What Does It Mean to Be Indigenous in Winnipeg? 4 Very Different Answers.
- Jun 12
- 3 min read
Ask four Indigenous Winnipeggers what their experience of this city looks like, and you'll get four very different answers. Making ceremonial art to keep a lake alive. Riding the same trails your city tried to push you off of. Watching your father almost die in a healthcare system that was designed without him in mind. Refusing to call yourself an artist because the word doesn't come close.
These are four of the conversations that stayed with us in 2025 and 2026 on Humans, On Rights. For National Indigenous History Month, we're sharing them here.
KC Adams: Red Dress Day and The Art of Relational Making
Originally aired May 14, 2026
KC Adams is a Cree and Anishinaabe creator, curator, and educator based in Winnipeg — and she'll stop you if you call her an artist. The word, she says, doesn't come from a tradition that honours Indigenous ways of knowing. She prefers "relational maker": someone whose practice is about relationship, ceremony, and community, not individual expression.
In this episode, KC talks about collaborating with Jamie Black on the reimagined Sky Woman installation at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, about why the conversation around MMIWG2S needs to include Indigenous men and Two Spirit people, and about what she means when she says she wants to bring everyone into the circle. It's one of the more hopeful conversations we've had — not because it avoids hard things, but because KC refuses to.
Adrian Alfonso: Trails, Truth, and Reconciliation on Two Wheels
Originally aired April 30, 2026
Adrian Alfonso grew up riding the monkey trails along the Red River. He skipped school to maintain them. He knows every flood marker and every spot where a "no trespassing" sign once made clear he wasn't welcome.
Now he runs Clear Paths, a program that uses those same cycling routes to teach Truth and Reconciliation — the original place names of the land we're on, the shared experience of navigating a city that wasn't designed with you in mind. In this episode, Adrian talks about what it means to move through Winnipeg as an Indigenous person, and why he thinks a bike ride can open conversations that a classroom can't.
Dr. Marcia Anderson: Confronting Anti-Indigenous Racism in Healthcare
Originally aired November 6, 2025
Dr. Marcia Anderson is a Cree Anishinaabe physician from Peguis First Nation and Norway House Cree Nation, and the Vice Dean of Indigenous Health, Social Justice and Anti-Racism at the University of Manitoba. She led the work that made Manitoba the first province in Canada to systematically collect racial and ethnic identifiers in healthcare.
The data confirmed what Indigenous patients have been saying for years: they wait longer in emergency rooms and are more likely to leave without care. In this episode, Dr. Anderson talks about going through medical school while fielding questions like "are there polar bears where you grew up?", about her father's near-fatal experience with healthcare racism, and about why she doesn't think any of this is accidental. The healthcare system, she points out, was built at the same time as residential schools — with many of the same assumptions baked in.
Taylor Galvin: Lake Winnipeg's Fight for Rights
Originally aired February 6, 2025
Taylor Galvin is a member of the Sturgeon Clan from Broken Head Ojibway Nation, a graduate student at the University of Manitoba, and part of a landmark legal case arguing for Lake Winnipeg's rights under Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the first case of its kind in Canada. She is joined on the episode by Byron Williams, the lawyer working with her on the case.
In this episode, Taylor talks about what it means to understand a lake as a living being rather than a resource, why Manitoba Hydro's upcoming licence renewal creates a critical window, and what she wants people in this city to understand the next time they flip on a light switch. Her message isn't radical: "No one is asking Hydro to remove all their dams. We're asking for a change in behaviour. To have more respect for the land and all the water systems they use."
These conversations are part of Humans, On Rights, our ongoing podcast about the people doing human rights work right here in Winnipeg. Find all our episodes at humanrightshub.ca/podcast.
