Indigenous broadcaster feels blessed to be in the chair hosting Our Native Land

Vancouver Island resident Tchadas Leo is thrilled to be back in broadcasting again. The new father was recently courted by CHEK television in Victoria to helm its new Indigenous culture podcast series Our Native Land.

A former student of the Vancouver Island University Digital Media Program in Nanaimo, Leo first learned his craft working for Shaw Community Television as a youth. When it comes to the broadcasting business he admits he feels a bit “rusty” after a decade-long detour working as a sales representative for local Nanaimo car dealerships.

Leo is part Indigenous and part South American. His lineage connects him to both the Stillaguamish Tribe of Washington State and the Xwémalhkwu (Homalco) Nation from the Campbell River area of Vancouver Island where he grew up.

After buying a home in Ladysmith two years ago with his wife Sarah, Leo began exploring the idea of a media career.

He originally applied for a posted position with CHEK that eventually went to another candidate. Still, Leo’s professional nature and his broadcasting background made quite an impact on the CHEK producers, so they decided to work together to come up with a project that would benefit from the young man’s talent and creativity.

As with many established commercial media companies today CHEK had decided to invest funding and human resources into the growing podcasting medium. Leo saw this new podcasting initiative as his opportunity to work with the broadcaster, so he has spent the past year-and-a-half collaborating with CHEK to develop Our Native Land.

“I'm very excited and honored and blessed to have the opportunity to do this not only for myself, but for the Indigenous community to have another platform supported by a local television station to give light to Indigenous stories, culture, and tradition,” Leo said.

CHEK Media celebrated its 64th anniversary with the launch of their new podcast platform on Dec. 1, with Our Native Land as the company’s debut podcast series.

Our Native Land is produced weekly in the brand new CHEK podcast studios at the news organization’s headquarters in Victoria. Now three episodes in Leo has been recording the show initially as an audio broadcast interviewing his guests remotely due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Plans are under way to install three robotic cameras so that the show can be captured on video as well as on audio, and Leo hopes that it won’t be long before he will be able to connect with his guests together one-on-one live in the studio.

“The core mandate of the show is to focus on Indigenous stories that include culture, art, history, heritage, tradition and giving a platform to those Indigenous people who are doing work that is Indigenous related so they can tell their stories in an easy listening manner,” Leo explained.

The broadcaster admits that he’s been asked a number of times whether Our Native Land will be open to taking on hard ball topics surrounding issues like land rights, the environment and systemic racism.

“These are topics that we will get into, “said Leo. “But by no means is the podcast a crusader activist type of format.”

The Our Native Land “podcast is meant to highlight the positivity of Indigenous people and their related Indigenous work. We will talk about their struggles if they have them, but I don't think it's the focal point of the show. It definitely will be touched on in a manner that is topical but sensitive and justified in a way where it allows for it to happen organically within the conversation.”

Leo works on pre-production for the show, lining up guests and story ideas, and then he makes the hour-plus drive down island to Victoria to work with CHEK’s new media and podcast specialist Kyle Lancaster who works with the host to put the show together and then launch the weekly episodes on several available podcasting platforms.

Leo admits that he’s excited to be back in the broadcasting chair and taking on the new challenges of podcasting in a professional TV production environment.

“Podcasts are still a fairly new venture and I'm learning a lot of new technology. It’s exciting and it feels like podcasts always have room to grow and improve, so it feels like the sky's the limit.”

Episodes of the Our Native Land become available every Monday morning and so far Leo’s featured guests have included BC’s minister of advanced education, skills and training, Melanie Mark, and Indigenous chef Jared Qwustenuxun Williams.

“I'm getting a good response from the Indigenous community,” Leo said. “I've been contacted by School District 72 to do some work with the Indigenous youth in Campbell River and there's been some Indigenous newspapers reaching out to me as well. So the overall community response has been positive, and we're hoping to reach out to other Indigenous radio stations to see if they want to have the show featured in their programming as well.”

Asked if he has started a wish list of guests he hopes to interview on the program, Leo lists such prominent local Indigenous people as 28th Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia Steven Point, as well as Sliammon actor, playwright, and physician Dr. Evan Adams.

“My long-term goals for the show is for it to become a regular focal point for people to gather their Indigenous news stories,” said Leo. “I want it to be a place where people will just say ‘oh, if I need to know about anything Indigenous, or I want to hear about it, and I want it to be fairly local, I'm going to go listen to Our Native Land’.

“That's my intent. And obviously I want to attract as many listeners and subscribers as possible and to try and gather as many stories as possible to give a platform to Indigenous people young and old who want to tell her stories.”

New episodes of the Our Native Land podcast with host Tchadas Leo are made available every Monday on several podcast hosting platforms, including Deezer, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and at the Our Native Land podcast page at cheknews.ca.

Local Journalism Initiative Reporters are supported by a financial contribution made by the Government of Canada.