny, that I have a part to play in what I say, what I do. I get to feel all of my feelings. And what's what's interesting to me is currently I am in the middle of writing a book, next book coming out, and it doesn't have a title yet, but it really has to do with the intelligence of the four bodies of existence and the intelligence of the four bodies of existence being the mental, spiritual, physical, you know, emotional and the intellect.
Colonization thought processes, governmental policies, legislation, blah, blah, blah. Systems of thinking has actually moved us away from feeling okay with feeling what we feel and moved us away from being what we are. And so in this book, I really get into it. It is so empowering. There is science within it.
Like for example, the left hemisphere is all about logic and l you know, the language. The right hemisphere is all about creativity. We know this to be true. This is scientifically explored. But then how does the left hemisphere approach the world and how does the right hemisphere approach the. Well, the left hemisphere will say, oh, this is logical.
I will learn from my past and I will create a project for my future. You know what the writer does? It sees everything holistically within the moment it sees, it understands the paradox that we are in. It understands empathy. It is not judgmental, and it resonates into these pictures, which I think links is expressing.
You know, Amanda is expressing in, in the artwork, and it's like we need to tap into our right hemisphere of connectivity, logic, connectivity, and creativity. So here's the difference. The left hemisphere, when I look at the hand, the hand right in front of my face that I've risen, I say, left hemisphere says, this is my hand.
You know what the right hemisphere says. This is me. So if we can begin to think in terms of this is me, I am you, you are me, we are different expressions of this wonderful thing. And yeah, there's gonna be a little static, but caffeinate your life babies. Cuz here we
[00:24:24] Amanda: come. I'm so excited and really wanna read this book you're writing that's that's amazing.
I think when it comes to the type of artwork that explores new media and these digital types of worlds often in that type of art you have. Individualism you have very much the idea of autonomy, getting things faster. Things like ai, things that are programmable, reproducible and carbon copy.
And this goes against our worldview. This goes against the way that we see things. So when using a medium like that, it's this paradoxical juxtaposition of those two states where we're in. Ill new worldview Albert Marshall talks about, and Murdina Marshall talks about two-eyed seeing . And what this is, is looking at the two ways that we are in the world right now through the eyes of.
White man, or however you wanna say that through that colonial lens and with that language, and then in our language and the way that we see things that are relational and reciprocal and never without community, you're kind of looking at the networks as like a tree and root system or something that is very interconnected with everything that's around it.
And fusing those two ways of looking together is where you find that balance. And it's never one over the other. It's it's a type of cleverness in a sense where. Thinking about it partially as a politician of like, how do I mediate contrasting views of looking at the world, but as well accepting and acknowledging that we're in I forget the word exactly, but where you have like a mix of many people and perspectives.
Like we just live in a different place now. And those things that are with us aren't really going away anytime soon. And I guess if you're thinking about it on a, on a truth and reconciliation level where it's like you need the truth before you can reconcile, you can't really skip the steps. You have to look at what's really there.
And so in the, in the artwork it traipses this line between how do I bring. My community with me, how do I use digital, digital storytelling to keep our cultures alive and preserve it, but also in a way that's sovereign, that doesn't respect close practices. And looks at those dialogues as well of some of our more ancestral practices with materials connecting with things that are very much alive animals and plants.
The ways that we gift and use generosity and have protocol around how we tend to things and how we make, always putting something of ourselves. And giving it away if we're gonna ever take something into ourselves. And so a lot of the new ways of making art with some of these more techy mediums is shifting that individualism to a place where you can envision something as an alternative or an intervention.
Recently I was using it visually to try to connect to the place that my great-grandmother grew up and the water that She likely spent a lot of time near, and I haven't really been in that place to visit myself. There's a lot of barriers to really get myself that direction going out east. And so that was my way to be in ceremony with myself.
That was my way to say. I may not be able to be there physically, but I can tap into that whenever I want and I could talk to her whenever I want. And these are conduits, they're ways that we facilitate it the same way that we use divination like tarot and any other kind of scrying or even speaking to our inner self.
But it's also how can that be collaborative as well? So you can do your individual storytelling, but you can also think about what are. Dialogues I really wanna have happen that I can visually represent here, that bring our values and represent who we feel we are. Things that are by us and for us.
They're not interjected by the gays of someone that wants us to package ourselves in a palatable way that is doing lip service to their cause to their ideas of reconciliation and just kind of unapologetically exist and say, if you get my iconography, if you get what I'm putting down my motifs those ways that I'm talking about the way I see the world, there's an instant recognition that happens between people that are the same and That ripples forward, I think to see someone do that and almost think, well, I could do that too, or, that was actually something I was thinking as well, but I didn't think it was possible.
Or maybe I just feel less shame or embarrassment around that idea, so I might try it.
I mean, yeah.
[00:31:01] Risa: Here's to, here's to being inspired by seeing each of us release shame, ugh, step by step. Gdc, would you extrapolate forward from that idea towards thinking about indigenous futurism, indigenous futures? I feel like Amanda just seeded. Ski did a lot of ways of thinking about how that emerges and what it looks like.
Do you wanna pick up any
[00:31:34] Amanda: of those
[00:31:34] GDC: seats? Oh, absolutely. I think that there was a lot that they threw down. One part that I was connecting with was the idea that we are living in a duality or a dualistic time, and how do we balance duality, how do we balance opposites? Whether it's the white body thinking and speaking versus the red body thinking or speaking moreover than to the, the black body or to the yellow body, or to the brown body.
There's all these different ways of thinking and approaching the world from, like I was talking about, the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. Well, heck, let's take it a step further from the head and the heart, from the eye and the you from the masculine and the feminine side within all of us.
And what I would say is that's your council people. Those dualistic approaches are board members at your table providing you with different perspectives. Now you are the one who gets to make the final decision, but in order to hear the whole lay of the land, you need to listen to what each side is saying.
So a lot of times, you know I just kind of look. You know, the difference is even when I come to the table of somebody who I'm like, that's not how I perceive the world. They're perceiving it from a completely different way. I still want to listen because I'm gonna learn something. And the truth is, a lot of us, I know this to be true on the Missing Witch is people.
But we are all headed in the same direction. We are just doing it from different ways and we see things from different places. I loved what They said about the idea of the animistic world, meaning that everything has a soul, is alive, the water is alive, the stone is alive, the animal is alive.
You are alive. And when we work to create a world futuristic thinking, we need to have those dualities and we need to rely on the animism and the wisdom that is within the natural world and how we individually respond to that. So I would also say I love the idea of being able to sit under that tree and see what you see.
And maybe you're just like, oh, am I supposed to listen to the tree? And you think the tree's gonna speak to you in English? Tree doesn't speak in English, it speaks in body language. It speaks in vibration. So what is it saying to you? And then what is it saying collectively? You can't, you cannot be a complete mindful, authentic being unless you can hear.
All of the duality. And I love the idea of leaning into that which might have been shamed from a societal point of view, and you being curious about it or leaning into that uncomfortability. Because the truth is, is that what if it's not shameful? It was just said that it was supposed to be shameful.
What if you are a representation of what the future looks like, but you can only get there because you can hear yourself and then you join in circle and we collectively do it. Love the idea of doing this through art, because art holds a vibration that is louder than words. I, myself, am not a per se artist in the different modalities.
I am an artist in concepts, I write books. I weave people together, I weave things. So my artistic abilities are seen in this spiritual, mental realm. And every once in a while I'll write it down on paper and then people will read what I say, and then they're like, oh, is this what you meant? And I'm like, I don't know.
Is that what I said to you? So I love the idea of the collective, the individual expression and the collective and what that looks like. What does it say to you? Cuz your voice matters. And in order for us to move into a future, Well, by God, we have a great responsibility. The first thing that we need to do is move into ourself and our authenticity.
We all feel like we are in between. We all feel shame, we all feel liberated. We all feel blah, blah, blah, blah. So feel what you feel. And then, and only then can you literally help understand, respect, what you know. And then, and only then can you respect the community and that which is outside of yourself.
Start from point A, which is the self connect with point B, which is the natural world. Let it speak to you. Understand that these dualities are both a part of your council, even if you don't like one and you get to know more. So I would say that everything that links Amanda links, I, I just keep calling you links, but Amanda Links, throws down, is this idea that.
The way that we can process together starts with you processing here first inside and expressing yourself. Even if you think it was a mistake or an error, maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was your authenticity. Maybe you're embarrassed because you're not supposed to draw outside the line. But I think that that's where we begin outside the line.
[00:37:39] Risa: I mean, I was totally shook and had to stop to write down. Maybe it's not shame. Maybe you're the future. Ugh. Also, when you said we're all going the same direction, I think I saw Amy get hit in the heart with that one. Yeah. Cuz those feel like really powerful reassuring things to hear right now. Amanda, do you wanna pick up this idea of.
Any of the ideas you just heard there, but also I wonder in particular about the idea of picking up voices, of picking up voices of the collective, of the voices of your council, the voices, you know, and, and how does that, if it does play into a future?
[00:38:23] Amanda: Hmm. I love what you said. I get taken aback with like the beauty and profoundness of the ways that you weave.
Like you, you said you're a weaver. A very much does sound exactly like the way that you draw from the world and bring all of these concepts and themes together. We really have a lot of gratitude for that insight. I think that. Drawing from the collective. And that leaving is an interesting practice where
inadvertently by experiencing the cosmos, experiencing the energy around us, we're all mirroring and grappling with that vibration coming out. I draw a lot of that reference with astrology and the ways that even though our charts, our individual lives might be different. Ways that transits are happening in the collective.
As those planetary bodies and celestial things are moving and always in flux in these very unique geometric combinations, they
affect us similarly but differently. So where we would experience it, maybe, maybe for one person, it has to do with like their, their identity and their inner self. And for another it has to do with their parents or their assets or properties or their relationships. And we're all kind of Looking at the same thing from multiple perspectives and kind of coming into it somewhere in the hubris of it all.
And what ends up happening a lot of the time is the moment someone starts talking about what's going on in their life, you can apply it to, oh, that sounds a little bit similar, but maybe just manifested slightly different. Or, I see myself in it and the more you open up to speaking what you might feel, Unsure about, or maybe you feel like it's t m i or it's a little bit too personal, or even in some cases a little bit too woo for whoever you're in company with. And that's when you realize that you're being visited by the same omens and the same visions or the same words will pop up.
Or the same like, I don't know, lately it's been birds and crows and yep, here you are. But there was a, like a few weeks ago, all of these. Running themes with seemingly disconnected people were all on the same tangent. And I was like, if you only knew that I was just talking to someone else about this thing, but in addition to that, it's letting that discomfort of saying what you think might not be okay. Breathe into existence. A little bit about the spirit name. I carry the one who leaves footprints. It's a weird thing that I'm still trying to understand. It's a new name I've been given, but a lot of it has to do with well, if you think about footprints and making treads someone has to start first.
And what happens to the person that starts first? Sometimes that looks like persecution or confusion or threat. Why are you being different? It's shown in a lot of people that are standing up for oppression, whether that's from their race or culture, their their position in the world, their gender, as well as their neurotype.
And whenever someone kind of goes out of the box, you see things that kind of trickle in, like either persecution or revolution. And that is making footprints. It's kind of saying, if I. Realized that that path that I was going on isn't, for me. It doesn't serve me that's someone else's path. Or maybe I just don't like how it's going.
Maybe that's going towards the apocalypse on a civilizational level and I wanna be a little bit more sustainable or think about coming back into ways that are more caring, whatever it might be. It could just be an active rebellion too. That's also totally fine. It could be simple as that of just being, yeah, I'm different today just doing it different.
That tread is also neuroplasticity. So in the ways that we look at recovery from injury, recovery from trauma, what.
I guess different therapies look at is the way that you rewrite your narrative by doing something differently. If something's been the same your whole life, you aren't going to get a different result. And if you're suffering from it, like I do live with P T S D and reliving and looping on a fear or a threat is something that is a reality that I face, that I do a lot of self-work to make more tolerable and more manageable.
And neuroplasticity is like that. Looking at it kind of like when you're walking through a park and you see there's kind of like a, a dirt path because people walked along that way for long enough time that the grass doesn't grow anymore. There. But if you walk across the grass, maybe the first time you walk that way, you're maybe just stamping the grass down a little bit, still alive, and it might spring back up.
But if you do it long enough, you do have that new route. And they could both exist still, but they are they're adjacent, they're choices. And sometimes you would walk and revisit the old path and that might help you in that moment. It might give you some insight or medicine. And if it's maladaptive, if it causes you to suffer, you could, no, you, oh, you have a little other direction you can go into.
[00:46:11] Risa: My mom's a psychologist, she always says n neurons that fire together, wire together. It's like a catchphrase from when you're in school studying that stuff that like you, you can actually associate new paths with good feelings and make those paths happen again. It is something we're capable of and if we face a fear and we avoid it, then that fear gets bigger.
Like we, we live in a world that is plastic and our choices are a part of it. We literally do make the future. It's a real thing we can believe in. Amy, do you have a closing question or feeling?
[00:46:52] Amy: Well, I, I do wanna say before we, we come back to our, our guests for their closing thoughts and ideas and ways that our listeners can support you.
I just wanna remind everybody that this conversation is part of a fundraiser and, and everything that we've been talking about today can sort of feed into that idea that we're all inadvertently experiencing the cosmos, but that we have, we have the ability to rewrite a narrative. A lot of us are, are in this space listening right now who are experiencing shame or guilt or who are unsure or you.
Sucked into believing the ultimate capitalist and colonial lie that individualism is possible and sustainable. And so what we would love for you to do is take this, this idea that Amanda brought of being in ceremony with myself, and make your reparation part of a ceremony that you do with yourself. If it helps, think of it as a ritual sacrifice.
Think of it as making amends or giving a gift, or you know, honoring that part of you, that board of directors that G D C talks about that that lives inside each of us. Make your reparation, make your donation. We'll give you all the details in a minute, but really think about it as being in ceremony with yourself and making a ritual sacrifice that can help to rewrite the narrative for.
All of us, we are in this together and hopefully we are all going in the same direction. And that direction is, you know, decolonizing, it's land back. It's changing the way we think about other people, quote unquote other people. You know, we are, we are witches. We have the benefit of recognizing that we are all one, but we still need to manifest that, that heart energy and put it into the world.
When we are investing in our community, we are investing in ourselves. And again, we would love for you to take this opportunity if you felt inspired by something that you heard today, to go into ceremony with yourself and make that ritual sacrifice, put some finances into the hands of an organization that deserves it, not just needs it or wants it, but that deserves our support.
So I wanna go back to g d c, I wanna go back to Amanda, if you have any more words of wisdom to help inflate the balloon. That is my heart and mind right now. And also, if you could add in if our listeners wanna support you individually, g d C, you can tell us about your books. And Amanda, whatever you have that our listeners can throw money at, please tell us about.
[00:49:52] GDC: Perfect. Well, I will definitely say that I've really enjoyed once again being in Sacred Space with The Missing Witches and everybody that listens. I know that I have met several of you. I look forward to meeting more of you. Granddaughter Crow here, www.granddaughtercrow.com. I have a Patreon.
Yes, I do. Patreon, granddaughter Crow is on Patreon. I do weekly, quick weekly reads on my YouTube channel. What Granddaughter Crow has a YouTube channel. So just look me up. You can find it all on www.granddaughtercrow.com. QuickBooks. I wrote The Journey of the Soul, the Path of a Medicine Woman, I wrote Wisdom of the natural world, spiritual and practical teachings by plants, animals, and Mother Earth. This might be a really good one for you guys to go and, and get so that you'll be able to understand a little bit more about what communing in nature can look like. And then I have belief being and beyond your journey to questioning ideas, deconstructing concepts, and healing from harmful belief systems.
All of these you can get, you know, have your local bookstore, order them for you, go to Amazon, whatever it is that you wanna do. Before I give parting words of wisdom, I do wanna invite everybody, every Sunday, 2:00 PM Eastern Time, 11:00 AM Pacific Time Granddaughter. Crow has the circle. It is, it doesn't cost a lot to join, but we talk about these wonderful topics every week we're throwing down.
And then afterward we do a social circle where you can just kind of get to know everybody on Zoom. What would I say as words of wisdom? I would say today, thank you for listening to us, but moreover, listen to yourself and write those things down that you hear, and let your most dominant voices be nice to you.
Let the most dominant thoughts be your friend, and if they're not, let's work on that because you weren't born to be mean to yourself. You were not born to be mean to yourself. And so, and if you have these dominant thoughts that are mean to you, get some, get some talk to Missing Witches, you know, we'll help you out with that.
Go get a journal and of course I do one-on-one sessions, and right now I have deals going on. www.granddaughtercrow.com. If you wanna learn more, you gotta check out the website, but listen to yourself and make sure that all of the voices that you hear within yourself, make sure if they're mean to you, that's not original, if they are nice to you or curious, that is you.
Your curiosity is your internal compass to lead you to your authenticity. Do not be ashamed of what you are curious about. Be curious. Grand outro, signing off. I
[00:53:18] Risa: just wanna quickly add the G D C right before this call, right before this interview wrote to let us know that she's donating three one-on-one one hour sessions to the prizes that you could possibly win by making a donation to the Montreal Native Women's Shelter.
I know from having spent one-on-one time with G D C that you will really, really benefit and enjoy those fucking times. She's just the best. Amanda Links, do you have words coming through you for what we can learn from you and how we can support you and throw money at you? And more
[00:53:54] Amanda: love? You'all are so amazing.
I really love all of the things that you believe in and the causes that you stand behind. And every time I have the opportunity to. Spend time with you. I just feel so blessed with insight and this like, rejuvenation inside, like it's very charging and fulfilling and I don't really have a plug. Like I, I don't think I'm wired that way.
I was like, oh, I didn't even think about that. So the, the thing that maybe is connecting with some of that wise council messaging that and our crow sharing around those voices that are like, mean to you versus the ones that are like supportive of your path. The thing that I'm coming with today in my own, you know, my own life is the feeling of shock.
And what happens in your body when you're shook. And sometimes things happen where you'll have gut feelings and impressions or fears trickle through, and they might disguise themselves as intuition. They might disguise themselves as self-preservation or protection. And sometimes it is true. And maybe in that sense, being a, being forgiving with yourself if say you say no to something you really wish you could do or you really thought that you could participate in, but it just, it's not working.
It's like you're. You're feeling, you're feeling crummy, you're feeling stressed, whatever it might be, and knowing that whatever is aligning with you will come your way. And that idea of shock as well. It's it's a cataclysmic, it brings about external changes sometimes the hardest experiences like losing someone you care about or something that gave us security that isn't there anymore.
You know? We can sometimes spiral out. We can feel unsure.
Try to continue on autopilot and kind of not hear ourselves and what we're, what our bodies are asking us for, and in the gentleness of our nature and trying to give yourself enough room. I mean, sometimes you don't have a choice. Sometimes it's like you gotta pack your house up last minute, and this is your one way out you'll, you'll sleep later.
I get that. But also being patient with that process and saying, you know, this is opening me up to something as well. As much as it's an ending, it's a way forward.
It's kind of the feeling I have currently that you
are doing what you need to do and just do, just do it. You know, we're, we'll all, we'll all do it one step at a time.
In terms of charities and causes and things that are going on.
There's some really cool work that is happening in my little circle of networks that I've made recently. One is with an initiative called Slow Studies collective. And it's a group of 10 of us who are immersed in this mentorship with Meta and Joshua Conrad, who, who created this program for us as indigenous artists who learn how to use AR in our artwork. So make an Instagram filters and looking at that expanded way of looking at reality and taking our mediums, our bead work, our Are dodos or those types of motifs from each of our distinct cultures of, in that cohort that we're in.
And you know, instead of like a puppy dog filter with the tongue sticking out, like, what if it's like your your culture? What if it's deeply representative of you? I think that's really cool. There are people that are doing that work to shift shift narratives and look at things in that new way.
And so, I don't know, like, I think it's really cool. Thank you so much for having me here and giving me space to talk and thinking that it's like what I have to say. Worth the time. Like it's, it's very it's very encouraging and motivating and builds my self-esteem up and, you know, like I don't, I didn't come with a lot of it.
So maybe that's a message I wanna impart as well, is like, you might not see yourself as someone that has a voice, but you do. And there are people that believe in what you have to say because it teaches us something. Everything is a gift that shows us how to be in relationship with, with you, and maybe something else.
So beautifully
[01:00:22] Risa: said. Thank you so much for that. Everything is a gift that teaches us how to be in relation with you, and maybe someone else too isn't actually so dear. It's the smallest, most like humble hope that is actually right at the heart of the most profound desire for connection in all of us. So I have little tears.
It was really perfectly said. Thanks for being here, everyone, both of you and everyone who's here in the space between our ears. Thanks for
listening.
[01:00:57] Amy: Remember to stick around to the very tail end of the episode when you'll get the full list of prizes that are available to be won in the fundraiser that this conversation is, is around.
But very quickly, make a donation of $10 or more to the native women's shelter of Montreal or we love it when you find your local organizations and tell us about them. We love that. Love that, love that. I love that. So find a local make a reparation of $10 or more. Send us a screenshot of the receipt to missing witches@gmail.com and be entered to win fabulous prizes.
And again, think of that as being in ceremony with yourself. It's a moment that you can take and a thing that you can do that is very, very real and practical, but also like hella spiritual and, you know, collaborative
[01:01:45] Risa: hell. Thanks so much.
Blessed fucking me.
[01:01:50] Amy: Bless the fucking
[01:01:50] GDC: So
[01:01:51] Amy: Here is the full list of prizes
Get ready. The list is long. Deep breath. Here we go, everybody.
NOTE: For the full list with links and photos please go here!
A prize pack from Jinkx Monsoon. Magic class with Pam Grossman. A full year of classes with Kate Belew and Kristen Lisenby with the Barto Bar Toed, the Bardo Institute.
That's a full year of writing workshops. Amazing. Julia from Root Kitchens has donated a series of classes. Sarah Gottessdiener, a 45 minute terror reading. Palma. Has offered us some custom made silver jewelry, so if you win that prize, you'll actually get to make specifications about the piece. Melissa Wang, a watercolor artist, has offered a piece of her art.
Felicity Roberts is doing a foraging and cooking workshop over Zoom. He Martinez an astrology consultation. Amy Wild of Spectral Communications is doing an animal communication session. I'm so excited whoever wins this. Please keep me posted that Ash yet yata an intuitive co-created tarot reading.
Ritual Herb has a gift box of ritual oils to be won. Dawn, the Kitchen witch from Cuchina Aurora Kitchen, Witchery as a whole gift basket of kitchen witch goodies, including signed copies of both of her books. Heather Darby DeMarco Head Witch of Wild Moon Charm School is offering a medium reading. Where she suggests you can hear from your beloved dead.
Say hi to them for me, Sarah Beck. A copy of her children's picture book, the Tarot Deck Mess, and a copy of the Companion Companion Major Arkana mini deck. My first tarot, Hannah Lewis, has a handmade greeting card hack that you can win and send greeting cards to your friends about how you just won a prize.
Tamara the acupuncturists is offering a sound bath. James Davis, a weaving class over zoom. You could learn how to weave. And Rachel Slar is offering one of her art pieces, which is also woven gorgeous. Go to our website to take a look at beautiful pictures. Granddaughter Crow is offering three sessions, so three of you are going to get to have a sit down with granddaughter Crow.
And finally, Michelle Pay, Jack Reynolds has offered us a hundred dollars gift card from her jewelry shop. Again, go to missing witches.com for all this info and don't forget everyone's a winner because everyone who makes a donation is going to get a coupon codes for our favorite Witchy businesses House Witch in Salem and the Death Witch in Colorado.
That's everyone who makes a donation is going to get digital coupons for these businesses, so you really cannot lose. We invite you to care and blessed fucking bee
...
Be witch. Be witch. You must be a witch. The Missing Witches Podcast is created by Risa Dickens and Amy Toro with insight and support from the coven. Amy and Risa are the co-authors of missing witches, reclaiming true histories of feminist magic, which is available now wherever you get your books or audio books.
And of New Moon Magic 13 anti-capitalist tools for resistance and re-enchantment coming fall 2023.
