our guest for episode 4 is heather kiskihkoman! heather is nehiyaw & anishinaabe artist and educator from maskwacîs in treaty 6 territory - in what is currently called alberta. a former schoolteacher, she now focuses mainly on her work as a beadworker & traditional tattoo practitioner. her practice also includes learning porcupine quillwork, moose & caribou hair tufting, smoke/brain tanning animal hides as well as sewing clothing, accessories and tipis. you can find her on instagram @osawayisis.

each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #snortandcacklebookclub, with a book review by ash and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. this season's #snortandcacklebookclub read is brujas: the magic and power of witches of color by lorraine monteagut.

take the fibre witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz. follow us on instagram @snortandcackle and be sure to subscribe via your favourite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode!

seasons 1-3 of snort & cackle are generously supported by the manitoba arts council. you can support future episodes of snort & cackle by sponsoring a full episode or transcript.

transcript

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast. I'm your host, Ash Alberg. I'm a queer fibre witch and hedgewitch. And each week I interview a fellow boss witch to discuss how everyday magic helps them make their life and the wider world, a better place. 

Expect serious discussions about intersections of privilege and oppression, big C versus small C capitalism, rituals, sustainability, astrology, ancestral work, and a whole lot of snorts and cackles. Each season, we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color by Lorraine Monteagut.

Whether you're an aspiring boss witch looking to start your knitwear design business, a plant witch looking to play more with your local naturally dyed color palette or a knit witch wondering just what the hell is a natural yarn and how do you use it in your favorite patterns, we've got the solution for you.

Take the free fiber witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz and find out which self-paced online program will help you take your dreams into reality. Visit ashalberg.com/quiz [upbeat music fades out] and then join fellow fiber witches in the Creative Coven Community at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community for 24/7 access to Ash’s favorite resources, monthly zoom knit nights, and more. [End of intro.]  

Hello everyone. I am very excited for my conversation today. I am here with Heather Kiskihkoman and she is a nehiyaw and Anishinaabe artist and educator from Maskwacîs in Treaty 6 territory in what is currently called Alberta. A former school teacher, she now focuses mainly on her work as a bead worker and traditional tattoo practitioner.

Her practice also includes learning porcupine quill work, moose and caribou hair tufting, smoke and brain tanning animal hides, as well as sewing clothing, accessories, and teepees. Hi Heather, how's it going?

heather kiskihkoman: Hi there! I'm doing great. How about you?

ash alberg: I'm pretty good. It's cold, but otherwise I'm okay. I'm actually like, I'm sitting on a sheep skin right now and my butt is so warm, but then I had to put a blanket in the dryer ‘cause I don't have another sheepskin to put on top of my legs. 

heather kiskihkoman: [Laughs.] To-do projects. 

ash alberg: Yes, exactly. [Laughs.]

[Heather says something distorted by the audio.] 

I'm just going to end up like in the winter, I'm just going to have an entire suit of fur that I just walk around my house like … [Laughs.] 

heather kiskihkoman: Sounds like a dream. [Both laugh.] 

ash alberg: Oh man. Tell us a bit about you and what you do in the world.

heather kiskihkoman: Yeeaah. It's always a difficult question for me to answer ‘cause I just see myself as just this little person doing these little things. But so I was a school teacher, I taught junior, senior high and it just wasn't, it wasn't serving me … [clears throat] pardon me … in the way that I needed it to. 

So about three years ago I quit teaching and then I just started focusing mainly on doing my bead work and doing my tattoo practice. And that's how I've been making money. I haven't been making a lot of money, but … 

So I've been trying to work my way through this world but I found like, I'd struggled a lot with mental health and depression and anxiety, and I found that once I started focusing on these practices of beading and tattooing and just different traditional arts, that's, I started to heal myself through doing that work.

ash alberg: Yeah.

heather kiskihkoman: And now I'm feeling more, just more comfortable with who I am and understanding of what my purpose is in this life.

ash alberg: That's beautiful. And also makes a lot of sense. I, we hear like scientific journals being like, oh yeah, crafting and making are good for mental health but when you add on the additional layer of like traditional practices that are like rooted in your ancestral DNA and like that in your bones feel good, it does add that additional layer of, oh this is what I'm actually supposed to be doing in the world. 

And there's also a self-sufficiency, right? There's that bit of, it's often not recognized financially in the way that it should be under capitalism, but it's also one of those things where it's okay, I can go and do a lot of the things and support myself in ways that don't require the exchange of money for as many things. 

Like that obviously doesn't apply for everything. Like we don't live in a space right now where we can like trade rent for like multiple skins or for some beautiful beaded jewelry or things like that. But you can certainly be clothing yourself and feeding yourself and doing other things through more traditional practices at the very least.

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah, and I find that's more, this more rewarding. I feel so much better about myself and the time that I've spent, if I'm designing and tattooing someone, and then they're trading with me for, food or supplies, maybe it's hide, maybe it's beads, maybe it's wool, whatever. 

But that to me is much more nourishing for my spirit than going off to a nine to five job and putting up with A, B, and C.

ash alberg: Yes.

heather kiskihkoman: And then coming home and feeling completely exhausted and drained and not be able to do anything that I truly love or care about.

Like that's what the, I guess economy I dream of is just being able to make and share and have others be able to do the same and just support each other in that way. 

ash alberg: I love that a lot at, I am totally on board with that economy. That feels a lot lovelier and just like really honing in on people's zone of genius. And not just what are you really good at, but what are you really passionate about and what like feeds your soul and your bones and your blood?

And then being able to trade that energy with somebody else's energy, for something that they have loved really deeply. Like it's, it's so funny ‘cause it, when it comes to fibershed stuff, like I deeply love my wool, obviously. But I have no fucking desire to raise sheep. Like I see my friends do it, or to run a mill.

I'm like, if I ever won the lottery, which I won't do, but if I did, I would invest in additional mills so that we had more capacity, but I don't want to actually be at all involved in the running of them. I'd be like, cool, people who know this shit already, here's the money, here's the equipment.

You run it. And then please process my wool when I want you to, and by my wool, the wool that I have got from farmers who are doing the raising of the sheep and the shearing themselves. [Chuckles.]

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah.

And I feel like that even speaks to, I guess traditionally in communities there would be artisans and there would be people who specialized in all of these specific things. And it wasn't up to an individual to master all of the steps involved. Like when I'm doing, I just started doing hide work this summer, but I've really connected with it, but I have absolutely no desire to go hunting. Like … 

ash alberg: Right? Yeah. Totally. [Laughs.]

heather kiskihkoman: I can't be quiet. I get bored easily. I get lost, I don't want to kill anything. I just want to cuddle the animals. Like none of that appeals to me whatsoever. But if someone wants to bring me a hide, awesome. And like just throw some meat in there too. [Both laugh.]

ash alberg: A hundred percent. And also just like the complexity, like I remember chatting with Cree Guy here about like, when he goes hunting. He's also a tanner and sometimes he'll like straight up just tan like full moose and deer hides himself, but in the bush and it's an incredible process and there's a lot of really beautiful parts to it, but it's also really fucking complicated. [Laughs.]

And he was like, yeah, trying to get other hunters who aren't tanners to bring the hides back with them. There's a reason they leave them to rot. It's like an extra 50 pounds that you're trying to lug out of the bush. It's not like you're like on a path and you're like, dragging it behind you on a convenient little sled on a nice, smooth surface.

It's you're trying get up and over a tree trunks and like over hills and things like that. And so if there's not the value that they feel like they're going to get for it on the end of that, then why are you going to do that extra labor? They just leave it to decompose. And then it composts the earth and it goes back into the living system in a different kind of a way.

But yeah, it's, I don't blame the hunters who are like, I don't want to bring this whole thing back with me. But I appreciate the ones who do. [Chuckles.]

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah.

Like we're, right now, I've got a group of women who I tan hides with and we're trying to build relationships with local hunters to set up that whatever they're not going to use, can they donate it to us? And we can use that as a teaching tool because we've started going into the schools and teaching the young children in the schools.

And we've held a few, like just training camps where … right now it's on a pay basis. I would love to be able to do, just show up and work a hide. But just finding, I think part of it goes down to, what is the intention of that hunter? Like for me personally, if I'm going to work a hide, I will need not necessarily to know who hunted it, but to know that animal was killed in a respectful way and an honorable way.

And that like care and love and attention went into the skinning of it. And not everyone knows. I don't want to offend any hunters, [laughs] but if you're going to save a hide to, to work or to donate, you have to know how to skin it. And that includes not getting knife marks and not putting holes in it.

And I think that's something that hunters that are used to just leaving that extra weight behind are not fully aware of it. And then that affects the hide as you're working it. If there's knife marks and holes, those then get bigger, the holes or the knife marks become holes. And then you end up working 3, 4, 5 times harder on this hide and you end up with a very poor product at the end. 

ash alberg: Yeah.

heather kiskihkoman: But like coming from the approach of a hide tanner, I want to respect that animal and use what we can to the best of our ability, so it doesn't go to waste. 

And yeah, my sister and I had this incredible experience a few months ago. It was in September, I think, where she got a phone call from her partner and he said there was a moose that was hit on the side of the highway, like just a couple miles away from their house. So she called me and let me know. 

And then I drove out there with my knives and everything and she called Fish and Wildlife because it was on the highway. They had to get approval. And she got approval to harvest the hide and the legs and the brains of that moose.

ash alberg: That’s amazing.

heather kiskihkoman: So we were sitting there on the side of the road trying to come up with a game plan and then … pardon me. And then she found out that there was two moose. Actually there was two that were hit and it was a mother and a baby, which was really tragic. 

So we called some friends for help for backup, and they came out and we started to harvest these moose that had died. And it was a really, it was a … mmm. I don't even have the words to accurately describe it. There was a lot of energy that went into just trying to do this work as respectfully as we can, while there are people driving by at very high speeds on the highway.

And then to see the different responses from people who like pulled over. We had the police call on us numerous times. [Ash blows a raspberry.] And yeah, it was a peace officer that eventually came out and just talked us through it. And it was ridiculous how we … one of the friends that came out to help is a settler and he's very, he’s been, he's been quite involved with summer in helping us do this work. 

And he went and spoke to the peace officer and he became our liaison, who would go between and explain what we were doing. And somehow just having a settler explain these things to them made it alright?

ash alberg: Oh my god. 

heather kiskihkoman: Where I, as an indigenous person standing on the side of the road with a knife, like, terrified people. And had the cops called. And then the peace officer, when I stood up and had a knife in my hand, not anywhere near close to him, like maybe six, seven meters away from him. 

ash alberg: Yeah, like clearly way too far.

[Both talking at the same time.] 

heather kiskihkoman: He started to back away from me. Yeah. It was like, you can't do that. If anyone sees you with that knife, they're going to call the police on you. You need to put that knife down. 

Meanwhile, our friend who was a settler was standing beside him with a knife in his hand, didn't say a word. 

ash alberg: Woowww.

heather kiskihkoman: So just having that constant, like that need to be vigilant.

ash alberg: Yeah!

heather kiskihkoman: We're doing this and it feels good to be doing this work, but there's people who are very angry and stressed out and frightened, of seeing this work being done. So we deliberately parked our vehicles in the way.

ash alberg: Yeah, totally.

heather kiskihkoman: People were having to slow down and then drive around to see. Yeah. 

ash alberg: It's … I'm not at all surprised. And also, it's just so fucking frustrating and angering and just ‘cause it just like it sours what is an incredibly, already emotionally loaded experience of being with these beings that have very recently, very violently lost their lives. And now you're like trying to respectfully harvest and thank them for the harvest and help their energies move on.

And then being interrupted by racism that is like so fucking blatant and then being like, okay, now also like having to do the very important, unfortunately, emotional labor of making yourself seem as less than a threat, even though you're already not a threat. And having to like, minimize your existence in the space in order to make somebody else feel comfortable when that person is already like socially in a much more powerful position in like every possible iteration that our society says, okay, yeah, this person has more power than you do.

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah.

But I think even speaking to ritual, when we do this work, when we're working on the hides, when we're skinning the animal, any, anytime we go into this work, we go into it with like good intentions and pure … like I say, pure, but like good thoughts. You don't want to put any of that negativity or that hurt into this work that you're doing, because that imbues within the skin and then that carries that forth. 

So if you make a moss bag for a baby, you don't want that baby wrapped in those negative feelings or those intentions. So to try and even keep the even temper while there's this sort of chaos going around. 

And yeah. All in all, it was a very good experience. It was a very good day. That was our first time skinning, like large animals even. I had done a few porcupines before. 

ash alberg: [Cackles.] Slight shift in scale.

heather kiskihkoman: [Laughs.] Yeah. Exactly. To do two whole moose … Well actually, we found out it was three moose by the end. It was a very tragic story. So it was a mother and her two babies and the baby had been hit. The first baby had been hit and then was not removed by Fish and Wildlife or whoever. So it was there for two or three days.

And then the mother and the baby came back looking for the, for the sibling. And then those two were hit that morning that we went and harvested. 

ash alberg: [Quietly] Fuck. 

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah. So just. I don't know where I'm going with this sentence, but … [laughs.] A lot of emotions and like a lot of highs and then a lot of … not lows, but just fear and nervousness [audio distortion] out to this animal and to just constantly be having to justify or assign a person to justify what we were doing. 

ash alberg: Yeah.

heather kiskihkoman: Because if you don't know what you're doing, all of a sudden you see these people taking the skin of an animal, taking the legs off an animal, taking the head off an animal.

ash alberg: Yes.

heather kiskihkoman: What normally what everyone else would take …

ash alberg: [Laughs.] Yeah.

heather kiskihkoman: We’re taking the rest of it. 

ash alberg: I, yeah, I dunno. It's so fucking weird. And it's impossible to remove race as a factor in that because literally I have sat in my urban city. Like I, not, when I live in my house here, but a few years back, I lived like a few blocks over. Same neighborhood. 

It's the hippy neighborhood so there's going to be weirder shit that people see. But I had a friend called me and was like, there's a crow. It's dead in my back lane. It's been here for no more than an hour. Do you want it? And I was like, yes, I do. 

And so I went and I got it, and then I was like, harvesting it and so, I'm doing this, it's also … my neighborhood, we have like postage stamp lands so there's no space for anything. So I'm literally like sitting on my front, front walk pulling apart this crow and people are walking past and like looking at me. And then meanwhile, also the cats of the neighborhood are like trying to sneak up around me to get the crow.

And so I'm like, hissing out the cats to make them fuck off. And I'm like, as I'm like taking off the feet and like removing the wings, doing all these things, and people are like, “What the fuck's going on?” But like in that experience, nobody called the cops on me, even though that, it would be very reasonable to be like, seeing that in the middle of the city and being like, there's something a little crazy going on, like ritual sacrifice or something like that. [Chuckles.]

heather kiskihkoman: Very surprising to me. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Yeah, but I'm white! So it's … I'm sure that if I'd been an Indigenous person in my neighborhood doing that, and it wouldn't have, it would have been a very different experience despite the fact that I think it's like half of the population in Manitoba is Indigenous.

The majority of the population in Winnipeg is not white. And there's in many Indigenous folks. I'm not sure what the exact breakdown, but like many Indigenous folks live in the city and in particular, in the center of the city, which is also where I live. So it's not as though seeing somebody would be abnormal.

And to me, I'm like, anything that you're doing with an animal would probably be something ritual-based. Like, you're doing something to use the whole animal and whether that's like harvesting meat or harvesting fur, or harvesting feathers, like I don't, but I … Yeah. I don't know. I don't know where I'm going with that, but … [Both laugh.]

heather kiskihkoman: Agreed, yeah. Like interesting to see like the dynamics of who's allowed to do what. Yeah. That's, I'm surprised that no one … 

ash alberg: I know. I'm very aware that I looked real crazy. ‘Cause I also, like I had on, ‘cause I was like, I don't, I also don't want to get any like bird because birds carry a lot of diseases. 

heather kiskihkoman: I have so many dead birds and people keep telling me, and I’m like, what do you mean?? [Both laugh.]

ash alberg: Like that, it's also why my friend was like, it's only been dead an hour. Like it was not here an hour ago. I'm like, okay, great, off I go. And so I'm thinking like, I definitely … I don't think, oh no, I did. I had on my respirator mask, so I was like, oh, I should protect my face. So I had on a respirator mask and I had on kitchen gloves ‘cause I didn't have any like proper clubs. 

heather kiskihkoman: Those are good ones!

ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then I'm like crouched on the like front path of my house, like pulling them and like literally hissing at cats. I don't know. I think at this point, like if I did that, like I'm planning, once the weather gets a little nicer and I have my hides that are currently frozen in a shed, I'm probably going to be doing them like on my front patio.

And I'm curious about what that'll be like. I know that my immediate neighbors are super used to me and are going to be like, oh, that makes sense. But also there's a lot of foot traffic in my neighborhood. And I always find it funny and by funny, sometimes I want to slap some people, who like clearly don't live on the street and get mad about the dogs that like … also my neighborhood, every other house has a dog and like range from like chihuahuas through multiple St. Bernards. 

So it's like we got the full range and Willow’s on the upper end of the range. And just the way that people respond to dogs in fenced yards, I already am like, like the number of dirty looks I get when Willow and her pack mates across the street are playing, ‘cause they're, you know, they're like all big dogs, lots of growling, lots of … it sounds like they're ripping each other apart, but they're not.

heather kiskihkoman: My dogs are doing that outside right now. 

ash alberg: Like it's … and anybody who knows dogs, it's oh, okay, this is fine. But like the number of dirty looks I get from that … so I'm curious about whether, when there's like a deer skin on a frame in my front yard for a week, whether there'll be any phone calls about that, we’ll see.

heather kiskihkoman: I'm interested to know. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: I will, I'll report back. I'll be like, so, as a white person, I still didn't get in trouble. I'm sure that there'll be like weird conversations that happen on the Facebook group for the neighborhood. [Heather laughs.] But like most just, those are just automatically there anyway. 

heather kiskihkoman: One of my friends does hides in her backyard in Edmonton, and I think she’s been doing it for about a year now. And this year on Canada Day, her neighbors called the cops and Fish and Wildlife on her for doing her hide. In her backyard! She's got like a six foot fence. So like …

ash alberg: Also what are you doing spying on somebody's backyard?? I'm like, like mine's on my front yard and we can only have a four foot fence and it's chain link. It'll be visible. If it's in a backyard, like that's like a special level of spying.

heather kiskihkoman: Exactly. It's going out of your way to be annoyed by someone. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Yeah, yes. Also that where it's this is like clearly not at all visible to you and a salted hide is not going to smell so bad that you can smell it in the neighboring backyard. Like maybe if you're …

heather kiskihkoman: I don't think it was salted. [Laughs.] I don't, I think it was fleshed. I can't remember actually, but I think it was already fleshed. So there shouldn't have been a smell.

ash alberg: No. It's one thing if she's like scraping it and then like leaving rotting meat, and then I can understand being a little bit like, excuse you, please clean that.

heather kiskihkoman: We're trying to eat our hotdogs over here. [Both laugh.]

ash alberg: There is also that. Oh, okay. You just like it in that form. Got it. Noticed. 

Oh my god. Oh fuck. So tell me a bit about your tattooing practice, because I am like so deeply in love with watching it just from Instagram. It's, it looks so just, I love tattoos in general, but it looks so fun also.

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah.

So I never ever in a million years thought I would be doing tattoos. I think even as a young teen, I was like, oh, I want this tattooed. I want that tattooed. But like a joke or not a joke, but just as a way to make conversation, to try to feel cool. It was never actually my intention to get any tattoos.

And it was, oh goodness, when was it? When I was very young, about 13, I had an experience where I saw some Māori women with their facial tattoos and I felt this very strong, meaningful, oh my god. Like that, that I want that. I need that. But even as a 13-year-old, it's that's cultural appropriation, Heather. Like, you can’t.

[Both talking at the same time.]

ash alberg: [Laughs.] You're self aware enough to be like, can’t do that one.

heather kiskihkoman: Exactly. Don't even know. 

But then I was in my mid-twenties, I started to see paintings and see pictures and actually see real life people walking around with facial tattoos here in like the area that I … not the area that I live in, but like in Edmonton, which is like a, where people from the north would come down for healthcare or whatnot.

So it's crazy that in my mid-twenties, that's the first instance I started to see this example of this history and this tradition in my own culture. Like I've never, I had never been around, we had never learned about it. So I just started to see these more and more images and signs that this is something that I should be looking into and this is something that I should know about and it came to me. 

I don't really know how to describe it. It just, it wasn't a dream and it wasn't something that I thought of. It was just this image of this tattoo that I knew was mine. And it wasn't even like I woke up one day. It's like all of a sudden I remembered something I had forgotten from so long ago that this is what I'm supposed to be wearing. 

So I had reached out to an artist to get the tattoo done and that didn't work out. So I found another artist. Surprisingly, there was two people that I could find, like I had never even heard of this thing five years before, but yeah.

I, it was Dion Kaszas, and he was based in Salmon Arm but now he's in Halifax, and he's been doing a lot of research and he's training … he did, he was training tattoo artists to research and find their own history of tattooing practices in their own cultures. 

ash alberg: Oh, I love that.

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah!  So I went out and was tattooed by him and just as we were talking to each other, he told me that he does the Earthline Tattoo Collective school. And I was like, oh my god, I want to do that.

And he was like, okay, apply. And in my mind, every single person that he tells says, “Oh my god, I want to do that!” [Ash snort-laughs.] It just sounds so cool! Everyone wants to do it. So when it came up again, finally, it was probably about two years, a year and a half later that I saw on call out for applications and I applied and was accepted. And it was really incredible. There was only four people accepted and I was one of them. 

ash alberg: That's amazing!

heather kiskihkoman: I went out to reg—Yeah! I went down to Regina and did the training and the whole time I was there, I was like, what am I doing? I'm learning how to tattoo!

This has never occurred to me. Like three years ago there's no way I would have been like, I'm going to learn how to tattoo! [Both laugh.] It was never on, on the radar for me, but all these just random … not random. They feel random, but they're intentional, these decisions I've made. And these people that I've met have led me to this practice.

So I have been tattooing now for three years. It's not something I do every day. It's something I do maybe a couple of times a year. It would probably be more if COVID hadn't hit. So yeah.

ash alberg: Yes.

heather kiskihkoman: So I learned to tattoo at the, I guess it was in 20 … I can't remember what year.

ash alberg: Time is not linear. COVID has ruined it.

heather kiskihkoman: I was … yeah.

So I think in the last few years I've definitely tattooed a lot less than I would normally be tattooing, but that's okay with me because what I've found is that the work itself is very heavy for me. And it takes a lot of emotional and spiritual energy to build up to it. And when I'm doing the work, it's, I sustain myself and like myself and the energy of the person that I'm tattooing is, it's this incredible energy flow. And it's, I've … it nourishes me, but then afterwards I've found that it's, I'm so drained afterwards. 

Even for example, this, I thought this meeting was next week. [Laughs.] Like I did a tattoo. What day is it, it's the fifth? I did a tattoo three days ago and I've been in a daze since then. And I haven't been able to like really focus on one thing or accomplish one thing. I've been like taking naps every day and just really trying to eat good things that restore me, but it's a big output for me.

And then to rebuild myself, to bring myself back to it, practice that I can do every day or even like once a week, like it's, it's going to be like once or twice a month for me. If I get even that busy. 

ash alberg: Yes. And if COVID fucks off enough.

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah. That too. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: ‘cause also like you're doing like, so you've … you've got face tattoos. You've also got tattoos elsewhere on your body. When you are tattooing others, is there like a focus that you've maintained? Like you will only do certain parts of the body or you will only tattoo certain things on certain bodies or like how have you structured that for yourself?

heather kiskihkoman: Right. I guess I have quite a few little protocols like that. First of all, I guess I mainly tattoo women and that's just, I think, my comfort zone, but also going back, there are a lot of cultures where women would tattoo women and that was it. And men would tattoo the men. 

So I don't necessarily know if that was practiced in nehiyaw culture or in Anishinaabe culture, but it feels, that's what feels right for me. So that's like a soft rule. I have tattooed like my brother-in-law and my cousin and I have no issues … I have no issues tattooing someone who identifies as female. It's just that feminine energy is what's, is, provides that safe space for me. 

And I like, I feel like that's the purpose of the work that I do, is to empower women and those who identify as women. Which would be women. [Both laugh.] Like I hate that I have to like [audio distortion] explain that.

ash alberg: It’s always a weird thing though, bieng like you are women. And also when we say you are a woman, we're caveating that we actually mean y'all are. 

heather kiskihkoman: Exactly. Like I'm not here to tell anyone who is or who isn't what. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Yeah. [Laughs.]

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah.

And then also I find myself, I think, because I've been limiting who I tattoo so much lately that I find I'm doing mostly facial tattooing, which I love. And it's super empowering for the person I'm tattooing, but then also for me to be able to gift this wonderful experience of this wonderful marking to do an incredible person. 

As far as protocols go, it's tough because I … the tattooing I practice is, it's not, I wouldn't call it ceremonial. Like I don't possess the titles and the knowledge of medicine keepers or elders who have studied their entire lives to perform ceremony and to designate anything really.

I ask that people who want to be tattooed by me, who want specific markings, that they ask their elders for that, and that they ask, if they don't have elders, then someone they trust or ask creator or spirit for that guidance and that knowledge. And it's really a lot of trust, because sometimes I do get people reaching out to me who are … again, I don't want to say anyone is anything, but it feels a bit disingenuous sometimes when there are some people who want specific tattoos because they look cool or because they want to align themselves with the community without being part of that community or to give themselves more of an identity. 

ash alberg: Yeah.

heather kiskihkoman: Or a confidence boost in an identity that they're trying to achieve.

So it's difficult to navigate that, that area when I don't claim to know anything. [Laughs.] I guess. I don't claim to have any authority over anything like that, any like who belongs to what community and who can wear what markings. I'm still brand new to pretty much everything that I do. And I don't want to be saying hard and fast no, we're not doing that, or you're not doing that. 

But if someone who is not Inuit comes to me and wants Inuit tattoos and I am not Inuit and they are not Inuit … 

ash alberg: Yeah. 

heather kiskihkoman: … and the markings that they want were not drawn by an Inuit person, like we, none of us have any business like in that whatsoever. 

Just navigating what feels right and what feels genuine can be very difficult sometimes. I have had some bad experiences, people … don't put that in there. [Both laugh.]

ash alberg: I can just imagine the people who get, they like want a thing and then you say no, and you're, you're maintaining your own boundaries and you like … it, consent goes both ways. Like it's not just can, it's not just, can you do this for me? It's you being able to say yes or no.

And then that that's part of it. Especially if you're getting a tattoo that is culturally significant, but also just generally any tattoo, like if you find a tattoo artist, the number, it's usually a marker of the good or the, I'm putting these things in quotations, but like the good and the popular tattoo artists will very consistently say no to the vast majority of submissions that they get, because they just don't want to. Like, it's their art practice.

And so we, we don't make a big thing about that. It's, oh yeah, that's understandable. And if somebody got their feelings hurt, then that's a them thing, not a, not the tattoo artist’s business or labor to do. But then there's like somehow different rules because … [Laughs.]

heather kiskihkoman: Yeeaah.

It's … I dunno. I just go with what feels right based on the initial interaction with the person. I think now after, after thinking about it more and after having a few experiences with people that I don't know, I’m thinking now I have to know the person beforehand and at least for a few months and have had interactions not regarding requesting a tattoo to know if that's the energy that I want in my space. 

Because I tattoo out of my home, so whatever energy is released in that space, I'm still here living in this space. But also I feel like when I tattoo someone, my energy is going into them and their energy is coming into me and that's like a lifelong relationship. [Dog barks.] 

I feel like they're carrying something of me with them for the rest of their lives, so I need to be coming forward with good intentions and good thoughts and just, I need to make sure I'm doing everything I can to be doing good and doing well and giving this person the healing that they're asking for, the healing that they're needing. 

And if I'm getting weird vibes off of them, then that's going to affect the energy that I'm putting forth. 

ash alberg: Totally.

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah. 

ash alberg: That, yeah, that makes a whole whack of sense. Do you, when you do the work and when you're doing the tattoo work, do you only do your own … it's not like specifically your designs, but do you only do designs that you are familiar with and/or come from your own traditions? 

Or … like if somebody came to you and was like, “I come from this tradition, these are our traditional markings. I either have done the research and so I've designed it myself or at somebody else. Who's also, from that tradition has designed this. Can you do this on me?” Is that a thing that you feel comfortable with or is that also something where you're like, that feels too separate almost for the amount of energy that ends up going into the work?

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah. [Dog barks.]

I find that it's like a case-by-case basis for me. I have done like facial tattoos for women of different tribes. And that's, I feel okay doing that because I know that they've done their research. I know they've spoken to their elders, they've spoken to their community and they know what markings that they are to receive.

And it's like an access issue at that point where they can't access that community to get, go there and get the tattoo done, or there isn't a tattoo practitioner in that community anymore or yet. And if I'm local to them, then I have no issues doing that work for them because … I don't know. It's just like energetically, you can tell if someone is genuine and sincere or not. 

And that for me, when I know that I can trust that person's spirit or that person's energy and that person's intentions, then I can do that work for them. I have had people ask me to, they'll send me a picture of like some west coast design and oh, can you tattoo this?

And it's …

ash alberg: Nope.

heather kiskihkoman: How about you contact the artist? [Both laugh.] Then get the artists to approve that, that I can do that specific design. And then usually they stop. 

ash alberg: They never … 

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah, because I don't have any business tattooing A, that style of artwork or B, someone else's work. When I'm not doing traditional markings, I'm doing my own drawings.

Like I went to art school and I had, I guess I still do have an art practice, a fine art practice. Not so much anymore, I’ve shifted more into like traditional arts, but that memory and that style of creating still is underlying the work that I do. So I do, I have tattooed plants in like the style of drawing that I do, which is not like a Cree style or an Ojibwe style or anything like that.

It's just, that's how I draw. And yeah. So it depends on what the person is asking for. When I first started, I was taking commissions like more, more broad because people were more looking just for to get a fun tattoo and not get like a marking they need for healing because it's COVID and they're locked down and they can't access community and they can't access ceremony.

So yeah. I have done tattoos that were my drawings and my designs, and I love doing that work as well. 

ash alberg: Does that feel like it ends up being similar in the energy flow or a different kind of energy exchange in those moments?

heather kiskihkoman: I feel like … it's hard to say because I've been doing facial tattoos for only, pretty much for over a year. I haven't really had, I think I would need to do them both not back-to-back, but in the same, in a similar timeframe to be able to tell the difference. I do feel like the ones that I've drawn up myself that are my own designs, it's weird to see my designs on someone else. 

It's a no, like that's my baby and my baby going out to the world. And like I say weird in an affectionate way, like not weird in I need to keep it and I need to not do that. Just to see something that I did grow legs and walk out into the world is … I guess it's the same with my bead work. Just to see, to know that it's living out there in the world, it's this strange, wonderful feeling.

ash alberg: Okay. So then let's shift to your beadwork and then is the tufting, do you find that the tufting work ends up, like feeding into the beadwork or do they feel like two very different things for you?

heather kiskihkoman: So I guess with tufting and quillwork I'm still learning. So I wouldn't say that I have any specific feelings or attachments to those practices. For me specifically, the bead work and the tattooing are flowing into each other and supporting one another. I bead in the design, in the style that I draw and I tattoo in the style that I draw and I see them as … I see them as the same thing in a way.

When I first learned to tattoo, I really wanted to just like bead on the skin, let's add actual beads. [Laughs.] But now there's like incredible tattoo artists who do that style and it's gorgeous. So now, like that need for me has been fulfilled. Someone out there has done it and it looks amazing now I don't … 

ash alberg: You're like, I don't have to be the one that's literally … I've seen that though. And it is fucking stunning, but also ha ha ha, like … 

heather kiskihkoman: Incredible. Yeah. Some of these artists are amazing. 

But even just, I think further to … how am I going to word this? I think to like to connect the beading and the tattooing is, it comes down to like skin stitching for me. When I'm beading I'm sewing using a needle and when I'm tattooing, I do a lot of hand poked tattoos, but when I talk to myself, I have to skin stitch, I cannot hand poke myself. 

And that skin stitching, it's exactly the same as sewing fabric or sewing leather. You're taking a needle and putting ink underneath the skin, you drag it under with the thread. And to me, that's, it's like a repair. It's, I'm repairing myself, like I'm repairing old wounds or emotional wounds or spiritual wounds.

And that is somehow, it's like visible mending in a way, where it's bringing everything back together. And the same with beading, you're adding beads using a needle and thread, and you're creating something beautiful from just supplies, like stuff that could have been beautiful on its own, but altogether it comes together and it's this amazing image. 

And it's the same idea as if you're wounded, you stitch yourself up or you get stitched back up together. And that for me, I think is the underlying connection in all the work that I do. The tattooing, the beading, the tufting quillwork. And sewing clothing and I just, this summer, learned how to make teepees. And to be able to sew a home for yourself or to sew a home for someone you love and care for, it's just this incredible feeling to just, I just want to wrap you in warmth and love and take care of you. 

And that's what a teepee is, right? It's this? Yeah. I can only like hug myself because I don't have the words for it. 

Yeah. It's all the same thing for me. Visually it comes about in different ways, but for me, it's all the same practice. 

ash alberg: I love that. And it's like a really clear metaphor that like, and maybe for folks that haven't necessarily been exposed to each of those practices, then they feel disconnected. But yeah, to me, I like I'm familiar with all of them, so it's, they absolutely make sense. You are doing the same thing on different mediums or with different mediums, but it's the same ritual practice being just applied across different forms.

That's really fucking cool. [Both laugh.]

heather kiskihkoman: And that's why I don't think of it in the broad scheme of things. I think of it in this tiny little needle and thread, so when I get opportunities to talk about my work, I'm always amazed that people are interested ‘cause I'm just like, oh yeah, I just sew things, all I do. [Both laugh.]

ash alberg: Oh, my god. I love that. I felt like that kind of like combines both the question of what does ritual play out like in your personal life? And then also, how does ritual play out in your professional life? Are there other things in either arena for you or in both arenas for you that you feel are like really important practices?

heather kiskihkoman: I … No. [Both laugh.]

ash alberg: Also is there other vocabulary that you would use? ‘Cause I always find the word usage …

heather kiskihkoman: I think I am, what I'm … my challenge now is to create that professional life or that professional environment for myself because it used to be waking up and going to work and working with children and having an absolutely wonderful time because like kids are hilarious. And then coming home and being exhausted and drained and not able to prepare dinner and not able to do anything fun and then falling asleep on the couch and then waking up and doing it all over again and just feeling very like, it's resource extraction essentially. 

It's everything that I have is going out and I'm not receiving any nourishment or nothing's building me up, so to me, that's what I see as like a professional life or professional world. So now since I've taken a step back from that and I've rebuilt myself, I'm now trying to find a way, how do I make this sustainable? And how do I make this so that I can thrive as best I can? 

So it's like this internal battle I've got going on where I'm fighting against it. I'm fighting against making money and I'm fighting against having a job and taxes or whatever, I don't understand it! [Both laugh.] 

That's what's my goal for this upcoming year, this upcoming season, is to find a way to balance the two, because ideally I don't want to live in that world, but like functionally I do. And there's no getting around it. Like I can't hunt. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Yeah. [Laughs.] There's practical things that you're like, I literally, this is not my thing. [Snorts.]

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah. I can barely garden. I was so proud. I grew six pumpkins this year!

ash alberg: I feel like that's really good. 

heather kiskihkoman: It's really good, but that's not going to sustain me all winter. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: No, I haven't really … like food gardening is a thing that I am absolute shit at. Like medicine gardening, easy peasy, but that's also because medicine is usually weeds and you don't really need to do that much for them. 

Like my nettles are just like, we're happy without you. We are good. I'm like, cool. Great. Thank you. 

Willow can literally just walk through the middle of the patch of them and just shove her face into them. And then I'll like accidentally forget. I appreciate nettles ‘cause they're very loud with their boundaries and they feel like a really good, just general metaphor for life.

But like I'll accidentally forget and I'll like just lightly brush one and it stings me and it's “Fuck you!” I'm like, I'm sorry. Good to know that you love my dog a lot more than you love me. I don't totally get it, but okay. Like … 

heather kiskihkoman: Just like such a resentful child. [Audio distortion.]

ash alberg: Totally! This one steps on me and pees on me, but I love it more. [Laughs.] I … yeah, I don't know.

heather kiskihkoman: That's so punk. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Nettles are the punk plant, aww. [Both laugh.]

Oh man. But where were we going with this originally? Yes. Okay. Gardening. Yeah. I don't know, food. I feel like the fact that you got six pumpkin's out of that is, I don't know that I would get maybe a little half a half pumpkin.

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah!

And I think part of that was the fact that I did leave it alone. Like I’m horrible at gardening. I went out and I was like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to be self-sustaining and I don't need anyone! I need people, but I can do this! So I like, I got this huge patch tilled like way too big, even when it was getting tilled, I'm like, I'm not going to garden that whole thing. Like. Why am I doing this to myself? 

And then my brother-in-law came over and he and his brother came in like manually turned over some earth. And it was like this really great day and I was like, oh my goodness, this is how people used to do it! And this is how people should do it.

My sister was here and she cooked for all of us. And it was just like a great day. And that's the spot I ended up using, ‘cause again, they put their own energy into it. They put their own like care and love into that land. And the one that was tilled by machine, like it just became a canola field. [Ash laughs.] 

But like I went out and I planted, oh my goodness, I planted the three sisters. I had a whole bunch of corn, beans, squash. I planted, what else did I plant? Carrots and onions, I think. I did so much for someone who doesn't garden then and then I watered it once. 

ash alberg: Yeah.

heather kiskihkoman: And then I forgot about it. [Ash snorts.] I looked at it like, oh, I should really get in there and weed. Hmm, maybe next week. And then three months have gone by and the thistles are taller than anything. And then it started to get cold. 

I'm like, I guess I should go check my garden and see what grew. And I had one corn stock that was three feet high, no carrots, six pumpkins and one zucchini. 

ash alberg: Hey, I … zucchinis man, they will survive the apocalypse. 

heather kiskihkoman: Just one though!

ash alberg: Yeah. Was it a big one? We always joke about the Mennonite  zucchinis in Manitoba, like everyone's just running and leaving zucchinis on each other's steps because everyone overgrew too many zucchinis and they're all like at least three feet long and that's a legitimate thing that you end up dealing with. 

heather kiskihkoman: Oh my goodness. 

ash alberg: Just, it's way more that like the whole like zucchini noodles and make it into breads. Like you can do that and also you will still end up with way too many zucchinis.

heather kiskihkoman: There should be like a zucchini exchange program. You just -- 

ash alberg: Except everybody grew it. So … 

heather kiskihkoman: You mail it outside of the city. 

ash alberg: Oh, I like this idea.

heather kiskihkoman: Send it on over here! 

ash alberg: [Cackles.] Everyone, we are just mailing all of our zucchinis to Heather.

heather kiskihkoman: That sounds fantastic. Zucchinis are my favorite. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Oh. But I feel like this is, it also highlights a thing that like, at the beginning of COVID when all of the supply chains were fucked and everyone was like, we need to go back to the land in general. And whether you were settler or indigenous to the land, or like a mix thereof, like everyone was like, oh, we need to go back to the more traditional ways.

But everyone was still also doing it as themselves as an individual or as like a single household. And even within the household, it was like one person really doing all of it, not everybody. And it highlights the fact that similar with tanning, like we're not meant to do it as a single person.

And back in the day, people didn't do it as just one person was doing it. Like tanning was a communal process and hunt, like hunting was … it wasn't like you did all of the hunting or set all of the trap lines and then you were the only one who was monitoring those trap lines. And then you would gather all of the harvests, do all of the harvesting yourself, do all the tanning and yourself do all the curing and the dah dah. 

It was a community effort and whether the size of the community was the size of one family or the size of multiple families coming together, it was you weren't responsible for doing all of it. And I don't know, like also as a triple fire sign, I have a real hard time letting other people help me. I don't want them to, I want to do it all myself. 

And so the fact that I'm not good at growing food does not stop me every fucking year from convincing myself that this is the year I'm going to grow all of the food. And then I don't, or be like, I'm going to be able to sustain myself with all the things. Like also our climates are ones where it's not like I can …

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: … grow beans and survive off that for a year. Like it's not going to happen. So I'm like, I'll get all of my … and then I'm like, okay I don't grow livestock. I don't want to grow livestock. I'm not a hunter. 

I could fish, but I'm not going to catch enough fish to survive for an entire year. Also there's only so much pickerel you can eat before you get bored of it. There's like all of these, we're not meant to do all of it ourselves. But I don't actually know what the solution is at this particular point in time where we are currently at, within capitalism and within our Western societies that are … especially when you live in urban spaces within those societies. 

I don't know what the solution is cause it's and then you add on COVID on top of it. So it's, to be physically engaging with other people is literally dangerous to your health potentially.

So I don't know.

heather kiskihkoman: I know, it's … I don't know if there is an answer to that question. It's something that I think about a lot too. And it's, we obviously need community care and we need communities that support and take care of each other. 

And then this also goes to like the Land Back movement as well. It's, give Indigenous peoples stewardship over the land again, because this, like the practices of taking care of your home, taking care of the earth and like being the steward of the land kept this land pristine for tens of thousands of years. And then to see it all destroyed within, four or five generations is … 

ash alberg: Yeah.

heather kiskihkoman: When you think of it in that perspective, it's disgusting and it's heartbreaking. That, I think something that isn't really discussed within a lot of Land Back conversations is okay, we've got a large settler population. They're not going to leave. So and I don't want to kick anyone out of their home.

ash alberg: Yeah. Like where is that … And I think it's also where for a lot of settlers then the … and by settlers, like literally everyone else who's not indigenous to this land specifically, probably the vast majority, at some point in there coming to the land were forced to leave their own lands at whatever chunk of time.

And that doesn't mean that it is okay that then the way that they came to a new land was to force other people off of their lands. But like the, there's ends up being like a lot of defensiveness beyond the usual defensiveness of “I'm not racist. I wasn't the one who came here 600 years ago.”

No, you're not, we're not saying that you were, that was obviously your forebearer. We all have shitty ancestors, like that, but that's not what we're talking about. Like nowadays, what can we do as part of reconciliation and as part of reparations? And people get like very … I think there's like a fear attached to specifically with land back of like, how do I give land back if I don't have a hundred acres?

And so then I can just like easily be like, here is 50 of those hundred acres. You do your, what you want to do with it ‘cause I don't need those 50. There's this like thing of being like, oh, I only have a city lot or oh, I live in an apartment. Like how do I give land back? 

And I think the probably it's just that like people aren't having large enough conversations, like long enough conversations to really dig into the nuance and figure out okay, when we say land back, what does that mean for each person? And like where's the balancing act that like, here's what we are trying to reconcile from the past and make reparations for, here's where we would like to get to in the future, and then also here's the current reality for all of the players that play. And so what can we do that's going to cause the least amount of stress while also still being responsible to, and taking accountability for things that we personally weren't necessarily responsible for in the past, but are absolutely now, we're dealing with the effects of. 

It's all that like with climate change where it's yeah, we fucked it up and maybe it wasn't necessarily specifically us or like maybe we're not the 1% who are using I think it's something like … I keep on saying different stats, but it's like it, there was one stat that was like the top 1% are using 40% of the resources. And I saw another one that said the top 1% are using 95% of the resources, which might actually be … like either way, it's super fucked. I think the one was technically like 1% including corporations, which would maybe make more sense? 

But like either way, right? Like you're using way more resources. Oh no, it was that the top 1% use more resources than all the other 99% combined. That's what it was. So if you're not part of that 1% then being like, “Oh, I can't do anything.” That's not true. 

There are things that we can do. They're not going to necessarily have the same level of impact as if that 1% went and did something, but it, there's still something that we can do and doing something, even if we don't necessarily personally see the impact, doesn't stop that impact from eventually collectively adding up to something important.

heather kiskihkoman: Mhmmm. Yeah. That's huge. I think even to comment on any of that, that's huge, right? For me, Land Back means taking care of the land first and foremost, allowing indigenous people access to their traditional territories. 

For me, I don't believe you can truly own the land. Whether settler or indigenous or corporation or any of that, there's no such thing as ownership over something that's constantly changing and renewing and could disappear.

There could be a tornado here and I could lose what I've got here. Does that mean that I don't own anything anymore? Or people who've had their homes like fall into rivers or get swept away by tidal waves? What do they own now? Do they own part of the ocean? [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Right? Yeah. Like your land has now … is your land …?  Actually like the and often when people are talking about land, they're not actually talking about the land itself. They're talking about the structures on top of the land, whether that's like a factory …

heather kiskihkoman: Or the resources underneath.

ash alberg: So yeah. I don't know.

heather kiskihkoman: I think discussing, I guess, when you bring corporations into it, that's the main … that's who owns and who is destroying most of the land and resources. So that I believe is a completely different discussion and I'm not as well versed in it. 

But far as individuals go, I truly believe like it comes back to community and taking care of your community, taking care of your homes, your home land, all of that. It doesn't have to be settler-indigenous or anything like that. It's person to person, what can we do to help each other? And what can we do to take care of this space that we occupy so that we can nourish ourselves and nourish our children and be sure that it will still be able to do that for future generations?

For me, that's what Land Back is, but some people who are unhoused will definitely have a different opinion. I'm fortunate enough to have somewhere to live. So for me, I'm thinking more community-based and … [sighs.] I don't know what else to say about that.

ash alberg: [Laughs.] It's fucking complicated though. And like, that is part of it. Like our conversations have just so much nuance in terms of, I'm a settler and like my settler genera--, like my ancestry is like on the one side, those very first settlers who definitely did some fucked up shit.

And then the other side is like much fresher, coming from war, like displaced from their own lands due to trauma that was not of their choosing. Then, like you were an indigenous person living on also like physically very far apart, similar in landscape actually considering it's Canada, but or what we call Canada, but like very far apart, as far as actual like distance goes and then you're housed. 

And then, we, there's the folks who are unhoused and their experience of it. And we're also both in areas that are further south rather than further north. And there's so many … there, and just in terms of like how much access to land, like physical land, do you have based on where you are located?

Like all of those things then feed into the nuances of the conversations and I feel like a lot of the times a big part of the problem, just with conversations in general that have nuance, is that a lot of the conversations are happening on social media especially, or that's where we see them. And social media literally is not designed for nuance.

Like the whole fucking point of it is to have short, quick, like bite-sized blasts that also are much more focused on the things that are going to be controversial, which usually means the things that are like fucking horrendous and encouraging hate and encouraging anger, because those are reactive like reasons that cause people to stay on the platforms for longer and the platforms are run by corporations.

Like it's just, there's so many pieces that like feed into and complicate a conversation that already is complicated. And then you just add in the part where people are not always the best at communicating and I don't, I dunno, like I dunno.

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah.

And it goes back to education and the education we all received. Me personally, I don't look at colonization as something that we can go back from. It's here, it happens. We have to find a way that we can all live and work together. And that was the intention of the treaties that were signed.

And that's what allowed for this country that's currently called Canada to exists. Like the treaties are what formed this country. And that's something that not a lot of people know, and not a lot of people understand that the reason that this country is allowed to exist is because of the treaties that were signed with different Indigenous nations.

And it's, that's something that is deliberately left out of education. 

ash alberg: Yes.

heather kiskihkoman: And that's, I think part of, a huge part of the misunderstandings and the … I don't even want to say the unwillingness to participate in like meaningful conversations, but that sort of standoffish energy, that's, “I'm not going to talk about this because I didn't, I wasn't involved in this and I'm a nice person” and all of that.

No, can we, all of those things can be true, but also by living here, whether you're born here, immigrated or whatever, you, we are all still bound by these laws, by these treaties, before the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that's something that every single person on this land needs to know and needs to be aware of and needs to … like everyone should know treaty.

Everyone should know what they, by being here, by being present are bound to, ‘cause it's not just Indigenous people. Like it's framed as treaties are for Indigenous people and Canada is for non-indigenous people … 

ash alberg: Yeah. Which is like this weird, like actually like super hypocritical and not, it's like the opposite of what is actually true.

heather kiskihkoman: I would go further and say it's like, it's all of us. Treaty is an agreement between two parties. It's not … 

ash alberg: Yes.

heather kiskihkoman: … for settler populations only, it's … 

ash alberg: Yeah, no, sorry. I meant the Canada bit where it's like [audio distortion.]

heather kiskihkoman: Oh, okay. [Ash snort-laughs.]

Yeah, yeah, and it's an agreement between two parties and both parties have to uphold their sides of it. Otherwise it's not … like the contract is in violation or whatever. I don't understand legal terms, but I understand that is how, that's what designed this country, and that's, that was revolutionary.

People were coming from monarchies where they had people in charge telling them what to do, this idea of freedom and making your own destiny and all that came about because of signing treaty, and that's something that we don't get credit for. [Both laugh.] 

That's something that like these colonists get credit for, but truly like that wouldn't happen. That wouldn't … yeah, that wouldn't exist otherwise.

ash alberg: Yeah. It's, I think the like education part if we back it up slightly, that's so crucial because … and obviously not everybody comes to this country or becomes aware of things in this country via starting right at kindergarten and moving their way through. If you come as an older person or we didn't learn those things in schools, so like now it would take a different kind of education, but like one of the simplest ways of getting it started would be to just start changing the curriculum in the public school systems, and then also like the rules within the private school systems, starting at least. 

So that then even if we don't fucking touch any of the rest of it, eventually there will be a generation that understands those things better. Like there, I have a lot more faith in children than I do in adults. And I think that's like the Sagittarius optimism of, I don't necessarily trust that humans are going to do the right thing, but I trust that the universe will figure it out. And in the same way, like I don't trust adults.

I think humans in general are like pretty fucked up, but I have immeasurable trust in children and their capacity and their potential. And then, what they are exposed to will then inform them, but they have so much more possibility and hope at that stage then than when they're older. 

And that's not to say that as adults, we don't also have capacity to change. I think that's like a ridiculous thing that people just use as an excuse to not do the work that they should continue doing. As a human, you should just be constantly changing and evolving and growing, but kids are much more comfortable with that concept than adults are. 

Adults hit a certain point and then they're like, okay, I know who I am. It's great, congratulations. And now it’s the next year. And the next moment, and the next. Like, the world around us is changing. We need to stay up with that. And kids are a lot more flexible, I think, in that regard. 

And it also like looking at a thing without having preconceived notions of what that means, right? Like they’ll all of the questions and accept a thing as true or not. But they're going to ask the question and then be like, okay, cool. Got it. And then move on and ask the next question, rather than being like, I don't agree with that. I'm going to argue with you. Like they do that, but once they already have kind of some sort of like structure around an idea. And as they, as we grow, we build more and more structure around more and more ideas.

heather kiskihkoman: It's interesting that you bring that up because I found when I was teaching in the classroom, my favorite grades were seven and eight. 

If you speak to any teacher, generally they say like grade seven is the absolute worst year. No one wants to teach it. And I agree. There's not a lot of learning that's going on. [Both laugh.] Not a lot of curriculum being retained, but that age group was, it's so incredible.

Like that age, they're willing to try and make mistakes and fail and have a good time and learn something new and come back again and do it again. And I found by ninth grade, that's when like the kids started like just shutting themselves off and sitting there quietly and not engaging and being like, absolutely terrified to make a mistake in public.

So they'd rather not do anything at all. Then that for me was really hard and I guess that's, I guess an example of what you were just saying. That's something that you have to really struggle to work with and you have to struggle to build those connections. And I don't know. I just, I try to think about now what can I do or how can I create a space that's welcoming of shame and welcoming of guilt, because that's what stopping people from learning, that feeling of, oh my god, I did something wrong.

Everything's, everything's falling apart. Everyone hates me, everyone thinks I'm dumb, blah, blah, blah. That's what stopping people from learning. It doesn't matter if they're like ninth grade or like 80 years old or any of that. That's, what's putting up that wall and how can we maintain that feeling of safety?

And I just saw a post today it was something about, instead of safe spaces, let's have brave spaces. Yeah. And like, how do you empower the entire population with the ability to be brave and to feel safe to admit that they were wrong and learn something new and just maybe change their viewpoint on one or two things?

ash alberg: Yeah.

heather kiskihkoman: I don't know how to build that structure within like the larger community that we're in now, but I think that's what I found so beautiful about the hide tanning camps that we were doing, is it's hard work and it's gross work some of the time. Like sometimes it's absolutely disgusting, but at no point was I disgusted by it. At no point did I feel like I don't want to do this anymore. 

And for me, I'm very sensitive to like smells and textures. And I thought that was going to be like, I'm not doing this, but it wasn't. And what surprised me even more was that there was so many other people that we encountered in the workshops that we did that had the exact same experience.

Like when we were working with little kids, like you bring in an animal hide that smells rotten. And it's oh, they're all gonna, they're all gonna hate this. But at no point, did we have that. There was maybe two or three kids in the two schools that we went to that just chose not to participate.

They just chose to sit on the side. They didn't complain, they didn't throw a tantrum, they didn't yell or scream or any of that. They're just like, you know what, this isn't for me. And that was fine. 

The amount of energy and dedication and devotion that these little babies put into it and then to see adults doing that, adults who had gone to residential school and adults who had grown up without their families who had grown up in care or were adopted out or whatever, that people that had this very tangible pain and anger and hurts. To see them working on the hides and connecting on a deeper level, like a cellular level, and to see that blood memory coming through, that was the most surprising thing that I've found of doing hide work was to feel a part of someone else's healing and to feel like you can feel that hurt come off, whether you're flushing or whether you're scraping, just to see that transformative change and to be part of a community and to all feel it together.

That was amazing for me. I think I cried at almost every hide camp we had. 

ash alberg: [Laughs.] Yep. I, yep. I can absolutely see that. ‘Cause there's also just, it's incredible work. Like the, I think everyone needs to have the experience of it. Like whether you're plant-based or not, like the experience of tanning a hide is the, like one of the most magical things, which I think is extra important in a world and society these days where like that size of magic is hard to maintain and just like the meditation that sets in.

And I it's physically hard work and I was expecting my body to be so much sorer than I ended up feeling and it's if you were to tell me, okay, Ash, go and do this thing that's going to be that physically demanding and do it for eight hours straight, I'd be like, fuck you, what are you talking about?

But like to go and do it in the process of tanning hide was just like, yes, absolutely. This is what we do. And you just get into that rhythm and you do it, and then you do it the next day and you do it the next day. And there's body care that obviously you need to be also doing in that.

It's not you're just like, oh yes, I'm in the meditative space. And I'll just wreck my body in the process. No, that's not what … not advocating that. But there's something that is so much more that you experience. And yeah, it's hard to draw parallels. 

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah. It's definitely spiritual work like, and it's, you can feel it when you're there in the moment. And it's very transformative. 

And I think even on, maybe more superficial scale, as someone with ADHD, just to be able to see instant results … 

ash alberg: Yeah. There's that!

heather kiskihkoman: Oh my god. I've been working on this for 30 seconds and look at how much flesh I peeled off already! That's huge for me. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Yeah.

heather kiskihkoman: Because it can be so frustrating to be doing like a large-scale beading piece and doing one bead at a time.

And I've got a piece here that I've been working on for almost a year. And it's and that makes me not want to work on it, but just that instant reward and instant gratification on a small scale. But then on the larger scale, if you do that for days or weeks, then you have this incredible textile that like, it would have just been thrown away! [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Yes. Yeah. Also that too where it's like you're taking something that otherwise would become compost if we do it properly, garbage if we don't, and was part of a living being, and then to turn it into a usable piece of cloth, like it is, it's a textile, it's a usable textile that keeps us warm and keeps us protected and keeps us, especially where we live, where it's like very extreme weather, it's necessary.

But even if you live in somewhere that's more temperate, like the elements are still, it's not like you have a moderate amount of sun and no, nothing like coming at you, nothing's going to touch your skin. Like humans are very frail creatures. Yeah, it’s something else.

heather kiskihkoman: Even for Indigenous people, a lot of us have the memories of the smell of smoke tanned hide, or the brain tanned hide, and that's so intricately tied up with our memories of grandparents and great-grandparents and ceremony. 

And like all of that sensory information is so valuable as well. And I've called it nehiyaw gold, like this home tanned, brain tanned hide that's so soft. And the tiniest needle just like slides right through. And the smell just takes you, like takes you back in time. 

It's, that in itself is magical. Even if you didn't have any hand in creating that textile, just to have that experience of either owning something made with that textile or being able to just hold it, that in and of itself is magic, I find. 

ash alberg: Yes. Yeah. At the time travel that comes from like sensory memory and then also blood memory is, it's fucking cool. 

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah. 

ash alberg: Yeah. When you like see a thing or feel a thing or smell a thing, or like to have your bones and your body respond in a way where maybe you don't understand, maybe you have no cognizant conscious memory of what this means, but your body knows what it is.

And even if it wasn't even you yourself who knows, but your ancestors know, and they're the ones that are responding to it in your own, like in your body. There's something really incredible about that, which I think is also the thing that scares the kyriarchy so bad, right? Like it's, it is like these practices are actively challenging and fucking with their goal of separating everybody out into being individual like flat, no nuance, no dimensional, anything like that's the goal of the kyriarchy is you just have a bunch of cogs in a machine.

And so when it's, it's not surprising that then those are the practices, which also, especially when they're communal practices, that those are the things that they're going to attack first and most ferociously because they cause the most risk to that cog and machine.

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah. Yeah.

‘Cause like, I agree. I never thought of it that way, but yes, that, when I smell that hide or when I feel it, that to me is love. And that to me is being held and being cherished because that’s what our mothers and our grandmothers used to make all of our clothing out of. And all of it is imbued with these intentions of love and care and good hopes and dreams for the future is put into this textile.

And then that textile’s put into cloth and then the person giving that gives that intention to that person and that person wears it. And they're cloaked in this power of like love. And then it gets passed down because it's an heirloom. So it's just building and building these spells, these intentions for the wearer and for whoever gets to possess that piece.

And [sighs] god, I just feel like so loved right now. [Both laugh, Ash snorts.]

ash alberg: So tell me what you wish you'd been told about magic or ritual when you were younger.

heather kiskihkoman: I don't think there's anything that I wish I had heard when I was younger, because finding it out for myself has been part of my journey and part of the process. And I'm thankful and grateful to have had all the opportunities to learn everything that I have had. And then also to then pass it on to younger generations.

So like working with kids has been a theme in my life and it just keeps coming up. I quit teaching and still ended up going back to the school and teaching the kids how to do hides. So I think for me, I'm happy with the way everything played out. Like it wasn't ideal. I would have loved to know and learn these skills as a child, and I would love to be fluent in my language, but to me that tells me that's what my purpose is. 

If that's what I want and if that's what I need, then I need to fulfill that for myself and then give back too, because if I needed it, then there are definitely other children out there that need that as well. 

ash alberg: Yeah. That's really fucking lovely. 

heather kiskihkoman: Aww!

ash alberg: And a different response than I've received from anybody else, which is, yeah, that's really lovely.

heather kiskihkoman: Awww.

ash alberg: I'm not saying that anybody else's responses also weren't lovely. I just, that question in particular, I find always is the, it like tickles me the most out of all the conversations.

And that was, yeah, I resonate with that, especially. So what's next for you then?

heather kiskihkoman: What is next? I am … I've got a few ideas. Like I, I align with this like Sagittarius energy, like I have all these ideas. And then I sit here and it's, which one do I start? 

Yeah, I've got a few ideas on the go with my sister. We're planning on making like a notebook of some sort for hide tanners. So look for that. We’re, it's still in the planning phase. 

I am hoping to design a website and get just like small merch going with some of the beadwork pieces that I've made. I really just need to be able to support myself. [Both laugh, Ash snorts.]

Support myself and support my bead habit. 

ash alberg: Yes. [Laughs.] I feel like that's how it often starts is it's just okay, I have too many of the finished objects and also I need more supplies and like move on some of the clutter and bring in more. [Laughs.]

heather kiskihkoman: Exactly. Like that's, I'm starting to really notice that. And I need to shift the energy in here. I've been collecting and collecting and then feeling this idea of scarcity just because of not moving things. So in December, my sister and I participated in a couple of like craft fairs, markets, and it was a huge, incredible experience for me.

Like I've never done that before, I've only ever sold my jewelry or whatever on Instagram. So being in person and getting to talk to people and watching them fall in love with certain pieces and then watching those pieces go out to their new home, oh my goodness! It was amazing. 

So we're looking at doing a few more markets like locally. I, part of … I'm going to be part of the Toronto Indigenous Fashion Week marketplace in June. 

ash alberg: Cool!

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah. So hopefully they'll be able to do in person and I'll be able to go and participate in that marketplace. And yeah, just more tattooing. I hope again, to get a garden going. [Both laugh.] Just like slowly building this life for myself and this community for myself.

There's a couple of us hide tanners that wants to get together and build something. We're not, we haven't set it down in words yet, but build a community, a collective of like-minded Indigenous women, who are all, like, all of us on our own are trying to make it on our own and do our own things, so we're hoping to build like a collective where we can support each other and help each other to succeed. 

And yeah, just make something more sustainable for us so we're not exhausting ourselves. 

ash alberg: Totally. Yeah, exactly. Where you're like all doing variations of similar things and then if you were to combine those powers, then you could relieve a lot of the workload on each of you individually. 

heather kiskihkoman: Yeah, exactly. 

ash alberg: I love it. This has been such a joy. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I really appreciate it.

This has been really fun.

heather kiskihkoman: Yes! Thank you. 

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] You can find full episode recordings and transcripts at snortandcackle.com. Just click on podcast in the main menu. Follow Snort and Cackle on Instagram @snortandcackle and join our seasonal book club with @SnortandCackleBookClub. Don't forget to subscribe and review the podcast by your favorite podcasting platform.

Editing provided by Noah Gilroy, recording and mixing by Ash Alberg, music by Yesable.