Sandi L Boucher argues that allies who build their identity around protecting marginalized people risk needing those people to stay marginalized to feel valuable. Real allyship means opening doors and passing the mic, not performing your goodness.
Chapters
If you know anything about me at all, you know, I love it when I come across a new fact or a quote or even someone's opinion that stops me in my tracks and has me thinking, whoa, wait a minute, does that mean. That's exactly what happened to me this weekend. I was watching a TikTok video, but it got me thinking about our allies and whether they're actually our enemy. Let's talk about it. Foreign. Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan, a proud member of Zane River First Nation in Treaty 3 Territory in Northern Ontario. And as I mentioned in the opening this weekend, I was sitting on my couch casually watching Tick Tock. I was scrolling, I was killing time, I was relaxing, it was the weekend and I came across this video. And basically what it said it was, it wasn't time anything about Indigenous Canadian reconciliation. It's just one of those transferable pieces of information. The video was actually talking about good guys, the kind of guys that pride themselves on being a protector of women. And what the woman in the original video and then the guy in the reaction video were saying, which blew my mind, was, if your identity, if what you take pride in is the fact that you're a man who protects women, then your identity requires that there's a threat to us. For you to be a protector, there has to be something that you protect us from. In other words, to be a good guy who prides himself on protecting women, you need the bad guys that are going to be a threat to us. So how did it go? Their identity is dependent on us remaining at risk. Their actual civilization as a protector is contingent on our endangerment. And that got me thinking about our allies, allies that pride themselves on helping the marginalized. Now, some of them go way out there, the extremes, and they're bragging about how good they are at being allies, how they pass the mic, how they understand. But if that's where you take your pride from, what if what we want actually happens? What if at some magical point, hopefully in the near future, Indigenous people are no longer marginalized? What happens to the allies? And are they subconsciously working against that? I don't think they're doing it consciously, but the reality is they can feel good about themselves if we don't need their help. Do allies actually want us living next door? Do allies actually want us dating our children? Dating their children? Do they actually want us bidding for the same jobs? How can they feel good about themselves if we no longer need help? Or God forbid, rescuing. So food for thought for the allies. Because as I've said a million times, the second allyship becomes about you, you're no longer an ally. And now after thinking about this on the weekend, I now know it's more than that. The second it becomes about you and your ego and wanting to feel good about yourself. And it's not just that you're no longer an ally now, you're actually an enemy to our effort. So. Oh, it's mind blow. Do we need our allies? The real ones? Humility. Practicing humility. Definitely help us open doors. Definitely help us get into rooms we haven't been in before. Definitely help us. They pass us the mic so people can hear us. But allyship cannot become their identity because the second it does, then they need us Marginalized. I can't wait to see the comments on this one. Feel free to share your thought process. I know my graphic designer loves it when I'm designing a new poster or helping her to do one. My thought processes. In the email, I start with this and go through this. So feel free to do that in the comments. What do you think? Allies. Remember yesterday, the. The statement is all about allies this week. Yesterday was allies. You know nothing. Today is allies. It's not about you. Because if it is, then your enemy. Enemy number one. Maybe not, but definitely on the wrong side of the feather. I just had to share that and that one blew me away. Because if you really are an ally, then you want us as strong, as privileged as you. Are you okay with not having to help anymore? Are you okay with not making that your identity and just being equal to us? Only you can answer that question. But I definitely invite you to do the work. Till tomorrow. I love you. Take care. Bye. Bye.
