(Skwxwú7mesh)

Cultural Advising by Nikki Sanchez-Hood, Decolonize Together

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone in “Vancouver” who has not heard of, or been greatly impacted by, the work of Ta7talíya Nahanee (she/her). As the CEO of Nahanee Creative, Nahanee and her team are opening doors for social change and the transformation of colonial narratives with decolonial facilitation and design—including a new workbook. 

Outside of her traditional work, Nahanee is a proud member of both the Squamish and East Van Nations. She’s a mother, a matriarch, and a dedicated leader, grounded by her community, her family, and the Squamish ways. 

Nahanee and her daughter Ta7talíya Paisley Nahanee are forces of great fortitude, emboldened by their deep respect for their Ancestors, and for their lineage. And, they’re only just getting started. 

In your own words, can you tell our Loose Lips Magazine readers a little bit about who you are and about the work you do with Decolonize First.

I am Ta7talíya Michelle Nahanee, I go by she/her pronouns, and I’m a Squamish Nation member. I grew up in the village of Eslhá7an, and belong to the Nahanee family. My ancestry is Squamish, Stó:lō, and Hawaiian on my dad’s side. And I’m French and Irish related to the Casey and Bruneau families on my mom’s side. I identify primarily as Squamish as I’m carrying an Ancestral name. I grew up in my community and I still work with my community. I’m a Squamish Nation Election Commissioner — that’s an appointed position and I’m really honoured to hold that title and hold the trust of my community in that way. 

I also very much consider myself part of the East Van Nation which is such an incredible Urban Indigenous community to belong to. I moved into the Strathcona area in 1984 and was part of the punk scene and Indigenous arts scene and learned so much from that rich intersection of cultures but was always grounded in my Squamish ways. So, that’s who I am in terms of cultural heritage. These days, I call myself a decolonial facilitator and strategist, which means I use my skills as a professional communicator and graphic designer in service of undoing colonial impacts. I’ve created a giant decolonizing board game, two decolonial workbooks, and many experiential decolonial unlearning workshops. 

I mainly call myself a “door opener” these days. It’s a never-ending task, but if my work can inspire people to stay in the work of dismantling neocolonialism, and keep going, that’s totally worth my time and my life’s purpose. 

I know that in December 2019 you and Paisley received your Ancestral name, Ta7talíya, together in ceremony. Can you tell me more about that experience and tradition and why it’s so significant?

Do you want the big story or the little story?

Whatever you feel comfortable to share. 

I’ll share the bigger story because I’ve shared it in a few talks now and I think it says so much about what’s possible through decolonizing practices.

In 2019, I was on a panel at the Vancouver Museum for the Why I Design Event. When I was up on a stage with six other people in design and social change, I introduced myself in a shorthand kind of way “Michelle Nahanee… kwi en sna Eslhá7an Úxwumixw” which is just a simple way of saying my name and where I am from. I still have a tiny amount of Squamish words that I know and feel comfortable saying. I am a intergenerational Residential School survivor, but I use what I can because it’s important.

As I was sitting on the panel, I started to hear my Ancestors. That site is actually on a village site that’s called the Village of Sen̓áḵw. And I was hearing this ‘who are you?’ And to me, this was a spiritual experience, even though nobody knew that this is what I was experiencing because I was up on a stage, with 200 people in the audience. I had this moment of understanding that [my Ancestors] knew I was one of them because of the few Squamish words I had used [in my introduction] but at the same time they wouldn’t know Michelle, they wouldn’t even know Nahanee, because my ancestors’ name is Nahinu. And so, I was thinking to myself ‘I need to learn more of my language and I need to make sure that they know me.’ 

The next day, my family was over for brunch. This this was pre-COVID, so we used to have a lot of people over at our house. And my Uncle just randomly stood up and he said he’d been thinking about an Ancestral name for me and that it was time now for me to carry the name and do some training to receive the name. He told us the name had in mind, Ta7talíya. He told me about my great great great great grandmother, Ta7tan. And so I told him the story of what happened the day before on the panel, when I received the message, and I told him I agreed, it was the right time. 

It’s an honour and work to carry the name. It’s also a protection to hold that connection. It’s my family’s way of supporting me now that I’m in the public eye a lot, and that my work has a legacy. The ceremony was their way to honour me with this name. And it was decided at the same time that Paisley [my daughter] should also carry the name because, even though she’s so young, she’s done so much.

Oh, I just get so emotional. It’s just so beautiful that she can be such a young person and be thought of with such respect from our family — she does truly carry herself with the teachings. 

So, we set the date for the winter solstice of that year. It’s all very collective because you make a decision like that as a family, then you go and speak to all of these other family members to be sure that they support the decision too. When family members offer their support, they also share some teachings, so even the preparation is part of the learning journey. And then we start to pull together a giveaway, and plan for a feast, and prepare for the ceremony. So, a lot goes into it and we did it quickly. 

The day of the ceremony, we stand on a blanket and we receive teachings from everybody, and then when we walk off of the blanket we’re in a new life. It’s still such a beautiful day to remember. Thanks for asking about it. I’m still at the intersection of my new life as Ta7talíya– it’s only in the last couple months have I been stronger with people about how I prefer to be addressed. I also changed my email and am trying to apply for a new passport but they won’t accept my 7 yet.

I’m supporting people to pronounce my name, and feel past that discomfort of ‘Oh, there’s a 7! What am I going to do?’ which is a sort of decolonizing too, right? By supporting people through that, and supporting myself to stand strong in the name and to think forward in the generations about what this name will mean to this land, and what meaning will grow for the name I share with my daughter. 

What does Matriarchy mean to you personally and what does Matriarchy mean in the context of your community?

To me, it’s service as leadership. It’s a leadership style that nurtures while also shaping. I see it as a way of caring for the world like a mother: being committed, providing feedback when it’s needed, and providing support when it’s needed. It’s not a gendered way of being for me, it’s carrying the teachings, it’s being in good relations, it’s nurturing the leadership of those around me. 

I really came to claim this when I went back to school to do my Master of Arts. After [our] teahouse closed, and after some very deep sadness, I did a lot of grieving and gained a deeper understanding of my place within meritocracy including understanding the lies of the meritocracy. And I was grieving the loss of that love that we had for the teahouse. When I look back at how I approached it I know that I believed that if we worked hard and we did the right things, we would be successful. I guess I believed in meritocracy at that point. 

But that critical education came in going back to school. My thesis is called Indian Girl to Squamish Matriarch, and I trace all of the naming conventions that I evolved through. 

I was born Stelmexw, which means I was born a Squamish person in my community in my language. And then I went to school to learn that I was an Indian, and in the 70s that was paired with really ugly adjectives that I’m still scarred by. And then my family was really identifying as Native because my Aunties were part of the Native Women’s Association of Canada and my Uncles were part of the Native Brotherhood. Two of my aunties led the Bill 31-C and Bill C-3 Legislative changes to the Indian Act that impacted the status of Indigenous women in Canada. In the 80s and 90s, we were called Aboriginal and First Nations and in the 2000s, Indigenous. Now I’m back to Squamish, with the 7, and really claiming the matriarchy I witnessed growing up.

Within my family, I was raised to be a leader. We all were raised to be leaders. Even being a little tiny person in the living room with cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, who were all involved in politics, and we were included in those family conversations. All of my aunts went to school later in life, after they had their kids, and have led in their professions. 

Even the way I raised my daughter, to have an opinion — and now I have to actually listen to it. She’s become a more strict feminst than I ever was! Which I love. 

When I defended my thesis, I invited my aunties. I had an Aunty Committee and an Academic Supervisor Committee. There were four aunties, including Chief Janice George who is an adoptive aunty of mine. Aunty is a word of respect for us. And also my blood aunties, who raised me. 

I was apprehended in my teens, I was taken into “care” as they called it. My aunties got me out of the system and brought me to live with them. They got me out of this horrible group home I was put into and fought for me to come back home. I know they would do anything for me. And, that’s another part of my leadership: it’s family first. My business is important to me, but my family is the most important — the two are intrinsically linked. 

What does Matriarchy look like in the traditional sense, and how do you feel like the role has modernized and changed over time?

There are so many ways that it shows up. Traditionally, it would have been a seat at the table, sharing what should be done for the Nation. From a Squamish perspective, if you know about our Squamish amalgamation, we came together in 1923 to sign a document of 16 communities, on how we would bond together in the face of colonialism and dispossession of our lands. It’s a document that we all signed, and people met for 12 years leading up to that, to make that decision.

All of the people were meeting and speaking and talking about what should happen. And, we still do that. We still have referendums on everything. So that idea that every person has a voice and every voice matters is still part of our community. Even in our meetings now, every person can go to the mic and say what needs to be said. From Nation members who are lawyers, to Nation members who collect bottles, everybody can and should weigh in on things. And people might not call it Matriarchy, it is just part of our sacred law of lifting each other up, of listening to each other. 

That community-care way of working has really informed my communications work because I’ve worked on so many projects for my nation where I had to communicate difficult things to a huge spectrum of literacy. So that means writing very complicated briefs, but also making an infographic that a Residential School survivor can read and still get the detailed information. I’m really proud of how that’s continued to inform my work.

Matriarchy shows up in that work, with that level of care, to [ensure that you think abou] everybody. To ask ‘What does everybody need?’  Within my decolonial work, I’m writing about things in a critical way, but I’m also trying to make them digestible and accessible. I’m talking about land and equity and intergenerational wealth, wealth gained from the dispossession of Indigenous lands. Through my matriarchal approach, I can speak about harder topics and I’ve been successful in getting people talking and thinking differently.

It all relates to matriarchy as a way to hold space, and create tools — with so much community care put into the work.

By doing all this care for everyone around you, how do you take care of yourself? What’s your favourite self-care practice?

Well, definitely visiting my Aunties. It’s number one for me. I also workout and I follow Medicine Wheel teachings. My husband Lloyd is Plains Cree and teaches Medicine Wheel wellness workshops. I have benefited greatly from those teachings. 

I’ve been working out for three years now. I started late in life because I have some physical deformities that caused me shame and worry. I’ve had rheumatoid arthritis since my early twenties but I’m so over worrying about how I look different. That’s the nice thing about being the age I am now. I really have taken a more holistic approach to my wellness, and I truly know that my wellness comes before any of the work that I do.

There’s four of us on our team (I’m so proud to be able to support all of us with this work) and each of us has a gym pass that my company pays for as well as a wellness budget. I don’t work 40 hours a week, I don’t think anybody should. I work the hours that work best for me, and I encourage my team to do the same thing. Wellness is the base of my life and of how I manage my company. Wellness first. Productivity comes after that.

I also know that I can’t hold that kind of matriarchal space without my spiritual practices too. I love smudging, it’s one of my favourite things. And a lot of nature walks. I spend a lot of time walking near the water — and I’m so grateful to be close to it. I have very active spiritual practices and I do them before I host workshops or presentations. It’s very much a Squamish thing to pray for the right words, and so in terms of work like this, I have an outline, I have prayer and a spiritual practice and then correct words come from my heart because I believe in a connected heart and mind. And that’s more than a nice idea, it’s really how I try to live my life. 

In your own words, who are the Squamish people and what do you want settlers to know about them?

Of course there are unique cultures across Squamish families and my Nahanee family has specific ways with the culture. But if I had to generalize about Squamish people, I would say every Squamish person that I know, that I can think of in my mind, is so creative and caring. I’ve never met a Squamish person who didn’t have a lot of ideas and a lot of vision. And I think that’s a really, really beautiful thing to share how you think things should be done and I think that’s a legacy of Matriarchal leadership. 

We’re very much an engaged community — about so many topics. Generally, Squamish are deeply caring Nation Members, who look out for each other, who are very much connected to each other. I really miss living in community, back when we all knew each other. I miss everyone waving on the street and the “lip up/chin up” nod to say hi. 

In terms of what I want settlers on our territory to know about Squamish people: it’s to have a framework of respect for our protocols and leadership. One of the things that is so important to us is to be good hosts, and to take good care of our guests. And colonialism stops us from doing that. Imagine what that has done to our relations with each other.

To uphold the protocols and be in good relations, I ask everyone to not stop expressing land acknowledgments even though I love to [challenge] them. A pro tips I share in my workshops is to not ever use the word “acknowledge” in your land acknowledgements, it’s so annoying! You can call it a land acknowledgement, but don’t say “I acknowledge the territories of ___________”  the subtext is that it’s not true but you acknowledge it.

How are the Squamish people continuing to thrive as a Coastal Nation that has had one of the largest urban redevelopments?

Well, we have powerful Ancestors and we have powerful Teachings. I’m referring to our sacred laws, and I’m referring to the concept of shared territory. It’s important to understand how we’ve been sharing this territory in good relations with the people around us through ceremony, through inter-marriage, through ancient ways of sharing resources that takes care of the land and the people and everything as woven together. 

We have always been business people, we’ve been doing business for thousands of years, it looks different because the business benefits everybody which includes the territory. We continue to practice business in our traditional ways now through MST Development Corporation. The three Host Nations are buying land together and we are now the largest landowners in this territory. What is different is that the land will be developed in ways that benefit all Host Nation members and our descendants. 

How we continue to thrive is staying in those good relations, in the ways that we have for thousands of years. And it looks different now because of land deeds, but we’ve always been negotiators. 

We just keep doing what we’ve been doing. We stay close to each other, we take care of each other, we love our land, and we love our culture. We sing our songs, we do our ceremonies. There’s so many ways we’ve stayed strong in the face of colonialism and we kept having big, big families. 

What is your vision for the Squamish Nation ten years from now?

I’d love to see our language and culture taught in schools, for everybody. I would love everybody in this territory to know our sacred laws. And, to know the anthem. And to respect our leadership. I want our children to be proud of who they are with opportunities to embody success in ways that are meaningful to them. I want our families kept together. 

What makes you feel empowered as a Matriarch?

It’s the younger people in my life, watching them thrive and supporting them to thrive. And seeing them get to some decolonial discoveries faster than I did. That really makes me feel empowered and happy and that it’s worth it. This next generation is so incredible — they have so much interpersonal knowledge it blows my mind. 

I really like it when I see people really start to see differently. The shifting is my cue to keep going. I do these four-week long seminars with my workbook and I received a package in the mail from someone who took it last summer. She has since committed to researching and re-understanding her connection to her Scottish heritage. She wrote to share how she found these knitting patterns that were indicative of family lines. Her words and story made me happy cry. She also sent me a beautiful piece of knitting in the mail and thanked me for my workbook and the time that I spent facilitating their unpacking their colonial impacts. That really made me feel empowered, and happy that I do this work. 

What does settler allyship look like to you?

In my [Decolonize First] workbook, I talk about doing complicity math. I really think it’s time to run some numbers on what people are gaining from the land that they own in the city and to make sure that a percentage of that is going back into Host Nation led projects. That’s something that I’d like to see as a next step beyond committing to territorial acknowledgements. I would like people who have gained wealth and security as settlers on this land to especially look at the origins of their intergenerational wealth and commit to redress. 

The fact that our people’s average income is $23,000 a year and that we don’t have paid holidays, or RRSPs, or that are our kids can’t comfortably cruise into [their futures] doing whatever they want to do is literally linked to intergenerational financial equity gained from the dispossession of Indigenous lands. I really want people to get down and talk about that, think about that and do something about that. 

In terms of this shared territory and shared resources, that’s how we’ve always run things. Our wealth systems were based on everything that we could give away and that was banned and outlawed because it must have just seemed so strange. 

But I’m getting back to those ways of being and thinking. I’m pushing this agenda to whoever will listen to me, these are the next steps to ending settler colonialism.

And I also encourage everybody to feel their heritage, feel their identity, that’s your decolonizing. I feel like, once that happens, people can’t help but be happy for us and our Indigenous identity. Sometimes, I feel like part of the reason for the anger and hatred towards us and who we are is because of people’s own loss of culture. 

I’d like to see settler allyship growing what identity has meant. 

Decolonize First, a liberating guide and workbook by Ta7talíya Michelle Nahanee is available for purchase online at Nahaneecreative.com.

Find this poem and more, now in print, available at select locations in Vancouver.