Launching a company is hard.

We weren’t sure when to do it. We weren’t sure how to do it. There was this feeling that we had to make something and put it out into the world first before we announced the company.

We kicked it around for a while and nothing felt right.

The conversation would come and go.

We’d get busy, we’d forget about it all together. But we hit a turning point where we needed something to fall into place in order for us to begin fundraising, meeting with supporters, and drumming up interest from investors.

We started with maybe inviting a few key folks to dinner as an effort to bring investors and potential collaborators along to learn about our story.

That turned into a game of if we invite so and so, we have to invite so and so. If so and so comes, do you think we could ask so and so. And. So on and so on.

Within a week of actually planning the gathering we realized something we probably already knew but hadn’t seen all in one place yet: we have a really powerful network. We have a lot of people who believe in what we’re doing. And bringing them all together, in one room, was the right move.

We also realized that we’d been talking about our company in one form or another with many of these people and most of them likely didn’t understand most of what the hell we’d been banging on about.

It was time to come clean.

On the evening of April 23rd, 2026, we opened the doors to the Indian & Cowboy Creative studio in downtown Hamilton for the first time.

Not with a ribbon cutting.

With tobacco.

With an honour song.

With a feast.

Standing in the same room together, setting our intentions, and understanding, maybe for the first time all at once, what it is we’re actually building here.

Sharing Our Spirit & Intention

We started with a mixer. Friends, family, collaborators, partners, investors, and a few curious souls who found their way to us.

The room was awesome. Old friends, new friends, old friends meeting new friends.

There were jokes, banter, small talk scattered throughout.

Folks had come straight from work to join us.

Madeline built an incredible charcuterie table for people to snack on when they arrived. Cheese, meats, pickles, olives, a bit of pizza, crackers. We had a non-alcoholic bar serving up a variety of bubbly whatevers.

Then we asked everyone to stop for a moment.

And we began.

Tobacco was passed to everyone.

Madeline and I expressed our hopes and dreams for the company out to the room.

We asked our guests to put their good hearts and minds into that tobacco while keeping our intentions in mind.

I sang an honour song.

It was a unifying prayer. An invitation for everyone in that room, regardless of where they came from or what brought them to us, to put their good spirit into what we were setting into motion together.

The song, the ceremony, the tobacco. All of us, together, welcoming Indian & Cowboy Creative into fruition.

For some people in that room, it may have been the first time they’d ever stood inside a ceremony. It’s not every day you find yourself in a moment like that with strangers. But that’s kind of the point we’re making.

Our elders teach us that when you put ceremony into something, your helpers will take care of you. That’s why we did it.

When Madeline and I started dreaming up what a studio launch could look like for us, ceremony felt like the right answer and it was.

After the honour song and a few short stories, we gave our guests a sneak peek of something we’ve been working on called, “City of Thieves.” We think this project is going to turn some heads.

We offered up a feast catered by incomparable Cheryl Bomberry from Six Nations. We served up an incredible wildrice and blueberry dish accompanied by a three sisters salad.

This completed the ceremony for us.

It starts with tobacco.

Songs.

Words.

And food.

An intentional moment shared together the way things worth celebrating deserve to be shared.

The night ended with people staying longer than they planned, conversations running deeper than expected, and a sense that something real had just begun.

We’re here.

We’re open.

And we’re just getting started.

Yes, we are a production company.

Yes, we make things for television, streamers, podcasts, and the internet.

But what sets Indian & Cowboy Creative apart is this: the community building, the inclusiveness baked into our model, the intentionality we bring to everything we develop, produce, and publish.

That’s not a marketing line.

It’s a practice.

It’s what we demonstrated in that room on April 23rd in front of the people who matter most to us.

Everything we build from here carries that with it.

Thanks to our friends and family that joined us. Special thanks to our new friends, partners, and collaborators that came through. We are absolutely blown away by the love in the room.

The journey continues.

— Ryan McMahon

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For a long time, this newsletter was called Joke Talk Yell Write.

It was personal.

It was mine.

It was essays, comedy, arts and culture, podcasts, and whatever was rattling around in my head that week.

Over 100 pieces.

A couple of years of writing.

A slow growing list of people, you, showed up and kept reading.

I never took that for granted.

Your readership put wind in the sails to help slowly bring this newsletter to where it is about to go.

Something has been building behind the scenes for a while now, and today I’m bringing it to you directly: Joke Talk Yell Write is becoming something different.

You are now subscribed to Indian & Cowboy Creative.

Here is what that means and what it doesn’t mean.

It doesn’t mean you’re losing my writing.

I’m a featured writer here and I’m not going anywhere. The voice you’ve been reading, direct, a little irreverent, grumpy, even hopeful at times, that’s still here.

What it means is that this newsletter is no longer just me.

Indian & Cowboy Creative is a company I’ve been building with my partner Madeline Wilson Shaw.

Madeline is Haudenosaunee, her dad’s family is from Kahnawake, and she is integral to everything we are doing. From the creative vision, the strategic lens, and the dynamic partnerships we are working hard to build, she’s with me everyday, building. This is something we are co-creating together. She’ll be writing here and we are opening this space up.

Indian & Cowboy Creative will feature emerging voices and a few voices you’ve likely heard of. Writers, journalists, storytellers, and thinkers from Indian country and beyond.

Podcasts, opinion, journalism, and storytelling.

Where Indigenous culture, politics, and community meet the world.

You signed up for one person’s newsletter and now that newsletter is turning into something larger.

I think you’re going to want to be here for what’s coming.

Welcome to Indian & Cowboy Creative.

— Ryan McMahon

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