The Spirit of All Nations.
As I place Mr. X on a breathing machine he flashes me a look from his terrified eyes. I know this look well, the desperate cry for help of a drowning man. But he is not drowning in water. He has spent a lifetime drowning in smoke and his lungs are now so shattered that his tiring, heaving shoulders are unable to bring in enough air for his next breath. I will not be able to pull him back to shore. His lungs are failing, he is dying and he knows it.
Ryan McMahon is an Anishinabe comedian and writer from Couchiching First Nation in Treaty 3 territory. He tours all over Turtle Island and makes the Red Man Laughing podcast. CBC has just finished taping a special with him in early February. He’s coming to Six Nations next week.
Over the past 11 years that WBAI-FM 99.5 in New York City has been airing “First Voices Indigenous Radio” (FVIR), the show’s host and executive producer Tiokasin Ghosthorse has slowly turned his weekly live one-hour radio show into an international broadcast with re-airings of this program on 45 stations in 15 states and one Canadian province.
