For Indigenous people water is more than just hydration. Water is alive and holds a spirit. Water is life. Stephanie Thorassie advocates for the Seal River Watershed, a pristine region in northern Manitoba, about 200 km west of Churchill. It is a vast area central to the Sayisi Dene people, who have served as its guardians for millenia. As the executive director of the Seal River Watershed Alliance Stephanie leads a partnership of four First Nations pushing to have the area designated an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area. In 2003, Anishnaabe Elder Josephine Mandamin took her first ceremonial water walk around Lake Superior. She wanted to share a message: the water is sick and people need to speak, love and fight for it. Following Mandamin's footsteps, Elder Shirley Williams, an Anishinaabe Elder from Wikwemikong Unceded Territory on Manitoulin Island, along with her niece Elizabeth Osawamick have been organizing annual water walks around the Kawartha region of Ontario since 2010. Lawyer and activist Pamela Palmater created a documentary that warns: we must work together to save water – before it's too late. The short documentary is called Samqwan which means water in the Mi'kmaq language. Pam is a lawyer, professor, activist and author who wants to raise awareness around the threats to water - from pipelines to clear-cutting to water pollution.

Indigenous agricultural practices kept our ancestors alive for millenia. They not only fed their own communities but also taught settlers how to grow food across this vast territory. Indigenous people, like Cree-Métis Winnipegger Audrey Logan, keep that tradition alive and growing! Audrey’s whole life revolves around growing food. It has to. We tour Spirit Park, a community garden she helped create, in the West Broadway neighbourhood where she shares her journey from being depressed, overweight and diabetic to a healthy-eating Indigenous garden guru! Over in Tyendinaga, Chloe Maracle is carrying seeds for the next 7 Generations. We dig deep and learn about the 300 seed varieties kept at the Kenhteke Seed Sanctuary and Learning Centre. The Haudenosaunee intern is not just learning how to care for the vast collection but is also growing that list to include at-risk varieties important to her people. Food insecurity has been a concern in many Indigenous communities for years. A 2019 study found that almost half of all First Nations families struggle to put food on the table. But people like Steven Wiig and Julia Pechawis are trying to change that. They turned a farmers field into a food forest in Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Saskatchewan.

He is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, professor, and author. After 25 years at CBC,the Anishinaabe storyteller is moving on from the public broadcaster and on to a new stage. Duncan began his career at the CBC as a reporter in Vancouver in 1998. These days, he’s the host of Helluvastory on CBC Radio One and the podcast Kuper Island, an 8-part series about the notorious Residential School by the same name. Many know him from the years he hosted Cross Country Checkup. He’s also the author of The Shoe Boy: A Trapline Memoir and created and wrote Decolonizing Journalism: A Guide to Reporting in Indigenous Communities, which is still used in CBC newsrooms. But all that’s about to change. Later this year he takes on a new role as Professor of Indigenous Journalism and Storytelling at Carleton's School of Journalism in Ottawa. He’ll be creating a new Certificate of Indigenous Journalism for students in remote communities. We want to send him off in a good way, reflecting on – not only an incredible career – but the life and the people that led him to it. Guest appearances and shout-outs of love from: Ian Hanomansing, Adrienne Arsenault, Waubgeshig Rice, and many more admirers, including his #1 fan, his Dad!

By day, he’s a police officer; by night, a DNA detective. Dean Lerat is an RCMP Staff Sergeant at Fort Qu’appelle, Saskatchewan. But when he’s not on duty, he helps Sixties Scoop survivors find their families, using DNA testing kits, ancestry websites, public documents and other resources. It all started with a curiosity about his own family tree and history. Up until two years ago, youth in Kinngait, Nunavut didn’t have much to do. The Inuit hamlet of about 1400 people had zero hockey games, art classes or social activities. That is, until Joanne Weedmark came along. She made it her job to keep the kids busy. As director of recreation, Joanne is bringing positive change to her community. Her hard work caught the attention of the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association, which selected her as its “Emerging Leader of the Year” in 2022 at the young age of 24. Dr. Courtney Leary is originally from Norway House Cree Nation in Manitoba. When she was growing up there, she dreamt of becoming a doctor. After graduating from university she returned home to become Norway House’s first practicing doctor. Respect, reciprocity, reconciliation, and relevance are the basis of an organization started by a group of youth in 2014. Jess Bolduc is Anishinaabe-French from Baawating and credits the Idle No More Movement for inspiring her own determination to bring change to her community and start the 4Rs Youth Movement. The organization centers and supports the work that Indigenous young people are doing in their communities, thereby creating an infrastructure for the next generation of changemakers.

Sage Paul grew up watching the women in her life sew, bead and craft. She turned these skills into a career, and has been dreaming and designing clothes for over a decade. But clothes aren’t the only things she wants to create. As the executive and artistic director of Indigenous Fashion Arts, Sage also creates opportunities for other Indigenous designers to find success in the fashion industry. This past February, the Dene designer and artist led a delegation all the way to Milan Fashion Week. Two people who were part of the team that Sage took to Milan Fashion Week were Anishinabe designer Lesley Hampton and Metis designer Evan Ducharme. Their stories are woven into the fabrics of history and shared across generations through the clothes they create. While the two young designers never saw themselves included within the fashion industry as children, they’re now bringing the change they wanted to see to international runways. Indigenous people are not just behind the runway curtain creating fabulous clothes. They’re also modeling them. From TikTok to the catwalk, Michelle Chubb knows what it takes to make it as an Indigenous woman in the fashion world. This past February, the 25 year-old Swampy Cree model joined 2Spirit fashion designer Scott Wabano at New York Fashion Week. Michelle was part of a group of mostly Indigenous models to showcase their work.

When it comes to loss and moving gracefully through grief, Christa Couture knows a thing or two. The multi-talented writer, singer and now filmmaker has lived through more than her fair share of loss. At 11 years old, she received a cancer diagnosis. She lost her first son when he was just a day old due to complications during childbirth. Her second son died at 14 months old due to complications with his heart. Soon after, her marriage ended. And just as some new beginnings emerged, cancer returned. To work through her loss and grief, Christa turned to music – creating seven albums and a memoir called How to Lose Everything. These were important projects in helping her deal with her own grief. Now she’s looking to help others with their experiences with grief and loss. Christa and producer Michelle St. John have teamed up with 5 pairs of Indigenous writers, artists and animators to create a series of short films. Each one – a personal story of loss. Each voice – sharing wisdom to help others through the darkness. “Grape Soda in the Parking Lot” is the name of Taqralik Partridge’s short film animated by Megan Kyak-Monteith. In it, Taqralik recalls her Scottish grandmother who spoke Gaelic and her Inuk father who spoke Inuktitut and poses an important question about language. Archer Pechawis, an artist and member of Mistawasis First Nation, is the storyteller behind “A Bear Named Jesus.” The short film, stop-motion animated by Terril Calder, explores what happened after his mom became a born-again Christian.

It was a crime that shook the art world. One hundred million dollars in suspected forgeries, over 1000 more fakes seized and 8 arrests in a far-reaching forgery ring of renowned Ojibwa artist Norval Morrisseau’s work. Police call it one of the largest art fraud schemes in history. But it's not just Morrisseau who has faced fakes and forgeries. Indigenous art makers and supporters all across Turtle Island say it is rampant and the cost is not just their livelihood – it is their culture. Indigenous artists say copycat art is more common than you think and copyright laws must evolve to protect them. Richard Hunt comes from a long line of Northwest Coast artists. The 73 year old Kwaguilth artist started carving at the age of 13 alongside his father, Henry Hunt. Richard says for about as long as he’s been a carver, he has seen his work copied. He says it is worse than stealing art: it is stealing cultural property. It was a design meant to support Residential School Survivors but the artist who created the West Coast stylized hands says people are ripping it off for profit. K’ómoks and Kwakwa̱ka̱'wakw visual artist Andy Everson and his wife Erin Brillon, Haida and Cree and owner of Totem Design House, have experienced the damage of copycats firsthand. They see websites selling inauthentic Indigenous art and design pop up on an almost daily basis. The husband and wife team work to educate others about the importance of buying authentic Indigenous art. As the first art historian to be appointed to the Senate of Canada, Senator Patricia Bovey champions Canadian art. But she also advocates for better protections for Indigenous artists’ work. Currently, there are few laws preventing counterfeit and fake Indigenous art in Canada but Senator Bovey hopes to change that by pushing changes to Canada’s copyright laws and setting up a fund that would help artists go after art fakesters.

Justin Delorme is Métis and an award-winning composer who has scored hundreds of television episodes like the true-crime series Taken, films like Finality of Dusk, and documentaries – including Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On. At just 29 years-old his career is only getting started. Raven Chacon is a Diné composer from the Navajo Nation. In 2022, he became the first Native American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his piece Voiceless Mass. The piece debuted in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist during American Thanksgiving. It features no words or lyrics, but it harnesses the absence of voice to tell a powerful story about the harm of colonialism. Deantha Edmunds grew up learning the classics like Handel’s Messiah. She never thought she would have the chance to sing it in Inuttitut, the language of her ancestors. As the world’s only professional Inuk opera singer, she is blazing a trail in the field of classical music.

Got land you want to give back? That may be harder than you think. Even when a group or individual is ready and willing to give land back to First Nations, there is no system in place to make this happen easily. Still, those who believe in land back are making it happen. SISCENEM, formerly Halibut Island, is a small island in the Salish Sea. When it went up for sale, Tara Martin, professor in conservation science in the department of Forest and Conservation sciences at UBC, wanted to return the island to the WSANEC Nation. She says that their guardianship is how this ecological gem would flourish. She found a funder, purchased the land, had it held in trust, and now that the WSANEC Nation has created its own land trust, it officially can have the land transferred over. If you got land - and want to return or gift it to a local First Nation or Indigenous group, how do you go about it? Lorraine Land, a lawyer who specializes in Indigenous rights and environmental law, knows the barriers in Canadian law that complicate the land back process. She outlines the existing ways land can be given back. Cathy Armstrong is the executive director of the Land Conservancy of BC. After the purchase of the island they held it in trust. Cathy says land back must be part of reconciliation. Eric Pelky is the community engagement coordinator of the WSANEC leadership council and the hereditary chief of Tsawout. He says the island is rich in traditional plants like camas and the presence of an ancient burial ground prove the WSANEC once lived there.

From the people searching on the frontlines, to those who hold Canadians to account and the women who know the solutions, we find power and place amidst the national crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2Spirit people. Winnipeg’s North Point Douglas Women’s Resource Centre is the home of the Mama Bear Clan. The volunteer patrol walks three times a week in this neighbourhood, the poorest in Winnipeg and where many of the city’s most vulnerable have few places to get warm and even fewer places to get food. Walkers like Gina Smoke, Mitch Bourbonnaire and Morgan Fontaine hand out food, winter gear and plenty of love while searching for the missing. There are roughly 1,200 missing or murdered Indigenous women in Canada, although the true number is thought to exceed 4,000. In 2016, Canada launched a national inquiry into the crisis and heard from three thousand family members, survivors of violence, experts and Knowledge Keepers. Its final report — Reclaiming Power and Place — lists 231 calls for justice. Karine Duhamel knows the report well. As the director of research for the National Inquiry which lasted nearly three years, she co-wrote it. Women like Bernadette Smith and Lorelei Williams have been on the ground in their communities, organizing, marching and educating. But our sisters and relatives keep disappearing. So what is it going to take to finally bring this crisis to an end? Bernadette Smith is the co-founder of the Coalition of Families of Missing and Murdered Women in Manitoba, Drag the Red Initiative and No Stone Unturned, and she is an MLA in the Manitoba legislature. Lorelei Williams is the founder of the Vancouver-based dance group Butterflies in Spirit and member of the Skatin and Sts'ailes First Nations.