Cree opera singer Rhonda Head tells an amazing story of how Cree music changed the Grammys.

And a feature discussion on Winnie The Pooh entering the slasher realm.

Also, a feature interview with the first female national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, RoseAnne Archibald, alongside a great story from our friend Gio.

Not much really, but a special year-end/start of 2023 episode of the Niigaan and the Lone Ranger Podcast managed to cover all of those topics and several others.

Free Press columnist Jen Zoratti and Free Press investigative journalist Katrina Clarke join hosts Niigaan Sinclair and Dan Lett for a wide-ranging discussion about the stories that impressed them most in 2022, and where those stories might be headed as we head into a new year.

The panel was united in its concern that Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative government continues to refuse to establish safer-consumption sites to prevent overdoses among drug users. Clarke recently returned from a trip to Hamilton, Ont., where she visited such a facility and talked to the people who credit it with saving their lives.

The panel was equally united in its conclusion that death of Freya — a young female walrus that appeared along the coasts of several western European nations from August 2021 to August 2022 — was a surprisingly moving story that touched on many of the great threats and challenges facing humankind.

Freya became a media sensation while swimming in waters not normally populated by walruses. So much so, that eventually, she had to be euthanized by Norwegian officials out of concern that she was a threat to public safety. Freya had, indeed, sunk boats in the Oslofjord attempting to find a place to sunbathe. Her death was widely condemned by wildlife advocates.

The panel was less united in its assessment of the political ceiling for Poilievre, who is trying to mobilize a huge constituency of voters with hardline conservative and libertarian sensibilities. Lett was confident he would fail, but others thought that increasing radicalization among right-of-centre voters would provide traction for the Tories.

On various platforms right now, there is a wealth of Indigenous programming, among them: Reservation Dogs, the bittersweet story of native youth growing up on an Oklahoma reservation; Dark Winds, the big-budget detective drama (executive producer Robert Redford) that takes place on a Navajo reservation; and Three Pines, based on the Chief Insp. Armand Gamache novels (by Canadian author Louise Penny), which confronts issues such as missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and the legacy of residential schools.

To get some perspective on how Indigenous people are interpreting all this mainstream content, this week’s episode of Niigaan & the Lone Ranger (the podcast hosted by Free Press columnists Niigaan Sinclair and Dan Lett) features an interview with Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., director of the School of Gender, Race and Nations at Portland State University and a noted expert in Indigenous film and television.

Van Alst talks about the enormous cultural value for Indigenous people of seeing their own people and telling their own stories. He also noted Hollywood, in particular, still has a way to go in its treatment of Indigenous stories.

The panel digs deep into the reasons why many Indigenous people around the world are protesting the next chapter in director James Cameron’s Avatar movie franchise, which seems destined to become one of the highest-grossing films of all times. Despite its commercial success, Van Alst said the film is universally disliked by Indigenous people for its “settler fantasy” motif.

Also this week, we get a very special edition of the Storytellers, featuring none other than Jeanette Sinclair (Niigaan’s mother), who describes her son’s epic performance as Joseph in a school Christmas concert.

Niigaan & the Lone Ranger will be taking next week off and will return in the first week of January.

In this week’s episode, we talk to Riva Symko, the WAG’s head of collections and exhibitions and curator of <i>Headlines: The Art of the News Cycle</i>, which has just recently opened to the public.

In a feature interview, Symko reveals the nearly three years of thinking and planning that went into an art installation inspired by the newspaper’s 15oth anniversary. And, how she has accumulated one of the world’s largest personal collections of clothing inspired by newspapers. Not kidding.

Also this week: Lett and Sinclair discuss more developments in the saga of the police investigation into an alleged serial killer who preyed on Indigenous women, and the reluctance of Winnipeg Police Service to search landfills that may contain the remains of the victims.

Finally, <i>Free Press</i> Perspectives Editor Brad Oswald provides us with another edition of <i>The Storytellers</i>, in which he relates his experience travelling to Rome and inadvertently discovering what could be a new Eritrean national anthem.