Indian & Cowboy Creative Media Inc.
Building a small and sustainable media company in 2025 may not be the smartest thing one could do with their career, but, here goes nothing.
Hey gang. I hope you’re well. Everything is good over here, thank you for asking.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that this Substack was undergoing a facelift and that we would be relaunching soon. While I’m not quite ready to lift the veil off the total rebuild just yet, I’m happy to share with you that I’ve officially launched my own media company, Indian & Cowboy Creative Media Inc.
I’m building a company that reflects the world we experience, shares the world we imagine, and builds the world we dream of.
This Substack will be fully integrated into the workflow of Indian & Cowboy Creative, so not much will change here, other than you’ll see more writing, video, and podcasting content in the coming weeks and months.
Indigenous stories, everywhere.
Where We’ve Been, Where We Are, Where We Are Going
Indian & Cowboy launched in 2014 as a grassroots, member-supported Indigenous podcast platform dedicated to empowering creators and communities.
We dreamed big, envisioning a member-supported online platform for Indigenous podcasts, writing, video, food, music, and culture. We said we’d be an “Indigenous VICE, but without the weed and the bro’s.”
We took a big swing in the dark, and we found some success.
The goal: to find 10,000 people worldwide who care enough about Indigenous stories, creators, and journalists to pay for a monthly membership at a “Netflix cost per month ($10, remember when Netflix was only ten bucks).”
We built podcasts. We researched. We wrote. We pitched projects to broadcasters. We spoke at conferences. We adapted the IP from the podcasts we created into a national comedy series, a hit on CBC Gem. The early days of figuring out how to tell the Thunder Bay story in podcast form began at Indian & Cowboy. We were a partner in helping to build the largest independent Indigenous education conference in North America, Think Indigenous.
We did so many good things, yet we couldn’t scale.
We danced with investors.
We built partnerships in the social innovation space.
We developed a business plan and strategy that inspired everyone who dared to dream alongside us.
We experienced growth during the company's first four years. My promise to the slow capital investors interested in us was that, after our 3-year runway (2018), we would begin implementing our sustainability strategy. That plan was a mix of revenue generation from licensing digital materials of educational content, paid memberships, and the creation of our creative services unit, which would focus on branded storytelling and consultancy work. We were focused on a few other large revenue drivers, including development, the sale of IP to the broadcast market, various investors, and live events and recordings.
I will say this unequivocally: the Indian & Cowboy Creative Media Inc. business plan is as solid a plan as I have ever seen. I believed that then, and I think that now.
We had very seasoned business advisors who said it themselves: we had an entirely plausible and dynamic plan, along with a path to sustainability.
But.
We couldn’t scale.
In the spring of 2018, I began my partnership with Canadaland on the first season of the Thunder Bay podcast. That work was hard, devastating, and impactful all the same. The success of the podcast series proved to me that people would care about Indigenous stories if they were told well, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do: tell good stories.
Reinvigorated by the success of the Thunder Bay podcast series, I dug deeper. We adjusted the business plan. We cut some fat. We did more with less. We relaunched with a rebuilt website and a few new content offerings. We tried really, really hard.
However, by 2019, I had reached a crossroads with the company and myself. I wrote a goodbye letter to Indian & Cowboy, and for a while, I woke up every day intending to post it and walk away.
I was tired and I desperately needed a break.
I hesitated to take the investment capital that we’d worked so hard for because, in the back of my mind, I was always concerned that our project wouldn’t scale. We couldn’t get advertisers on our podcasts. We couldn’t find sponsors that would support our unapologetically Indigenous brand of storytelling.
People weren’t used to paying for things they liked online. We built this project in the earliest days of Patreon, before Substack existed. So much of our digital culture is free. However, the stories we aimed to tell were free to listen to, not free to create.
Then the entire world changed.
In 2020, the pandemic hit, and the momentum we built came to a halt.
Slowly but surely, the project melted away to a ghost of itself, and that was okay because everything was changing every day. The digital bundles we built and placed online, as well as in the hearts and minds of all those who listened, watched, and read our stories, were out in the world forever in one form or another.
It’s 2025 now, and a lot has changed.
The media world has tanked globally; no business case makes sense for a project like the one I had envisioned back in 2014. Most of the websites and digital projects I admired and longed to be back then have been shuttered.
I’ve accepted my failure in building the vision that I, along with many others, had for the project. I’m grateful for all the lessons learned in those nearly seven years of trying to make something good. I’ve personally mourned that loss.
We took some time and space away from production to identify our place in the Indigenous content, publishing, and production space.
And now, Indian & Cowboy is back.
With a renewed focus and bold new projects, Indian & Cowboy Creative Media Inc. is back to finish what we started.
We’re creating and sharing Indigenous stories that are nuanced, complex, and unapologetically rooted in Indigenous truths.
Our mission remains the same: to share Indigenous stories with worldwide audiences.
We are open to collaborations, contracts, development, and consultations with communities, companies, and creatives.
We are currently in development with industry partners, broadcasters, and Indigenous producers worldwide.
Scripted television.
Unscripted television.
Podcasts.
Short films.
Feature films.
Books.
Indigenous stories, everywhere.
Visit our website to learn more about what we’re up to.
Contributions of content welcome...contribution of funds vital. Stand by for increase in subscription level!