Bee Millar on Overcoming Addiction and Trauma while Reconnecting with her Indigenous Roots
Content Warning: Drug Addiction, Kidnapping, Infant Loss, Overdose, Anti-Indigenous Racism
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Featuring
Bee Millar
Founder, A Tribe Called Beauty
“I know that my story may be uncomfortable to listen to, but making people uncomfortable is a great way to raise awareness’.”
Bio
Bianca (Bee) is a 26-year-old Huron-Wendat and Scottish woman with tribal affiliations to Wendake in Quebec. She lives in the city of Hamilton, in Ontario, Canada with her son, Ogichida.
Bianca is the founder of the website A Tribe Called Beauty. She created this website to help bring forth two of her biggest passions, which are natural beauty as well as supporting and encouraging Indigenous Women to feel confident, strong, beautiful, proud to be who they are, and to help them embrace their culture and traditions. Her life is dedicated to helping Indigenous Women thrive and reach their goals, while living healthy, traditional lives. She’s extremely passionate about keeping our traditions and culture alive, by learning and teaching about them as much as possible.
After changing her life around after many years of struggling with drug addiction, she’s working hard to help make a change to fight back against the stigma that surrounds our people. She’s determined to change the cycle that our people seem to be stuck in. She wouldn’t be where she is today if it wasn’t for her culture and the medicines that the Creator and Mother Earth provide. She is now sharing the power of our medicines and traditions in hopes that anyone that is suffering will find healing in our traditional ways.
About this episode
Content Warning: Drug Addiction, Kidnapping, Infant Loss, Overdose, Anti-Indigenous Racism
The conversation with Bee on this episode of the podcast is extremely powerful, raw and real. Bee, a natural storyteller, freely shares the most intimate details of her journey up to this point; from being bullied in elementary school because of her dark skin and long hair, to seeking acceptance outside of her peer group, experimenting with drugs, her years of heroin addiction, kidnapping, sexual assault, losing a child and a partner, and now, her life on the other side of becoming sober, as a mother, an activist and the creator of ‘A Tribe Called Beauty’.
I’m so honoured and grateful to have had the opportunity to interview Bee on this forum. As Bee says in the episode, she hopes that her decision to share her experiences will result in shifting the stigma around drug addiction.
Key takeaways
- Addiction is a disease. It is not a choice!
- The mainstream media in Canada does not appropriately report on the prevalence of discrimination against Indigenous individuals and communities, specifically around the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
- Cultural appropriation of Indigenous practices runs rampant in the spiritual community. Listen to Bee’s full talk on the Cultural Appropriation of sage to learn about the origins of the traditions of smudging. In the meantime, do not buy sage from big retailers like Urban Outfitters or Sephora.
About your host
Natalie Cooper
Founder of MindYourOwn.life
Natalie is a soul on a mission to empower you to take your healing – mental, physical, emotional and spiritual – into your own hands.
As a self-healer, living fully- medication and symptom-free, with chronic autoimmune diseases (Crohn’s & Multiple Sclerosis), Natalie believes in the power of mindfulness, intention and self-care to create the health, happiness and experiences you desire in your life.
Natalie started ‘Mind Your Own’ to share her experiences while navigating her path to wellness and to show you that anything is possible when you live mindfully.
Natalie’s healing journey has led her to experience practices that have been instrumental in strengthening her belief in the power of mindfulness. She feels her purpose is to share her experiences with others who are interested in becoming active participants in their healing. Natalie is a certified Meditation Instructor, EFT Instructor, Reiki Practitioner, Labour Doula and Childbirth Educator, living near Toronto, Canada.
