Culture Shock! (The PATH Podcast for Jan 13 2024)

You've heard me say it before. There's a difference between knowing something intellectually in your brain and knowing something at that deeper Debwe win truth level. Recognizing it when you see it. Not just the word, but when you see the manifestation of it in a human being or in a situation. And today I wanted to dig deep into a phrase that you're probably aware of. You may not be aware of how common it is or how overwhelming it can be. What I'm talking about is culture shock. Let's talk about it on this episode of the Path podcast. Misko Paganaan Kwei na dhina Kasmang Dodem. Hi, everybody, it's Sandy Boucher here once again. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan, a proud member of Seine River First Nation in Treaty 3 Territory in Northern Ontario. And of course, my focus is on the culture shock experienced by Indigenous people coming out of the communities, especially our remote northern communities, and what they encounter in mainstream non indigenous Canada municipalities, cities, whatever the case may be. But before we get into that, let's talk about what culture shock is and how often you may have experienced it, Indigenous or not. So first off, again, I have a handy dandy definition for you on my other monitor. Culture shock is an experience a person may have when one moves to a cultural environment which is different from one's own. It is also the personal disorientation a person may feel when experiencing it. So culture shock happens when you find yourself something, somewhere brand new. So you would have experienced culture shock and maybe you remember this on the very first day of school. Sorry about that, everyone. Should we lay bets on how far into the year we're going to get before I remember to put my phone on? Silence. Silent. Yeah, yeah, you get it. So, as I was saying, if you remember it, you experienced culture shock on your very first day of school. I remember my first day of school because of the culture shock. I pretty much stayed at home with just me and my brothers until school started. My mom took me to that first day of kindergarten. We didn't have JK and SK back then. This was a long time ago. And I remember standing in the doorway tightly holding my mom's hand, all of these little people running around, all of these kids, a whole bunch of toys and tables and just an environment I was not familiar with. And I was not letting go. I was not going in that room. I was not letting go until I got done in the teacher. Seeing how stressed I was seeing the culture shock I was experiencing brought out this Huge bin of wooden beads. I'm sorry. That was totally unfair. I saw the beads, raced over there and started stringing them together. By the time I had a necklace together, and I turned around and looked, and my mom was gone. I didn't even freak. I went back to making another necklace. I figured she'd come back. I definitely didn't have abandonment issues. My mom was always there, so I figured me, she's off talking with someone. I'm certain I'll see her again. So that was my first experience with culture shock. Maybe you can remember that. Or it's the first day of high school. I can remember the first day of high school for some unknown reason. Well, I guess I know why. They wanted to take us into the gym for orientation. But instead of taking us into the gym, they kept all of the grade nine students, which is the first grade for high school in the school I went to in, like, the glass vestibule of the school. So, like, you're in, like, a glass cage and you can see all the other students walking by from all the other grades, and they all seem to know what they're doing, which just reinforces that you have no idea where to go or what to do. And I will never forget it actually turned out to be a friend of my brother's who's three years older than me. So this guy would have been grade 12 and, like, tall drink of water. My mom would have described him as very tall and thin. Like six, five, tall and thin. And he was wearing this T shirt. And on the front it said, I love short people. And I thought, well, that's reassuring. Like, there's a nice attitude here. I don't need to worry. And I'm not kidding. He walked away, and on the back of his T shirt, it said, I had three for lunch. Not the reassurance I was going for. So again, culture shock. And I remember it. I'm 59 years old. I remember that day. You experience culture shock, the first day of a new job when you don't know where the lunchroom is, don't even know where the bathroom is, not really sure where to put your things, not really sure when. Coffee break is all of those ifs. And in fact, you experience culture shock even if you're already working in an environment and have been for years, and the boss changes. Try not to sneeze here. A game, because you know without even saying it that things are going to change. New boss means everything could change. And that causes stress when things change, may experience culture shock. So you know how this feels. You know how overwhelming it is. I wanted to share a couple of examples with you of the culture shock Indigenous people experience on a regular basis. Not all of us, but some of us. Now, you may not realize this depending on where you live. I live in northern Ontario, but not the remote north. And that's where we have remote First Nations. Some of them, a lot of them only fly in communities. There is no road access. And these children for high school are flown out of the communities, stay in boarding homes with boarding parents, and attend school in the city I live in. And I'm not the only. I still didn't turn that phone off. You think I would learn? It's going on silent right now. We're ignoring that. We're not the only city this happens in. So they come to Thunder Bay. Timmins is another one. I know for sure. I'm certain there's other cities as well. Imagine the culture shock, because not only, like, everything has changed. Your family is gone. Maybe you have another friend going with you. Maybe you're the oldest in your family, so that's not the case. You're staying with complete strangers on a street. You've never even seen paved roads and sidewalks before. Because that's not the situation in the remote communities. The school is going to be entirely different. These kids have to navigate the city bus system to get to school. How's that for scary? In fact, one of my girlfriends shared a story with me. This was years ago. She comes from one of the remote flying communities. This is a very successful professional. Now. She shared with me. She was just kind of laughing. We were joking around one day and she said, yeah, street lights almost got killed because of them. I was like, what? How did a street light almost kill you? And she laughed and said, it's not the street light that almost killed me. It's the fact that they exist. I was confused. So she explained that from where she came from, she thought street lights only existed in movies. Where in her community, if you want to cross the street, you cross the street. Well, she tried that in the city and almost got run over by a car. And they yelled out to pay attention to the lights. Total, complete culture shock. Pretty understanding when you come. I remember, like, I grew up in a municipality, not in the First Nation community. Our tiny little small town at the time I lived there had two stop signs and we were incredibly proud of it. We were also one of those communities that the main street had the yellow line down the middle because it's actually the highway. It's culture shock. And trust me, when I went to Toronto for the first time, huge, huge culture shock. Now I go down there and tell whoever, give me the keys, get out of my way. I'm now one of those women who can do her makeup at 140 clicks on the 401. I don't do that, so don't come after me. Another example of culture shock is the fact you may not realize that one in the northern community there's often just one quote unquote grocery store the size of one of our corner stores in any small, medium sized city. And I can remember being, I won't name the community, but I was in one of our remote first nation communities doing some work and the woman that had hired me decided to drive me around. She asked me if I wanted to see the community. Of course I did. So she drove me around and she said, by the way, I hope you don't mind, before I take you back to your room, can we stop at the grocery store? I got to pick up something for dinner. What am I going to say? Of course, no big deal. So we went into the grocery store, the empty shelves, it became pretty obvious that what you're having even for a snack like your chips flavor is determined by what is there, not what you want. She had to call her husband and she informed him that they had to change their plans for what they had wanted for dinner because are you ready for this? Dairy doesn't come in until Wednesday so they had to think of something else. I have been in remote communities under boil water advisories because we have first nation communities that are under decades long boil water advisory and you have no idea what that is like or what it is like to shower and consciously keep your mouth closed so that you don't take in the water to have those 2 liter, two 1 liter bottles of water delivered to where you're staying because that's the allotment for every person for a day. That's Canada 2023, 2024. Culture shock much. When they come to the city, there is more candies, chips, food in one of our corner stores that these kids have ever seen, another one that they unfortunately run into. And I hear it all the time, if it's so bad in the communities, why don't you, why do they go back? Why don't they leave? Well, for one, there's a lot of reasons. For one, it's home. For two, that's where their ancestors and family members are buried. They want to stay close. Three, it is the only Place I know of in Canada where there is no anti Indigenous racism. Because what are you gonna do? Racist towards me for being indigenous? So are you. You're gonna make comments because I have an alcoholic in my family. So do you. I have someone incarcerated. So do you. We're all affected by the situation. So that's why no one judges there. Because we understand. I'm not saying there's not gossiping and bullying and lateral violence. I talked about that in my podcast last week or two weeks ago, whenever it was. But it is home where people. You don't have to explain why you're exhausted. For the youth coming to the city, it's a culture shock to have to experience the racism that they get hit with when they come into the city. Now, Thunder Bay, I don't know if this happens elsewhere. I'm going to guess it does, but it definitely happens in Thunder Bay. That we have interesting individuals, let's call them that, that feel the need to drive around and roll down their windows and either yell out racist slurs at the young indigenous students walking on the sidewalk or in horrific cases, throw something at them. Google Barbara. Barbara Kentner. Anyways, she wasn't a student. Well, she might have been in university. Google it. I have spoken. We have Dennis Franklin Cromartie High School here in the city. It's an indigenous high school for a select group of First Nation communities banded together and wanted to try to create a safe educational environment for their kids. And I've had the chance to speak to those kids on a variety of different occasions. And I'll never forget, like, how many of them share, you know, what if I was out in the city on the street acting like a jerk and someone yelled at me to quit being a jerk. I deserve that. I did that. But I didn't do anything. I was just walking down the street and they felt the need to yell things at me. Right? Like how you wonder why our kids drop out and don't finish high school and men are not employable. You got to look at the environment. You're asking them to survive rather than just judge why they don't succeed. Another bit of the culture shock they experience is the expense of living in the city. And I think that applies to a lot of different people. Although in a small municipality, like, I mean, food is super expensive in our First Nation communities, but they don't pay rent. The. The First Nation community, some do. Like, there's some more modern First Nation communities that charge their. Their members rent just to help maintain the buildings. But In a lot of First Nation communities, the. The homes are banned, owned, so there is no rent. And we all know what rents are like in the city. The money that, like just to get across the city because it's so big, you gotta, you know, pay for a bus. The cabs are absolutely ridiculous. They don't have cars. What would buy a car when they can't even get it back home unless they wait for the ice roads that barely exist now thanks to climate change. On and on. Can you see how multifaceted this is? 1 now, like I get a kick out of because I'm the outsider, not experiencing the culture shock, but I know what's going on. Like for example, green space, trees are made to sit under, trees are made for shade. But in the city, you might have a tree planted in the boulevard in between the street lanes. And I've seen indigenous sitting under those trees because it's a tree and I'm exhausted and that's a long walk to the grocery store. I've seen indigenous crossing where there is no light or crossing lane, cross light. Because they come from communities. You cross where you need to cross. I don't want to go all the way down to the end of block, across and back up. That makes no sense to them. But holy moly's, do the cars honk when they do it? No understanding whatsoever. And the other one is child care in this case. And my phone is ringing again. Hang on a second. We are going to get through this podcast. I apologize for that. The last one I was talking about was it's to do with child rearing and having children. And no, I'm not talking about the number of children we have in this case. I'm talking about parenting styles. And we have a large Anishinaabe coming from that perspective. They'll learn is a really common parenting style. Let them climb the tree. If they fall, they'll learn. Let them touch that hot rock that just came out of the fire. They'll learn, right? That just letting Creator teach them that on two sides of the coin doesn't work really well when you're talking about traffic in the city. And it's definitely not appreciated by the people in the city. But having to restrict your children and keeping them under control, that's why often in the shopping malls, you'll just see them running wild because they're contained in this building. Why? Why would I have to contain them further? Not really big into that control thing that mainstream is, but having to do that could be an incredible culture shock. And I don't want to hear any of the. Well, you should. Should, because that's assimilation. And, and I mean, I just touched on the culture shock aspect. There's pros and cons to both systems, which is why we're learning to swim in the water between the lanes. So there you have it. Culture shock. Now, on this video, I'm inviting anyone to comment, indigenous or non. I would definitely love to hear from the indigenous who have experience culture shock because they moved to a non indigenous town, city, municipality, whatever. But anyone like, share your experience of culture shock. I would love to hear. What's the one that you remember distinctly? Maybe it's a first day in a new home, first day, I don't know, the day after you got married, whatever the case may be. I would love to hear them. I try to read all of them. I read most of them and comment when I can be respectful. Calling out other people or judging or any of that is going to get removed. You know that. I love you. Thank you so much for tuning in. And I will see you on Sundays. Now the members only videos go out and so if you're a member, you will see that tomorrow, if not on Monday with the next daily video. And if you're on my email list, you're going to get the email of what's the videos to come. Oh, by the way, if you're a member, you already see the videos because you get them early. So that's the update until next week for the PATH podcast. I'm Sandy Bouget. Love you. Take care. Bye. Bye.