This week on Unreserved, Indigenous people who are decolonizing the sky!
Pilot and entrepreneur Teara Fraser’s entire career has been about the sky. The Métis woman began as a pilot. Then she started an aerial photography company. But it wasn’t long before she aimed even higher, by being the first Indigenous woman to launch an airline in Canada – Iskwew Air. Now she is a leader in her efforts to rematriate the aviation industry.
We fly all the way to coastal Labrador to meet Zoie Michelin. She is a First Officer on Air Borealis, a crucial link within Nunatsiavut. They fly everything from passengers to cargo to and from isolated communities. But the airline based in Goose Bay is also breaking gender and language barriers with its first all-female Inuit flight crew.
CEO of Indigenous Aerospace Jacob Taylor uses the sky as a highway. Jacob is teaching community members in Moose Cree First Nation how to use drones to transport goods like medicine and food into hard-to-reach communities. But he says the sky's the limit on where First Nations could take drone technology.
Top comments
Named one of Audible's Best Canadian Podcasts of 2025. Join Rosanna Deerchild every Friday for vibrant conversations with our cousins, aunties, elders and heroes. Rosanna guides us on the path to better understanding our shared story. Together, we learn and unlearn, laugh and become gentler in all our relations.Our award-winning show is rooted in radio, where we’ve spent the last decade becoming a trusted space for Indigenous-led conversations.We are based in what is now known as Canada. Rosanna hails from O-Pipon-Na-Piwan Cree Nation at South Indian Lake in northern Manitoba, and now lives and works in Winnipeg (Treaty 1).