Latest / 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project / Eyoälha Baker: Trust, Signs, and Rewriting a Life | 100 Stories #1
Transcript
- paige: Welcome to 100 Stories, the Narrative Intelligence Project. I'm Paige Williams. This series explores a question at the center of how we become who we are. How malleable are the stories we live by? And what does it take to change one? Across 100 conversations, I'm speaking with thinkers, creators, researchers, leaders, people whose lives have been shaped by profound change. Together, we're examining the stories we inherit, the stories that become identity, and the human capacities that allow us to see, to question, and transform them. These conversations are helping shape the emerging field of narrative intelligence and are the foundation to my book I'm writing about it. This is 100 Stories. I'm so glad you're here. Today I'm speaking with Iola, a conceptual multimedia artist. Her work explores the human condition of healing and transformation. she is my first guest on 100 Stories, the Narrative Intelligence Project. the reason I wanted Iola to be on today is both a personal story of mine and also. Because she describes herself as being in perpetual metamorphosis. An experiential storyteller, which is very exciting for narrative intelligence. And then personally, Yola and I met a hundred years ago, and I was just at the beginning of my spiritual journey. And I was going to Sedona, and she said, when you go to Sedona, you should go to Bell Rock and because it's a vortex and manifest And I was like, okay, @eyoalha: Ha. paige: but I had to Google, what is a vortex? @eyoalha: Ha ha ha paige: What is manifestation and what is bell rock? And so that really began my spiritual journey and transformation as well. So welcome. I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being the first. @eyoalha: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really grateful to be here with you. paige: Yeah. tell me about the work that has most shaped how you see yourself in the world @eyoalha: hands down, when I did the Jump for Joy Photo project, that really transformed me internally. It transformed the way that I interacted with people. It transformed my perception of people as well. so just a little background, like that project was really about sharing and capturing the energy of joy. And I did that Through taking photographs of hundreds of people of all walks of life from all different areas, from, you know, like a millionaire to someone living on the street I really tried to touch different pockets of society. And then I took all of those photos and I enlarged them into six by six photos and did a massive mural with all the photos and it was really based on the idea that news in general and media in general is very fear-based and I became very aware of the way that impacts people. that we would be very closed off and very scared of each other and very tight towards each other. But when I started working with the energy of joy, which for me personally, I grew up on an Indian reservation, my family's native Indian. So I basically grew up in a stew of trauma and grief and tragedy. I wanted to feel joy. I wanted to know what that felt like. I wanted to know what feeling joy and sharing that with people felt like. I started to notice that when I approached people with that energy, it reflected back to me in our conversations and the way people wanted to help me. It just started to be this beautiful transformational journey for me. that was the biggest transformational art project that I've done publicly. I've done a lot of smaller things myself, but that really changed me as a human being. paige: What story did you develop as a result of that creative project about the world or your perception of it? @eyoalha: I had this concept, this idea that if I could enlarge the impact of joy on the world by putting it on a larger scale, the way that the news impacts people, you know, like every day it's in people's houses and people are addicted to it and they watch it and they just take in all that energy. And because we are Frequency beings, we're energy beings, that actually influences the way we interact with each other. So, what I took from that was the power behind joy and how that can change people, how it can change society, how it can bring people together. Because right now, as everybody knows, the world is very pitted against each other. I mean, it's chaos. But If we watched as much joy on TV as we watched fear and destruction, we would be an entirely different type of people. We'd be entirely different society. We'd be different communities, that that was the biggest takeaway for me. Because I I actually felt it real time. I got the real time reactions from people. I got the real time willingness to help each other and support each other, which was really strong during that time. And I think that that was the transformational piece for me with that project. paige: What story do you tell yourself about one of the most defining or transformative moments of your life? @eyoalha: the most transformative story that I want to tell you today is when I decided not to believe what the media was telling me while we were in lockdown. And I was in Vancouver, and for the first time I was around people that were watching the news. I'd been living before that in a tent, and I had no access to TV, very little access to internet, So I wasn't really involved in that storyline. I had my own storyline. I was in nature. I was doing healing. I was really connected to the earth. And then when I went back to visit my family, I just didn't buy into the story. all the news was saying that we weren't allowed to travel. We were everyone was locked indoors, it started to impact me and I started to get the fear. I started to believe it. I started to think if I leave, I'm not gonna be able to come back to Canada. If I leave I'm gonna be fined. If I you there was all this narrative going on and I just didn't along with it. And so I had a friend living in Mexico who said, hey, I'm down here and I have a spare room. If you can get down here you're welcome to come stay with me. So I decided to do that. I I think I had nine hundred dollars. I had no money. I sold some amethysts that I had to get the airfare to go there. I don't think I even had a job. I just took a big chance. The morning that I left, I didn't even know if I could get across the border or not. I do have indigenous status, so there is a treaty between the states and Canada, which allows me to travel back and forth. And I called every government line, can I cross the border? nobody had an answer for me. So I was like, I'm just gonna do it. paige: Yeah. @eyoalha: that morning, my mom drove me from North Vancouver to Vancouver, and there's a bridge between that goes over the ocean. we looked up and there was an eagle circling over us. And right away I was like, okay, this is gonna be all right, we get to the bus and the bus driver's like, I don't think you're gonna be able to cross the border. And I was like, Yes, I am. And so we get on the bus, we're going across, and he's like, you know, if we get there. And they don't let you through. You're you're just stuck at the border. And I was like, I'm gonna do it. we start driving towards the border. And I see another eagle on the way. And I was like, that's amazing. So I text my mom, I'm like, mom, I saw another eagle. A few minutes later, I see another eagle, like, and I'm like, holy crap, mom, there's another eagle. And then I was just like, I think I saw probably maybe 20 eagles. I saw an eagle nest with babies in it. Like I was just like every time I looked out the window, there was all these eagles, probably because it was quiet, right? And all the eagles were around. And it was just this amazing, I felt so supported. It was like every ancestor, every spirit, every whatever is out there paige: Whoa. @eyoalha: was on my side. So I get to the border. everyone was just like, What do we do? all the guards were like, I guess you can go through. We have to go through the customs and you get back on the bus. And just after the border, as we were passing the box stores, I look over and the very first thing I see was American Eagles outfitters. And I was like, Are you kidding me? And it kept happening. So then we get into same thing happens. We turn a corner and there's a giant eagle. Like, I mean, we're in the US, right? So there's like a giant eagle carved into the side of a building. And I was just like, the signs were just coming and coming and coming. And then I get to the airport and I'm standing in line, look at my ticket, just checking things, And it was Mexican Airlines. And their logo is an eagle. maybe those things are always there, but for some reason it was like they were glaringly obvious signs for me. I get to Mexico I'm looking at the flag there's an eagle in the flag. It was unbelievable. And it was just this kind of the transformation for me was trust. trusting that there's a greater power out there and that when you're convicted in your beliefs and in your choices, that the world or the univer or whatever you want to call it, I don't even know what the name of that is, but whatever's out there that is our power that we're moving through the world with. Conspired to make that really easy for me to get through a situation that no one would even think was possible. So that really, set in place this belief system and how we can transform our lives, even when it seems impossible. You know, like taking risks on things that If you really don't believe something, even though everyone in the world is telling you it's not gonna work, you can't do it, it's dangerous. I mean, I'm not saying do everything dangerous, but I'm just saying, in that scenario, it just transformed something inside of me that made me feel like whatever greater power is behind me made itself known. You know, like it was an incredible experience. paige: Mm. how are Eagles continuing to play in your life several years later? @eyoalha: Well, also my grandmother, on my dad's side held the eagle seat in our traditional heritage, I guess you would call it, like the potlatch system. So it's always just been a really powerful image for me and it's part of one of our family lineages. we can create signals for ourselves that have meaning and we give things meaning, right? paige: Right. @eyoalha: So for me, there's many ways that that holds power for me. Yeah. paige: Right. growing up, especially from an indigenous culture, what did you learn about who you were and who you could become? @eyoalha: my name has really profound impact on my life because it's from the Quacquakula language, which was the language my grandmother spoke before she was taken to residential school when she was around five or six years old and then forced to speak English. and then having that name, my name means the wind. So when I do go to Alert Bay, which is where I was born and also where my grandmother went to residential school, the people there speak the language. So they're always joking about, Yola, you brought the wind, because every time I introduce myself, people ask me about my name, where is it from? What does it mean? that that's had a really big impact on the way I move through the world. People literally say, Are you like the wind? I move through the world like the wind. sometimes with a lot of force, sometimes very gently. it's become a big part of my identity I guess you could say rebellion comes from that as well, because learning a different like my culture that I was brought up in doesn't really translate to colonial culture. And I didn't realize that until recently, just because of all the healing work that I've done. for so many years things were I had so many misunderstandings with people because culturally the way that I move through the world is very different. it's tied to my name too, because it's a language, right? And that language almost went extinct. One of my aunties actually revived it and made a written language out of it because it was originally just a oral language. the the survival and the perseverance has become a part of me as well. paige: As a multimedia artist, and you can talk about your art, how do you s choose which stories are yours to tell? And I think it's so interesting that your auntie decided to save the language. And here you are creating a new language through photography and multimedia. So how do you decide which stories to tell @eyoalha: Yeah. paige: and how does that even connect back into the wind and the way you grew up and what you learned from your culture? @eyoalha: for a long time I didn't really use my voice in the way like I didn't really feel comfortable being in front of people or sharing stories or anything like that. And I think I'm actually just starting to come into it. And it's been a way like my creative Playful way of creating art and experimenting and putting that out into the world, I think. I choose stories based on what I'm working through on in my inner world, in my mind, and what I'm working on healing. So for example, I shared a story about how my grandparents were both taken to residential school. And then my grandfather was one of the very first indigenous successful business owners. How that impacts me directly, and the way that I shared the story is that the government says that it's trying to create intergenerational wealth for people. But instead of doing that, they actually took that away. So instead of me inheriting what my grandparents and my dad built, I inherit nothing. So it does become part of my story. And I've never really talked about that before. So it's new for me to be sharing that, because it didn't really feel like my story for a long time. Because I had to learn and unravel a lot of my belief systems and my ways of thinking can actually impact more people than just me You know? So how do I decide which stories I want to tell? I guess it's how it impacts me through my own healing journey and how I rewrite that story and how I look at that moving forward And I don't want to tell people how to do that. I want to live it myself as an example and Hopefully they'll find that in themselves. paige: As a artist. visual and narrative. How does telling a story heal you? @eyoalha: I think telling a story is healing because there's something about being able to express ourselves, whether that's through physically moving our body, through art, through words, through song, through all these different elements, I think that has a lot to do with changing energy flow and changing frequency and All of those things are what we're made of. We're literally atoms, right? And we're bouncing around everywhere. So if we're able to emote something and tell something or show something, I think that is ultimately the transformation. paige: has creating something @eyoalha: Mm-hmm. paige: changed the way that You understand your own life. @eyoalha: yeah, absolutely. I think every time I create something, it's like I'm releasing something that mm like I think of pain or trauma as something dense and heavy within ourselves. I don't know if that's scientifically true. It I can look into it, but paige: Makes sense to me. @eyoalha: that's just how I imagine it. I imagine it as something dense paige: Heavy. @eyoalha: or heavy or weight, like it's a weight on us. So if I'm able to express that out and shake it up and move it around and clear it out, then I think that that's the that's the gold right there. That's the transformation again or the change that I'm able to do by creating something creatively, artistically. paige: And and let's talk about like that makes me curious about how powerful does a story have to be to actually change someone else's perspective or change someone else's life? Like what properties would a story have to h make them see the world differently? @eyoalha: sometimes very simple things can make a really big impact, you know. paige: The Joy Project. @eyoalha: yeah. Or I saw an image recently of a flower growing through a crack in the cement, and that says so much, you know, about our resilience and our capacity and nature, which is like my safe space, basically, you know, like the perseverance of life in general can just come from a very simple image like that. It doesn't have to be a massive thing. It can paige: Right. @eyoalha: be, but I think that that kind of juxtaposition of like nature coming through man made cement is just really powerful to me and I think it says a lot. paige: Yeah, it's like the the image of that reflects our own experience. @eyoalha: Exactly. nature for me is one of the greatest storytellers. I walk through nature and it just tells me so many things, I there's a lot of logging around here, a lot of clear cutting that happened, and you can see all these trees growing out of the middle of the giant trees. And again, it's just this willingness to keep going and keep growing and keep persevering through everything that comes into our way. So those things really remind me of our power, of our just what can be possible. paige: As storytellers, what's our responsibility when we tell the story of another or tell the story of spiritual truth? @eyoalha: Everything that we tell is a perspective. And our intention with why and what we're telling, you know, there's a big difference between gossip, for example, that is pulling people down and a story that is focused on uplifting or healing. It's a very different thing. it's important to Uplift people and that's my goal. that's the way that I choose. And when it's for myself, if I'm just trying to make sense of something, it doesn't even have to make sense to someone else. If I need to jump up and down for 10 minutes and that's my, thing that's gonna change, paige: As AI comes into being more and more what do you think as human artists we need to be aware of or better at or any any thoughts around AI and storytelling storytellers? @eyoalha: there's a huge difference because my experience so far with AI is it's very limited in it doesn't have a perspective, it doesn't have sentience. I know people are saying maybe it has consciousness, but it's basically just made up of an anything that's been written down. So if it hasn't been written down, it doesn't exist on AI. So it can only come to conclusions based on what's already been thought, what's already been in a book. And even then it's limited. For example, one of the first times I used it was for a storytelling thing. I was trying to look into my birth story. And I know that in the area I was born, there's a doctor that is known within the community to have been done a lot of malpractice and even killed a couple of the indigenous kids. So when I looked him up online on I think it was chat or whatever. It made him sound like a hero because it was from the perspective of the colonial perspective of, he's this amazing doctor in a small community. And I said, Can you do it in an indigenous perspective? And it tried, but it couldn't do it. I tried three times. I said, Can you please write this from an indigenous perspective? But because a lot of that is just known in the community, it doesn't translate to to the computer. There's if it's not written down, it doesn't exist. And I think remembering that we exist whether or not there's a computer, I can shut this computer and go off and live for a year. And none of those stories are gonna exist online. AI, of course, it's very smart and it has, the capacity to sort information and make judgments based off what's available. we're just human and we have capacities that computers don't have. Computers have capacities that we don't have. it's logical to me how we can use it for a lot of things, but it's always gonna be limited because of perspective, because of culture, because there's cultures that don't even use computers. that have never written their stories, that the culture isn't represented in the perspectives. there's no way everything, every experience is ever gonna be written down on a computer. paige: when you hear the words narrative intelligence, what do you think of? What might that mean to you? @eyoalha: languages don't always translate. And I think narrative intelligence to me is taking into consideration that perspective, cultural perspectives don't always translate. So we don't always have the capacity to put ourselves in each other's shoes because we literally don't have the words or the knowledge. so I think that learning And telling our stories are all like letting go of the of people understanding it from our point of view and being aware that other people might take something different from it or might understand it differently just because of the nature of being human and having different cultures and different languages that don't translate, paige: what does story mean to you, and how has your story shifted through this healing journey you've been on? @eyoalha: I've gone deeper within myself and I faced parts of myself that have been scary. I'm still working on it. But the more that I'm able to transform my inner world and my mind, the more I'm able to walk through the world with. More knowledge, more freedom in the sense that I think for a long time I felt very restrictive of just being myself and being able to express myself and my ideas. And so I think just an ongoing journey of healing is perpetual metamorph metamorphosis is like the storytelling, right? paige: Yeah, let me ask you a question about something you just said and it's going a little deep. @eyoalha: Yeah. paige: You said, when I can change my mind. @eyoalha: Mm-hmm. paige: How do you actually tell me about that process. How do you come to the moment where your mind changes? How is transformation actually possible? @eyoalha: well, I've been practicing this for a very long time. And a lot of it has to do with self-reflection. So I think for a long time I thought things were happening to me from the outside, like why are they doing it to me? Or, you know, like everything is this is happening to me rather than I'm creating this in the way that I receive the information or how I agree or don't agree with what's happening. So What I do is I reflect on my thought pattern or or change a thought pattern. Like for a long time I thought I was stupid when I was younger. I think I'm smart now. had to practice and I'd have to pay attention every time I would tell myself, I'm stupid. And I still occasionally I'll be say something like, that's stupid, it'll come back. And I just witness it without attaching myself to it, let it go and rewrite the story, like think a different thought, And I do that constantly. And it really, how everyone says it's a practice, it really takes practice of being self-reflective, if something hurts me or if I get triggered, which happens a lot, if I get triggered instead of being like, that person did this to me, why am I feeling that way? Know, like do a little introspective, a little digging, and be like, what is it about that that is making me have a reaction? And can I, instead of reacting, take a pause and reflect and just think about that for a minute and see what comes up. something will pop up. I remember that time. That's why I believed when that person said I was stupid, instead of saying, Well, that's your opinion, you know? paige: look at the stories we wrote at some point in our life and rewrite them. @eyoalha: And not only just rewrite them, it's again, it's practice. Like every time it comes up, sometimes it can be instantaneous, like I don't agree with what your your perspective, and that's okay. You can have that perspective, but it doesn't impact me. there were things that would happen in my life that would just destroy me internally that had nothing to do with me. It was just someone's perception of me And instead of someone else creating the storyboard that's gonna impact everything I do in my life, creating a storyboard for myself and moving through the world and practicing making that story real for myself. And then once it's integrated, it becomes second nature, and then it's no no longer an issue for me. And I can just have someone say that and be like, Okay. But it paige: Did you did you do that physically create a storyboard of your life? @eyoalha: Physically I don't. Internally. I mean, I've definitely paige: Internal. That's a beautiful image. @eyoalha: written my dream goal is to create a home based, nature based healing retreat center. So I I've written it out, I've imagined it, I've felt it, all the different ways that I can imagine manifesting this. I'm looking for my partners, I'm looking for the money, and maybe looking is not it. I'm drawing it to me. See that I caught something there. That's an example. I'm not looking for it. I'm inviting it to me. So I have to change my language. I have to change my perception because if I'm looking for something, that means I don't think it's, you know, it's out there somewhere. But if I'm drawing it to me, it feels easier, right? paige: Yeah, I was sitting on a table yesterday with my bodywork healer and I had this huge aha of just I don't actually have to do anything to get what I am here to do done. @eyoalha: Exactly. And that's a really hard one. I struggle with that all the time because I'm a busybody. I want to do, do, do, do. And then it's paige: That's a really hard one. Me too. Yeah, I want to make stuff happen. @eyoalha: and then sometimes you work yourself into a frenzy and then it's like but paige: Right. Right. @eyoalha: what I've started to do when I do that is I will literally close everything and just go for a walk. Go sit by the river, let it let it go, allow things to just settle. paige: Mm. @eyoalha: And then it it opens up. And again, it kind of goes back to what I was saying before about how we can our energy can get tight or heavy or stressy, you know, like being able to release that, it's just like it opens things up for us. paige: Yeah. It's such a a shift to go from achieving doing brain @eyoalha: Mm-hmm. paige: to just being I am brain. @eyoalha: Mm-hmm. paige: And and that work between those two brains is like for me it's just constant. And @eyoalha: Yeah. paige: I'm somewhere in the middle. I'm never always all the way here, all the ways there. Yeah. Yeah. @eyoalha: Yeah, same, same. I'm I'm practicing right now being more responsive. So I do a little bit of outreach, but then I also trust my kind of intuition a lot more. And things start to pop into my brain and I'll know what I need to do instead of just doing a bunch of stuff that I think I'm supposed to do. Because most of the things in my life have never really cut like Come to me in a normal way. So just kind of working somewhere between the balance of taking action when it's necessary and then allowing things to also just manifest, And I'm not saying don't do anything ever, because obviously you have to take action, but like just paige: Yeah. @eyoalha: trusting the inner guidance of of the things, you know, sometimes I'll have a name pop into my head or I'll just be like, I wonder what they're up to. And I'll just kind of reach out to someone randomly or, you know, it's just it's like there's an inner guidance that's there if we listen to it. Yeah. paige: Yes, deeply. Yeah. what are you excited about right now? What's bringing you joy? What are you curious about? @eyoalha: my healing's always top priority for me, but this project that I have that I've been working towards, I've been calling it home base, but I think really what I want is a home because I've never really had a a steady life ever in my entire life. And I'm over s half a century. my experiences living in nature. massively transformed me. Like it opened me up in ways that nothing else ever has. it made my intuition way stronger. I I don't know if I mentioned this to you that I was living in tents for in total a year, but it was six months, two different years in a row on two different healing retreat properties while the world was shut down. People were still coming and doing healing retreats and they'd always invite me in. I was like a caretaker on these properties, and they would invite me in to join them. it's been transformational. And I want to live on a massive property. I want to be able to invite people to do that kind of work. And also working with plants, plant medicine, I think was another way I want to do that. So those things are really exciting to me I know that the right place will present itself when the right time is. But paige: Yeah. Right. @eyoalha: I also found that when I speak about it more, again, like we were talking earlier. The more I put it out into the world, it the more real it becomes. The right paige: Yeah, really. @eyoalha: people will hear it. The right investors will hear it. The right healers will heal it, hear it, the right, I don't know, people who know how to live off the land that can teach us, they'll come. So it's that whole, what's that movie? If you build it, they will come kind of thing. That's yeah. paige: Yes, one thousand percent. It's amazing how speaking it into the world brings it into the world, which is why we have to watch what we say, because words are so powerful. @eyoalha: Exactly. Yeah. paige: Is there anything else you'd like our audience to know or me to know about narrative intelligence as I research and build this field? @eyoalha: what we speak out into the world or show the world does impact us. Our body doesn't know the difference if we watch someone get killed on TV or if it's really happening. we have to be careful about the words and the stories that we put out there because they become real. We make them real through. What we put out into the world. paige: Amen, sister. Thank @eyoalha: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. paige: you so much. This has been such a gift. What I'm taking from this conversation is that changing a story is rarely a single act. It is a practice. Iola described learning to notice an old belief, pause before attaching herself to it, question where it came from, and repeatedly choose a different story until it became second nature. I watched her do it in real time, mid-sentence. She caught herself saying she was looking for what she wanted, stopped and said, looking is not it. I'm drawing it to me. And that is the practice live. I also heard that stories are not carried only through words. They can live in names, images, landscapes, symbols, bodies, languages, and cultural memory. And one thing Iola st said stopped me. She tried to use AI to tell her birth story from an indigenous perspective, and it could not, because the knowledge that her community holds was never written down. The tools we build to help us tell our stories are trained on an archive that leaves whole ways of knowing out of the frame. Narrative intelligence may require more than understanding our own stories. It may also require the humility to recognize that another person's story cannot always be fully translated through our language, culture, or point of view. These are emerging insights. From one conversation, not conclusions, but I'll be listening for how they deepen, change, or are challenged across the next ninety-nine stories. Iola, thank you for sharing your story with us.