You're listening to Comedy Central now. My guest tonight shares my experiences growing up on a small Indian reservation in British Columbia in her critically acclaimed debut book, Hot Bury's A Memoir, please welcome Teresa Marie Mayan's.

Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here and thank you so much for this book. This is an experience that I think few people would envy, but most people would connect to. It is a memoir of your life that is written, and it's honestly one of the most authentic points of view I've ever come across when you were writing the book. One thing I wanted to discover from the beginning was, was it hard for you to figure out how to be the voice of American Indian people, but at the same time realize that you're not the voice for American Indian people?

It's an interesting balance to have.

Yeah, I think when you come from a collective culture, like a community that relies on each other and when you speak out against violence against indigenous women and when you speak out against the way we're treated, in the way disparity is working against our bodies and who we are, like, I feel like sometimes when I'm talking, I feel representative. And then I remember, oh, this is a singular story. Like this is what happened to me. And I feel like if I can speak out, I'm going to encourage other women to do so as well and hold up their voices when they do so.

You know, and that's how I relieve the pressure of feeling like, OK, I'm not speaking for all indigenous women, but I am helping.

You know, when you look at your story and that's the time that you've gone through, you you you speak about it in a painful way, in an authentic way, but in a in an uplifting way at the same time. I mean, there's there's times where you talk about growing up on the rez as a as a as a native person.

Do you find that you that you connect with your world in a different way to how people perceive your world?

Yeah, I mean, I grew up my mother was a healer and my mother was so powerful and also, um, you know, exploited her work was exploited and she was living in a community where we were surviving on welfare.

And sometimes she was employed and working 70 hours a week and she had to neglect us to stay afloat, you know, so but really, there was so many moments where we would collect medicine together and we would pray by the river almost daily. And she helped me see the world as familiar, familial, and she helped me see the world as something as something sacred, quote unquote, sacred. Yeah, yeah.

When you look at that relationship between yourself and your mother, do you think that her introducing you to that world and having you live an authentic native or indigenous experience helped you or hindered you in assimilating to the world that was around you? And then do you think that's a good or a bad thing?

It's difficult because she was resistant to let me fall into trying to please people within academic institutions as well. She was like, this is a choice. And it was not created to hold up indigenous people. It was created to assimilate them into a white culture. So she she always tried to make me critical of the world. And I thank her for that. But it also hindered me a lot because I just wanted to be normal to, you know, and I think, you know, ultimately it helped because my voice is is the voice I grew up around.

And the voice that the book is is getting attention for is the one she gave me. Right.

And it is a it is a voice that is apparent throughout the book. As you're telling your stories, one thing becomes apparent, and that is there's so many different themes. There's your life on the reservation. There's your life within the family, which is which is a different experience as well. You share a heart wrenching tale of discovering that your father was abusing you, which is something that's that's hard to comprehend. What did you go through when you discovered that?

And what did you mean by you discovered it?

Yeah, I think when you have when you had I told my mother when I was young that I had been abused by my father and her reaction was negligent. Her reaction was to kind of question if it really happened because she couldn't believe it, because it would say something about her as a mother, too, and her ability to protect me. So she kind of didn't deal with it in the right way, which then again, it at 16, I let her know again that I think this happened.

Mom, like, I remember these few, few details and, you know, I told her and trusted her to hold that space for me, but she was not prepared, you know. And so I kind of just tried to forget. And I think when you do that active forgetting and you and you think, OK, well, you know, this person didn't listen to me, who I trusted so much and who I still trust so much and love so much, you mitigate and you think, well, I guess it.

Didn't happen, or I guess I misremembered and then you realize when you're at the age I was, which was like I think I was 30 to you and I realized, no, I I would like to talk about this now because she's long gone.

And all I have is myself and I really need to get over and, you know, I need to look at this and I need to talk about it. Right. Yeah.

When when you look at your experiences growing up and the world you grew up in and your relationship with your father and your mother, but do you find that those things contributed to the stage in the book where you talk about having to institutionalize yourself? And what was that like? What is the conversation someone has with themselves where they go? I have mental health issues. I need to address this. Is there a shame? Is there a fear? And how do you overcome that?

Yeah, there's this stigma when we're vulnerable and we realize, oh, I'm crying more than I should, I I feel debilitated like I can't go to work and I can't function. There's this urge and people encourage it that we just get over it and go to work, that we just don't deal with it. But then, you know, I broke down after trying to just get over it and deal with it the day to day aspect of life. I broke down.

I had to realize that, like, my mental health was more important than going to work, you know, and I think I had the luxury at the time that it happened where I actually know I was evicted after I checked myself. And so it really does have these effects. You have to you have the luxury of having being able to have a breakdown. A lot of people don't. You know, a lot of people can't just check themselves in when they do.

Their life has changed forever. And I was just kind of lucky in that things did fall apart after that. But I really I wasn't willing to give up hope. You know, that was the last thing. And I'm still holding it.

And that is a threat that is apparent throughout the book is Hope, you know, from a hopeless place moving forward to the space you're living in now, in a loving relationship with your kids and with your husband and surrounded by friends and your community, which I feel is a big part of the story.

How important is it or why do you think it's so important for indigenous voices to be heard in their most authentic way as opposed to being told from the view of somebody on the outside?

Yeah, I think for a long time people have engaged with our communities with with the hope to fix it and save us, you know, and I think we never wanted that. We don't need missionaries. We need to do things for ourselves and also for people to stop exploiting us and our land and our resources and saying that we're doing it to ourselves when we're poor. You know what I mean? I know what you mean. Yeah. So I think it's I don't know.

I mean, I, I look at it and I think when I look at this book, I know that like a native woman who's probably a single mom and she might be on welfare, she might go into a library and she might see a book from a woman, from her circumstance, you know, and I I like it. I think there should be more of it. Yeah, I think I agree with you.

It's it's a beautiful story. You have, honestly, one of the most amazing voices when it comes to putting it down on the page.

Thank you so much, Joe. A beautiful memoir is available now free Mayak, everybody. This has been a Comedy Central podcast now.