Reclaiming your Roots with Emily Anne Brant | ep156
For the month of May, I have something really special planned for the Wholehearted Community!
From June to August, I'm taking a break from the blog, newsletter, and podcast. It's time for your girl to reset and refresh. But, before I go, I wanted to leave you with some inspiring content you can return to over the summer months.
If you’ve ever listened to the podcast, you know I usually don't do interviews.
That is until now.
Over the next 4 weeks on the podcast, I am featuring conversations with women who inspire me and who I know will inspire you.
They are women who have reclaimed their own path in life that exists outside of the "shoulds" and "supposed tos."
These conversations are so good that I was taking notes and having huge a-ha moments.
And at the end of the month, I will be doing a very personal podcast episode where I'll be sharing some really big news that has to do with Wholehearted Coaching (don't worry, I'm not going anywhere, I'm just making a bit of a pivot).
In this first interview of the series, I am featuring Emily Anne Brant
Emily is an Indigenous author, speaker & mentor on a mission to decolonize the personal development industry. She works with folks of the global majority (“BBIPOC”) as a success coach, and is also a consultant for allies who want to decolonize their business. At the heart of it all is fostering communities where everyone feels seen, safe, and truly supported so that we can all rise together!
I LOVED my conversation with Emily so much because she reminds us how important it is to reclaim our roots.
As part of the interview series, I am sharing a Mindset Monday that is inspired by the message of our interviewee.
So, this week we are inspired to highlight all the parts of who we are...
Let’s get into today’s interview.
I would love for you to tell us what does decolonizing your life and decolonization mean to you?
Decolonization is almost like a buzzword right now. I feel that a lot of people use it — and I used to use it — without fully understanding what exactly it means.
To me, decolonization is the active undoing of colonization. So to understand then what is decolonization, we really have to understand what is colonization.
The number one thing that is so important to understand is that colonization is an ongoing process.
It is not an event in history, a one-time thing that happened when settlers came in a certain year and took over the lands and lives of the Indigenous people in any certain area. It's an ongoing process.
So, decolonization is the active undoing of this process. The unlearning, the dismantling of it. I like to compare it to the words diversity and inclusion of DEI work. Although I love the equity part of DEI, diversity and inclusion is very much acting as if everybody is equal and saying, “Everyone is welcome here. We are not racist, we are all equal!”
Whereas decolonization work says, “Everyone is not equal. I acknowledge that. I see that and I'm dismantling that.”
Then we rebuild together from there. So going in more further into what is colonization, essentially settlers from Europe assumed the right to take over the lands, the lives, the power over all other people who were of a different race, which was constructed basically at the realization that, oh, there's different types of humans. We look different, we speak different languages, we have different skin colors. Therefore there must be a dominant group of us, and it must be us, the European settlers, right?
So, colonization is founded on the ideology that one race is superior to all others and is essentially another word for white supremacy.
We very much can see how this is still in place— white is still the dominant race, that is still who is governing everything that we do and dominating everything, every industry, every business. With that, colonization must be actively unlearned, dismantled, and rebuilt.
What does that look like for you in practice in your own life?
So I am Indigenous. I'm Mohawk on my dad's side, mixed Algonquin and European settler on my mom's side, and I grew up on a First Nations Reserve, and yet I still grew up very disconnected from my culture, from my roots, from my language. Although we learned some of it at the school that I went to, after leaving the reserve, it was even harder to connect to the language, the culture, the traditions, the beliefs, the ceremonies. Even when I was living on the reserve and at home still, I didn't have much of the culture in my home because of colonization essentially wiping out any cultures, any spiritual practices, any religions, any beliefs that were not in line with the Eurocentric Catholic and Christian worldviews.
So, for me personally, decolonization looks like reclamation. It’s reclaiming my roots and realearning my language. I'm taking a 12-week Mohawk class right now. I’m attending ceremonies whenever I can or creating my own ceremonies and reconnecting to my spirit and sharing that with pride.
It's even little things like the beaded jewelry that I'm wearing today and embracing that and embracing all parts of my culture with pride because that was very much taken away from me in this colonized society.
It’s all of these little yet massive acts of reclamation.
Even decolonizing the way that I see beauty.
I used to dye my hair and put lots of blonde in it. Whatever colors were trending. So now, even me just embracing my dark brunette hair and not being caught up in the belief that lighter is prettier, but rather asking, “Why do I think like that?”
It’s challenging all the tiniest things that we don't even realize come from colonialism that actually impact literally every aspect of our lives. But then becoming aware and then asking: Why do I believe that? Why do I think like that? And then doing our best to kind of unlearn it and coming back to just honoring our true selves, our true roots.
I love that you use this term “the inner colonizer within all of us” and I always think of this little tiny little colonizer inside me which is the part of me that does not question. And I think that's the biggest part of it is asking, Why? Why is professionalism defined this way? Why is beauty defined this way? Why is anything defined this way?
And when you really look at it, it's, it's this colonization of not just land, but of beliefs and habits and cultures and customs. And it's something as you so beautifully spoke on, that doesn't just affect folks of color. It affects all of us that there's an inner colonizer in all of us.
Yes, it’s that messaging of “Don’t rock the boat.” And I always tell my students, “Rock the boat!” That is literally how we decolonize. But we are so trained, especially as those of us who identify as women, to just be silent and go with the status quo, to not shake things up.
But that is literally what upholds toxic systems that are harming so many of us.
Emily, I met you while you’re in this reclamation era. I know that your backstory is very much rooted in why you're now in this period of reclamation. Can you tell us more about that?
What I'm doing now specifically is bringing decolonization to the coaching world, to the personal development world and the business world because that is the area that I love.
Just like you, I love personal development. I love coaching. It's transformed my life in so many ways. And when I think about how much work we need to do to decolonize as a society, as a country, as a world, it's very overwhelming.
Since every aspect of our lives has been colonized, I decided to start with the area that I know and love the most, which is personal development.
When I was a little girl, I used to watch Oprah with my mom. We would make vision boards together. We would read The Secret and anything that Oprah said, we went out and did it. And I loved it.
But, I didn't realize you could do that for a career. So, I went to school for interior decorating, one of my other passions, but quickly realized that industry didn't really resonate with me at all. It's very materialistic. It's filled with a lot of white privilege, a lot of wealth privilege. And it just did not feel good being in that line of work.
But I did it for the first half of my twenties. And in terms of my embracing my Indigenous roots, this is something that I learned because I'm mixed ancestry and I have light skin, that I can be white presenting or white passing. I learned there's a difference between those terms.
White presenting is when you can't help it, but you present as white. But white passing is when you purposely making yourself pass as white for your own safety or for whatever comfort.
And so, I am white presenting. I have lighter skin. People wouldn't necessarily know that I'm indigenous if I don't say anything, but I definitely learned to lean into that and become white passing as I experienced a lot of racism as young as six years old.
Now, at my Mohawk school, there was no racism there and we were all learning our own culture and language and embracing it. But as soon as we had events where we would go out and mingle with other schools from the city, that's where I first experienced racism. And I was literally as young as like six and six or seven years old.
I learned very quickly that racism is a thing and people can hate you or be mean to you just because of who you are.
And it never made sense to me. It angered me, but I just noticed it was safer if I just kept quiet and didn't identify, especially if people were making racist comments about Indigenous people. It would activate this very, like, like a freeze response within me, right? And so I didn't say anything. I just leaned into my whiteness.
Then I entered the personal development and coaching world. I didn't do this consciously, but I very much used my whiteness to fit in in this world. It was safer, it was easier. These spaces are filled with white women. They're dominated by white cis straight able bodied, skinny white women. I don't think I even realized that in the beginning, but I was consuming all of these books and podcasts and seminars and teachings all from either white men or white women. Because when I did have people that I somewhat related to, they were usually white women, or maybe occasionally I saw a woman of color, but that was very rare and it was almost nobody who was Indigenous.
So, I thought, it’s just not a thing yet for us, I guess.
Eventually that denying of this whole part of who I am really caught up with me. I had this moment where I had been in the world of coaching and manifestation and business growth, all of that, investing in all the things for over three years, and I just wondered, “Why am I not growing at the same rate that all of my white peers are?”
I actually had a psychic reading, an Akashic records reading done and I was like, “Spirit, what is going on? What is the key to my next level in money in business and growth?”
Like I'm doing all the work, I'm doing all the belief work and Spirit actually told me it's related to self-worth and it's related to your Indigenous side.
When I heard that, I was like, What?? I don't have a self-worth problem! All I do is like positive affirmations. I know I'm worthy, I do the affirmations, I do the things. I know I'm worthy. It's just not showing up.
I was very much in denial at first. And I didn’t even think I was Indigenous “enough” to have to heal from all of that.
Yes, I'm from a reserve and I'm half Indigenous, but I didn’t even feel Indigenous “enough” compared to other people who had experienced way worse racism or way worse trauma than me.
You can see in those statements it’s “I am not blank enough” which is just, “I am not enough.”
And so Spirit said that part of it was not feeling Indigenous enough and that was affecting my self worth. So, this reading totally blew everything wide open and essentially led to this identity crisis-meltdown of facing all of the ancestral trauma that was there plus the pain of me suppressing this whole half of who I was and being somebody that I'm not.
That just caught up with me and hit me all at once.
Tune into episode 158 of Wholehearted Coaching: The Podcast to hear the rest of Emily Anne Brant’s story.
If you enjoyed this, you’ll love the rest of our Decolonizing Your Life series!
157 | Reclaiming your Dreams with SharRon Jamison
SharRon Jamison joins us to talk about how we can decolonize our imaginations and our dreams, and if you're part of the Wholehearted Community, you know that this is something I talk about often: how our dreams can be limited within this box of what people tell us is possible for us, and today, SharRon Jamison is telling us to break out of that box.
158 | Reclaiming your Community with Marla Teyolia
When we think of decolonizing our lives, that is not a solo mission. It is an endeavor, a journey that we take in community. In this week’s interview, what really stood out to me was the importance of and the power of community as Marla Teyolia so vulnerably shared her story of decolonizing her life. I can’t wait for you to get to know her better.
159 | Reclaiming your Self with Asha Frost
Our final interview in the Decolonizing your Life series is with someone so incredibly special to me: Asha Frost. I truly see Asha as a changemaker. Asha shares openly about how difficult it was for her to use her voice and how she listened to her body and spirit in order to reclaim her self and her courage.
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About your host, Shirin Eskandani
Hi, love! I’m Shirin.
Coach, speaker, writer, and life alchemist.
I teach you how to listen to your intuition again, tune out all the BS, and let your heart lead the way.
Because once you strengthen your inner GPS, decisions become easier, boundaries become clearer, and belly laughs become a daily thing.
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME:
I’m a certified life coach (accredited through the International Coach Federation)
My husband and I met on Instagram and we live in Brooklyn, NY with our plant babies
I have a masters degree in Music and was a professional opera singer for twelve years. I worked all over the world singing on stage at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera (more on that later…).
I believe in the woo just as much as I do the work (internal and external). No amount of crystals and affirmations will make up for a lack of a healthy mindset and aligned action.
I love all the Real Housewives franchises. Don’t make me choose one… seriously, don’t.