Welcome to Between the Threads, a podcast exploring the threads that connect us, story, memory, identity, and meaning, and how they weave the fabric of peace in our lives and communities. Between the Threads is a joint initiative between Kahanee and Narratives. Kahanee is a nonprofit organization that amplifies storytelling for peace building, and Narratives is an award-winning planning and design firm based in Winnipeg, Canada. Welcome to today's episode of Between the Threads. Today we sit down with Jamie Goulet. Jamie is an Ojibwe Métis entrepreneur, artist and land based healing leader. devoted to the empowerment and reverence of Indigenous women and girls. For many years, Jamie ran the Grandmother Moon Lodge in Manitoba, an Indigenous women's healing and educational village rooted in matrilineal teachings, ancestral knowledge, and Indigenous earth spirituality. Jamie is now co-leading with Community, Clan Mothers Healing Village and Knowledge Centre, a large-scale, eco-centred healing and education village to support sexually exploited and trafficked women through holistic healing, education, and social enterprise. Welcome to today's episode, Jamie. How are doing today? I'm very good, Somia. Thanks for that intro. Yeah, it's always fun to hear these things about how people see you. I'm reminded of, I was trying to think last night of the first time that we met. And one of the things that will always stay with me is Jamie's a beautiful hugger. uh thank you for all that love that you share in the world, Jamie. aww jee Somia. You're making me blush. So we'll start today. I like to go right to the beginning. What was what was Jamie like growing up? my goodness. Very responsible. Incredibly responsible. I was a middle child born into a family of five children and a mom and a dad. My mom was Ojibwe up north and my dad was came from Quebec to work in the mines up north. So I had a lot of responsibility and we had quite a chaotic upbringing. Yeah, very chaotic. Lots of alcoholism, violence and all that stuff that a lot of Indigenous families go through. Not just ours. So I was, yeah, just very responsible. I know that for sure. I had to care for my younger brother and sister most of their childhood. Yeah. And then I had two older brothers as well. And I can't. The only thing I can keep thinking of when you ask me that is lots of responsibility. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that I had a childhood like a, you know. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we think a lot about. I've been reflecting on this idea of uh parentified, I just recently heard that language, a parentified childhood. I've been listening to this in the context of South Asian families and how often the eldest ends up taking on that role of being a parent to the children. as the eldest in our family, I sort of wrestle with that idea because on the one hand, I felt responsible for my brothers. It never felt like a burden. Probably grew up too quickly. And I'm also grateful for the learnings and teachings and experience that came from that. So it's a complicated mess. And I think it just really says a lot about who we end up becoming when we then eventually grow up. That's right. And then your concept around you, I think, is what really molds a family. Who's living in your community? Who's in your village? Who's doing what to who? What's happening? And all of those things, too. So as far as family units go, yeah, mine was complicated. Reflecting on the Jamie growing up, how did your upbringing sort of set you up, if you will, for the work that you did with the grandmother Moon Lodge? Well, eh I can say that Growing up, I witnessed a lot of degradation towards women, domestic violence towards women, um lots of... abuse towards children and families and my own as well. And I think that growing up I saw my mother was so dependent on my father. My mother was so everything. He would make all the decisions, whether they were right or wrong. And there was no space for her voice when we were growing up. She did lots of nurturing, I can say that. And she did the best she could to keep us together. And that was a miracle back then. And so in seeing all of that, and eventually my mother leaving that marriage really was the ticket to her freedom and her own personal life. And I think that that really bonded us together. I used to be angry at my mother when you see, you know, a male in the family being so dominant over children and your own mother. And I suppose this happens to so many children who are in domestic violence situations is that you would think right away, wow, this is just the way it is for a woman. It's just the way it is. And so I grew up, I would say quite uh militant for a while, as know, kind of claiming my own identity. identity and where I stood because I saw the men being treated so differently and the women were always suffering. They were always weeping, crying, you know, they were always, there was always something wrong. And when you're a child and you see that, you just think that there's, you know, she's not well, she's not healthy, she's not this, she's not that. So destabilizing. Yeah. Especially when you're little. oh And I truly had no memory until I was 12 years old of my life. Because it was pretty raunchy. I think as a child you just completely learn to disassociate and um stop and live in a different world. that's sort of what happened. And then when my mother did leave, as I said, there was... She was so eager to be at the center and the roots of her own culture and her own people and her own everything. that was a really key point. And I was pretty radical when I was younger, I have to tell you that. I think you're still pretty radical. Do you think so? uh I wouldn't suggest you're not. Yeah, I was very radical back then because I saw that as a way out. It's otherly. I didn't want to be a part of that world, right? So then you start to create visual in your mind, you start to create what you want to do and how you want it to look and you start to... gain your adult kind of freedom and knowledge and all of that stuff. And as I started to grow, my mother was beside me all the way. Yeah, she needed support. She needed support right at that time. And then as we grew together and started many different spaces, know, the drum became alive. Our voices. came alive, we started one of the first drum groups in Winnipeg, which was very, or in our territory here, that was very taboo at that time because... For women to have For drum. Yeah. Because at that time, I believe that a lot of patriarchal came into our ceremonies even, and dissolved the original grandmother councils and clan mother systems before us. And so, of course, I was sitting around the drum with quite a few radical Indigi women, right? In all different tribal affiliation, we all took to that drum and Elder May helped us build that drum. We got all the teachings because those things are inherent in your blood memory, right? sure. They're inherent in your blood memory. And so it just felt so natural. and so organic to have two-spirit people, lot of two-spirit women and Indigenous women around that drum. And to take that drum was a symbol to us because women are a drum, know, the birthing place, your womb and all of that stuff. so, and of course we were, know, comments were coming towards us, but we didn't let that stop us because there's a... I believe there was a new place to establish yourself as a woman back then and as Two-Spirited people as well, to reclaim that identity. And so this is my own belief system, is that I think the men understood, yes, that Two-Spirit people were very valid in our communities. And we kind of resurrected all that matriarchal knowledge at all. started coming back and we had a council of seven female elders at that time and they all felt that way. They said that the violence, especially sexual violence and incest within our communities wouldn't stop and it still hasn't stopped. I'm not saying that anybody has the power to stop that. It's such a long colonial... ragged journey that people have gone, know, within our culture have gone through that is, I don't know how long it's going to take. But we're on to something, right? got the Yeah, know, and I was thinking, Jamie, when you were talking about your mother and we all lovingly call her Mama Mae, thinking about this idea of What does resistance look like? What does resilience look like? And I've been thinking a lot about that in the last little while. I feel like we've come to a point in society where resistance only can mean certain things. And it's being loud, it's being bold and using your voice, projecting your voice. And I feel like if we only look at resistance that way, it really undermines the resistance that happens in our families where mothers continue to nurture and care for their little ones despite everything that's happening in their lives. And, you know, I'd like to sort of take a moment to acknowledge all of the women who somehow still manage to keep things together. despite all the violence that's happening in their lives. thinking about, I remember that some of the times that we've sat down with the Lived Experience Council for clan mothers, that seems to be an emerging theme regularly, that now resistance can take many, many different forms. How have you seen resistance play a role in the work that you've done over the years? Well, I think, as I said prior to this question, what I said was that when those grandmother elders, and I would say that was about maybe 20 years back, are we ever going to stop the sexual violence ah towards Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people? And I think we took, we stepped back. for a while and we sat down, the daughters of these elders, and said, what can we do? And this is resistance, what I'm going to talk to you about now. What can we do? And what do we have the freedom to do? Right? What can we do and what do we have the freedom to do? So at that time we sat down and we said, no, we've got to build a village. We have to build a replicable model. to be shared. And then the second thing was we have to bring matriarchal knowledge and systems of governance back to our communities. Those are the two things that we understood. And so we started to think and strategize like anybody else does. started to tap into, we used a lot of ceremony and spirituality to tap into our Indigenous cultural intelligence, through blood memory, to envision how our communities would have been back then, when the grandmother councils and the clan mother systems were there before us. then what we decided is that if we don't create model and I'll call this a model of resistance. Yeah I love that. We're not going to make it through and that we would never be able to stop sexual violence. and incest in the communities because it's all tied together with colonial and the conquest of others because that is used as a war crime and to take land over you, you have to get to the women. So that piece has been lost for a long, long time here in the territories here in North America and Canada now. And so I think that a lot of women since that time, and we've been at it for 35 years, 35 years. We still can't crack the code, but what we can is create a new model of existence. So other people give us another five years and we'll have it totally, we'll be sustainable. It'll be all based on our original mother-centered societies of love and compassion, of having the greatest, greatest, highest regard towards our female elders. birthers. it's been so important to bring back those matrilineal systems and matriarchal systems. I often find that the hardest voice to ignore is the voice that comes from within. So unless women believe in themselves, how do we convince the world to believe in women? How have you found that way out in the work that you are doing to build this village? I wouldn't say we've found our way out as of yet. But I think that when you have women coming together, listening to elders and their stories historically, and put what happened historically into that combination. I think that in our communities that is coming back, it's very evident. uh But I think for women individually, that's a complicated thing to extract that information right out of their body, to decode it in their bodies, to do all those things. Elder May says something, oh Over and over I've heard her say this and she said, whatever is happening to the Earth Mother, the whole globe is happening to the children of the Earth. And you know, that kind of correlates to extraction companies, know, conquering and taking everything out of a woman, out of her body, Mother Earth, you're taking all this out of her and she's depleted. And so... It is sad in a way, but it is the Indigenous women globally, I believe, that are going to change that. And I believe that the only way we can do it is when we come together with our cultural intelligence that's internally in our blood memory, that we have to start creating new models of existence. The patriarchy has squished that so much. And I think We're just all aching to come back to that place where We can't live like this anymore. We can't hurt children anymore. We can't sexually abuse women and children and all of the things that are happening to our people here. You touched on this just briefly. When we think about reflecting on how things used to be, there's a really powerful role there for stories. You know, having had the incredible honor of like sitting in circle with you and sitting in ceremony with you and some of the other elders and our sisters, I'm often the stories that they share, basically stay with me for months at a time. And sometimes I go back to them. Tell me a little bit more about the role of stories in bringing women together in this sort of healing journey, if you will. Well, they're so important. know, once a woman goes through a process of understanding her life, whether it's on the tragic side and moving into a space where she understands everything that happened, it completely comes through storytelling. it completely comes through storytelling. And that's why we use a lot of media. Right. you know, through clan mothers is to get those stories out there because they're all stories of empowerment. They're all stories of truth and they're stories of ancestral truth. Yeah. That we understand today. that it, again, I can't say that enough to it's in our, it's in our, it's in our DNA. It's in your bloodlines. You, you know, you know, and I find sometimes if we stay too much on the historical pain, of our past too, that we can stay stuck there. And that's why like all these emerging things that are happening around fashion is activism in the indigenous community now is it's so healing and it's so telling of, because it's the blending of our ancestral knowledge on how our communities used to be so balanced around those mother-centered societies. And those grandmother led advisory councils and those clan mother councils that used to, they were everything to our community and they still are. And that's why the resurrection of them coming back is so, important. And to share that knowledge and to be that knowledge and to strut your tribal fashion all over the place, that's gotta be it. It's gotta happen. Yeah, I'm hearing the artist in you come alive when you talk about that. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about that artist part of your journey. Yeah, that artist part of my journey. think it, you know, artists, whatever your medium is, whatever you work, and I think it really comes from, you know, your ancestral stories, your ancestral years. And it's the cause, whether it's that, you know, activism or resistance or whatever all the words are. But there's actually something inside that individual that has something to do, has something to offer the world. And I guess that's where we have to go to the roots of that in ourselves. You know, as we walk our journey now, you know, so part of it for me was being able to come out of my mother's womb. and then be a part of this Grandmother Council today that we're expanding into this village concept. That's art in the making. know, that's art in the making. You have to feel it in your soul, you know, to accomplish that. Because the idea of patriarchy is just to keep us in a solid motion of, you know, agency-based rules and regulations and everything. So... really the colonial powers, the minute we walk away from that and we say, we have this incredible idea, whether it be with words or art or building or sculpture or whatever the medium is. The only thing we do is to walk to conclude it, to have it happen and to share that with your community, with your families, with your relatives. I love that so much. As you were sharing that, Jamie, the image that was forming in my mind, and you're an incredible storyteller, so you have this power of evoking imagery in people's minds. I was imagining how when women have come together for ceremony at the the clan mother's uh healing village, it's like they're living their stories together. So they are breathing their stories and their souls and then somehow when they come together, they get to live that collectively and there's healing in that. So stories have such a powerful way of connecting us to each other and really to heal with each other. That's right. Yeah. That's what it's all about. And the best place to do that is on our Mother Earth. You know, to sit under her and dance under grandmother moon, give the moon dance back again. it's, they're all incredible steps towards. helping people move out of a way of thinking about who they are, know, as a human being, there's so much more than, so much more, there's so much depth. And as you get older, you realize how powerful that is. And that, of course, we have to do everything that you do. We have, when you're running organizations and we've got a... stamp this approval, get this approval, do all the reporting and continue down that wheel that never stops, because it'll never stop. But within that we can find this great, great beauty within that. what it is, is to be able to become the human being that you need to become, to help your family, to help your community. But as Elder May always says, firstly yourself. That's the way we heal. Yeah. And as Elder May also says, at 91 years old, she's still healing. Yeah. So it's lifelong journey. reminder. how do you stay optimistic? And I'm reflecting on we now met a long time ago and you know, every time I walk away from a conversation with you, I'm fired up again. you know, it's and that's the magic, that's sort of the art, the magic that you carry them. That's the medicine that you carry. How do you stay optimistic in the face of so many barriers that come your way in this path? The innovation, creativity, know, action, creating new models of existence. Because, know, the way we're set up here in any province, community, wherever you come from, you know, there are only certain things apparently we're supposed to reveal and do in our organization. And we're pretty well sort of, it's a common, it's common in all nonprofit organizations that work with Indigenous, particularly us Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people. Heal a woman, heal the families. So how I keep that up is that you have to leave it alone. You have to leave all the grievances aside. You have to leave all the lateral violence aside. And you have to go forward with a dream and a vision that is going to break the code of how patriarchal system wants to keep us controlled. That's art, that's artwork in itself. That's living art. you have to, and artists and in film and all art mediums, I was always admiring artists since I was young. Because I saw they'd be able to make statements on things that most people couldn't in the most beautiful way or most difficult way, whatever it was. So I hung around in that scene when I was younger a lot because I was inspired. And as you get older, as I get older, it's like we've got to create new models of existence. Because all we do is sit in the pus of what happened. Right? We will sit there and decades will go by, another decade is going to go by. Are we still going to have homeless people downtown? And then another decade goes by. I've sat through 30 of them myself. I mean 33, 10 years, three decades of it, pardon me. But when you see that happening, then you have to scratch your head. Yeah, what are we Go into ceremony, sit down, be quiet and say, are we just regurgitating old patriarchal systems? And I think that's a question, Somia, that I would ask you and anybody I sat with about what do we do? And how can we change it? And sometimes we won't fit into those boxes because the idea of political systems is to keep everybody the same. So those people who bust out of those systems, have just the grandest respect for. And it takes so much. It takes so much. you know, thinking of what what it's going to take. I really believe it's a combination of that struggle internal and the struggle outside in the world. We can keep, we need to heal and going back to what you said with that Elder May talks about, we need to heal our own selves, acknowledge the trauma that has happened in our lives and in our ancestral history, and then find ways to heal while also looking to heal the systems. And I think that's really the two pieces that we hold together. And we can't do it alone. We can never do it alone. Can't do it alone. Yeah. No, you need others that way, know, like something that we grapple with. I clam others a lot is that really within the system of funding, it can be very stressful. Sure. Lots of reporting to do, lots of... all that stuff to do and we always say, why is it that, you know, we live in a world that has an overabundance of money? Right? And so we have to go find those people, you know, that have that and that want to see a different way forward. Yeah. For all peoples. Everybody on Mother Earth right now has to, we've got to pull up our... got to ourselves up. We've got to get into action more now, especially with the current political situation. So I think that, you know, when people are doing those things, when they're, when they have ideas and they're innovative, they're out of the box, fund them. Fund them. Allow them to create that village of change. Allow them to, you know, because you're Otherwise, we're funding a lot of sameness in our community, right? Well, let's give this agency, you know, about a divvy up the money, give them all the money. They're all doing the same work and it's great work. They all do fantastic work. We need to go beyond that now. We need to create, you know, we talk about downtown of any city. We need vibrancy. We need to know that every single person in that downtown area wants to be involved. They want to work. They desire, some of them are musicians, whatever, you know, they've got so many gifts, artists beyond belief, given an opportunity, we've had so many conversations about, you know, I think the last time we were in, I can't remember the context here, but we were talking about, need barbecues and we need musicians and what kind of music and really leveraging art and expression to bring people together. Yeah. Yeah. Because it won't happen. There's not a chance that it's going to happen with, you know, implemented structures that maybe have worked someplace else and maybe try it here. It's got to come from the people. The people have to be involved in building the village and the downtown core. The people have to have the words. Not somebody who maybe doesn't want them downtown, the downtown area and push them to this side because it's unflattering in the city. We need the people downtown. We need all the lived experience to start coming together. and naming what has, you know, what's happening and do it differently. We've been to many, had conversations about land trust communities, community land trust, which I found super interesting because it's again, you're giving it back to the people because they know what needs to be done and you get them involved in it. You get me involved, you involved, everybody involved. Then we have a community. You know, as it is right now, know, most of our people in the downtown, they make their own communities. They make their own families downtown and they're segregated just like politics are, right? This camp is over here, this one's over here. They've got different belief systems and that's the, they naturally and organically set up their own systems downtown. Which is sort of the nature of community. When we're, you know, community. We come together, we find people like us and we resonate towards them. And I think that's how we can also bring about change, is to leverage the power of community that already exists. Yeah. that movement is, they've been done in other areas where through the Indigenous lens, we'd call it the rematriating the land. which encompasses everything, only to stewards of the land, but allowing every human being to be a part of that process, to be involved, regardless of what, where they came from, who they are, it doesn't matter, it's neither here nor there, but it's the involvement. And then you start building a community in that way, and it's very possible. It's been done in other places. the rematriation of land. Then you build your own economy. You create an economy, you create excitement for people that are on the outskirts judging everybody in the downtown core. Then you invite them to come. We have festivals there, we have social enterprises galore at that time. This is what I'm visualizing with you together. We visualize that, we have people, wow, this person is active. Instead, people want to push everybody in one area, bring the bad, awful medicines to them that are taking over their lives, uh really creating death down. And that's, it can change. It's been done in other places, but it takes alternative-minding people to get together and see innovation. can do it. It can be done. through this new model of rematriation and land trusts, community land trusts. There was a place, I think it was East Side Brooklyn in New York where they started buying up buildings. Same kind of concept of what's going down in Winnipeg now, but they started buying up buildings. But it was, there wasn't a unilateral leader. It was for the community. So therefore they have a council. I'm going to say this is how ours would look. We would have a council of elders, Lived experience councils. And we can change it. We have the ability to do it. We just need to get together with those alternative minded thinkers that know a way out of it because it will not happen through politics. It's impossible. Everybody has an alternative motive when they're wanting to help homeless people. absolutely. Absolutely. You know, they have an alternative motive. Well, and also, you know, we talk about this idea of lived experience council. Yeah. And I think a lot of people don't quite understand what that looks like or what that means. Ultimately, we're saying people, it's like nothing about us without us as a fundamental concept. And when we think about a lived experience council, that's really where the knowledge, the ground reality of what is happening lives in. So it would be these councils that actually guide us, direct us on what is going to work and what's not going to work. And Jamie, in a lot of the work that you've done, one of the things that's always stayed with me is the ability of the power of the lived experience councils and people to be able to turn shame into pride and for them to be able to help people see that transition. So lived experience councils play such an important role in really bringing systems back to matriarchy as well. Big time. Big, big, big time. When you think about it, When I talked about my aunties and all the lived experience they have had, you know, not a lot of opportunity from the Western world, right? They were building their, my auntie Maggie, who was a trapper all her life, and she built five trapping cabins. That's what she did, you know? And so when you think about all that experience and now we're dealing with experience of like sexual violence, domestic violence ah against women, two-spirit and children. So how do you turn their voices into activism? How do you turn their voices into knowing they belong? How do you turn their, there's so much knowledge and education in a lived experience, regardless of the content of your lived experience. It is so valid. And this world, I tell you, or this province is really missing out on a lot of change that could come from that. Yeah. Yeah. Like that downtown core. Yeah. That's where I reside, you reside. So we need to, you know, we really need, and the only way it's going to happen, you're absolutely right, is us coming together. Yeah. And that's a hard thing because they did a good job when they colonized with their divide and conquer, right? And so everybody's always, that's a lifelong journey to stop that kind of messaging in your brain. It's a lifelong journey to say, well, okay, I'm gonna just go back at that person and tell them they're so wrong and continue that. And some people say, well, that's resistance though. But when we start really hurting each other, And then we ask ourselves in the end, what is it all about really? Is it politic? it, well, I'm going to get the money. I want to get the money. And that separates us too. It takes a lifetime to learn not to do that. And what's helped myself, I can only talk about myself, is to create new models of existence. That's beautiful. That's it. What lies ahead for Clan Mothers and for Jamie? Well, I think that, well, we're actually going to be more operational. keep, you know, waiting, you know, it's that funding thing again. Sometimes I wish we would have done it like we did Grandmother Moonlaunch. We built everything ourselves. Right. Yeah. And we had the community. But the minute you walk into those systems of It becomes, we're building, well, you got to have a project manager, you got to have this, right? You all this, you with us through this, all of this stuff. Things change then. So it takes a little longer because there's not an abundance of funding that rolls in. But we got to have a private donor who believes in what we're doing. And now we're able to complete the three living quarters on the site. And our Park West projects and our crew, our Mother Earth construction crew, will be building them again. Amazing. So yeah, we'll be opening up. So that's the good news. Yeah, that's the good news. So for anyone looking for more information, they can just visit Plan Mother Earth Healing Village.com. And you'll see this beautiful photo. I think it's still that photo on the main website. of Jamie with your granddaughter. yeah, little Sophia. I took that photo eight years ago. You did. took that photo, Somia. Yeah. Yeah. She was only, think, four. She was only four years old. She's nine now. Wow. Oh my goodness. flies. Well, thank you so much, Jamie, for making time for us today. Really appreciated having your wisdom and It's just always a great reminder of the power and community and the power of stories and bringing us together so we can carry these responsibilities forward in a good way. Thank you, Somia Thank you.