Voices Decolonized

It’s OFFICIAL! And our website is live. We’ve been working on these Indigenous language flashcards for a couple of months, and we are beyond excited to bring them to you guys! We are so thankful to have worked alongside an incredible Hul’q’umi’num’ artist to bring you our first round of flashcards, so it seemed fitting that for our soft launch we will have Hul’q’umi’num’ cards available to purchase! For those local to Victoria please use code PICKUP1 at checkout to avoid s...hipping costs. What languages would you guys like to see next?

Residential Schools were a large weapon used to assimilate Indigenous People into proper Canadians. And today we are fighting the hard fight for our grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, and uncles that couldn’t keep their culture.

We love nature walks! On our weekend walk we tried out a new path and were pleasantly surprised to find that someone had put signs with the SENOTEN word for the plants up along the way kukscémx (thank you) whoever you are!... -Chelsea

Small acts of decolonization. Over the holiday break we were feeling very grateful for our health and happiness throughout all the craziness that 2020 brought and we wanted to do something meaningful to honour that. We decided to make medicine to gift to our friends and family who use traditional medicines in their home for cleansing and prayer. ... We waited for the right day and we bundled up, brought our offerings and drove out into the bush to harvest. After drying out our harvest we spent a Sunday morning preparing our smudge mix. We made sure to only do this work while in the right mindset and put love and good energy into it. This was our small way of decolonizing the holiday season. -Chelsea

This one goes out to all of my light skin Indigenous brothers + sisters. Your worth as an Indigenous Person is not defined by the amount of melanin you possess. Growing up a light skin Indigenous womxn, surrounded by a big beautiful family made up entirely of darker skin tones, was really frustrating to me. I felt like I was too white to fit in with my brown family + friends, but too brown to fit in with my white friends. I was in a constant panic not knowing who or whe...re I belonged. It wasn’t until I was in my 11th grade math class, and after years of being told I’m too white to be Indigenous, I was talking with a few of my classmates. And I remember saying something along the lines of No one believes me when I say I’m native. And my teacher marched right over to me, sat down, and said You are aboriginal. I knew the second you walked in here that you were. You have all the characteristics of an aboriginal person. Beautiful dark hair, high cheek bones, and your laugh is contagious. Don’t let other people’s opinions get you down. And then walked away. It took many years for me to digest what she said that day. But her words made a very important impression on my youth. I slowly started to be proud of my high cheek bones and my very loud laugh. And I noticed that once I started embracing my Indigidentity the amount of melanin I have didn’t matter as much. @matteahridley_ See more