Markie ‘Moki’ Bear Eagle is an Oglala Lakota storyteller from Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota. Markie first shared stories at Oglala Lakota College as a playwright, performing zero budget productions at schools of the area of Pine Ridge Rez, and among other tribal nations. Through performance, Markie discovered that the more he felt expressed, the more his own health & well-being issues healed. He created film, animation, theater, documentary, spoken word poetry ( @markiethemoki ) and became a fellow of the Playwrights Realm’s Inaugural Native American Artist Lab and NAMA’s 5th Annual Native American Animation Lab. Knowing the transformative power of expression, Markie found the same benefit in hearing / helping others tell their stories. This led to his interest in unscripted media / documentary. While attending UCLA (MA in American Indian Studies) he conducted a research project interviewing the CEO and staff of Taiwan Indigenous Television (TITV) about the power of Indigenous media. With a late father and grandmother who attended Indian Boarding Schools, Markie began video interviewing Native elders who attended Indian boarding schools, and was deeply impacted that elders reported a ‘weight lifted off of their spirit’ once they had told their heavy story (for many it was a weight they carried their entire lives, speaking of it openly for the first time ever). Markie decided to launch his own project ‘Wiċozani Omani’ in hopes of travelling to many Native/Indigenous nations and holding space as a platform for Indigenous stories of health to be told, in our own voices.