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<\/a>Stafford and Taylor are both Ojibwe from Whitesand First Nations in Ontario, but they grew up on Vancouver Island. For The Historical Natives, Stafford handles the short stories, the website, and social media, while Taylor works on research, art, and editing and producing the podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur inspiration for the podcast is, well, we both enjoy the horror genre and have for many years. We also really just wanted to do something that was close to our history,\u201d says Stafford.<\/p>\n
Taylor says that the podcast is a way for the two to help get back to their roots.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe grew up kind of disconnected with our culture,\u201d says Taylor, \u201cand this is us finding a way to reconnect with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Historical Natives is a completely independent project that the duo has been interested in making for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAround when the first Conjuring movie came out was when we were really introduced to horror,\u201d says Stafford. \u201cWe\u2019ve been thinking of doing a type of horror commentary podcast since about 2012, 2013.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taylor says that the two want people to learn and discover more about their culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cDealing with the horror genre, we do kinda want the listener to be a little scared,\u201d she says. \u201cBut we also have that history in there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Education is a huge part of The Historical Native\u2019s mission, and the duo strives to teach their audience more about Indigenous stories, Indigenous language, and Indigenous culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely think stories are a huge part of who we are,\u201d says Taylor. \u201cWe didn\u2019t really know much about native folklore to begin with, so it’s also a learning experience for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stafford says that developing the podcast has also been an opportunity to grow his skill set.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day we\u2019re learning something new,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can clearly see the difference from our first episode to our latest. We\u2019re getting better with audio quality, how to edit, and how to make everything sound good.\u201d<\/p>\n
The podcast episodes start off with an introduction to the people, the traditions of those people, their history, and a \u201cword of the week.\u201d Once that\u2019s done, the focus shifts to the creature the episode is based on. A short story about that creature, written by Stafford, is then read.<\/p>\n
\u201c[It\u2019s] something to do that we enjoy doing,\u201d says Stafford. \u201cWe\u2019ve just been working at it every day whenever we have time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two are currently producing an episode approximately every two weeks, but are hoping to do it weekly in the near future. Stafford says that it usually takes them a week and a half to do the research for an episode; being factual is important to them, so lots of time is spent fact-checking and cross-referencing between sources like Google and elders. The duo is also looking to expand their team in the future to include a researcher.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Research] is a very long and tedious process, but it needs to be done,\u201d says Taylor. \u201cWe\u2019d like to bring someone else on for the research so I can focus more on the art and producing the podcast.\u201d \u201cRight now we\u2019re still in the trial period\u2014trying to figure out what works best for us to make the best of each episode,\u201d says Stafford.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I can definitely see a long, prosperous future,\u201d adds Taylor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Camosun second-year Business Administration student Josef Stafford is the co-creator of The Historical Natives, an online podcast all about Indigenous North American horror folklore. Along with co-host Mackenzie Taylor, Stafford explores different cryptids from across the continent. \u201cWe tell the history, geography, and language of the specific peoples related to the creature we\u2019re talking about,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-campus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20568"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20571,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20568\/revisions\/20571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nEpisodes of The Historical Natives are available on Spotify, the Apple App Store or thehistoricalnatives.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n