I Save White People (Before you crucify me, let's talk about it!)

So recently I was reflecting back over my career, as I tend to do, I reflect on my career, on my life, on my relationships. That's how you build your wisdom, in case you didn't know that. And I realized something. I realized that for the last several years, probably the last decade, I've been working really hard to save a certain group of people. It's probably not the group you're thinking of, so let's talk about it. Foreign. Hi everybody. My name is Andy Boucher. 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 for the last 15 years I've been dedicated first to Indigenous empowerment and healing, and then eventually to Indigenous Canadian reconciliation. Because I honestly believe Indigenous empowerment has to come first without the healing, without the empowerment, without returning to a level of pride and self sufficiency and self determination that was our reality before the colonists got here. There will be no reconciliation. And if that made you nervous, then you don't understand reconciliation. But as I mentioned in the opening recently, I was looking back over my career. I started my business in September of 2009 and at that time I worked entirely with First Nation communities. In fact, in the beginning I worked specifically with first nations women. Ed Minette, who is a motivational speaker and just coach and author and just all around awesome dude, is someone I've been following for a while. And one of his quotes that he uses all the time, I don't think he wrote it, but he definitely uses it. His quote is, you are most qualified to help the person you used to be. And that is most definitely what I was doing in the beginning of my career. I was helping Indigenous women to find their confidence, to find their self esteem, to find their value. In a country that tries to tell us on a daily basis that we don't have value. I use traditional teachings, empowering teachings. All of our teachings are empowering. If they're not, maybe unpack the colonial influence. But I use those teachings to remind my audiences that another person's vision problem wasn't their value problem, meaning if someone else couldn't see their value, that was their problem. They should go to the optometrist. That doesn't mean they didn't have value. So I started working with Indigenous women and then that quickly, well, two, three years in, it morphed into First Nation communities asking me to work with their youth and interesting request. I was definitely up for the challenge. Definitely realized the importance of reaching these young people before tragedy struck and then that morphed into working with entire communities. And then about a decade ago, it was the first time I received a call or a request from a non Indigenous entity that in this case wanted me to help them to develop their Indigenous engagement strategy. And I honestly thought they called the wrong person. Excuse me, but how they explained it was they wanted to develop an effective Indigenous engagement strategy and they figured if they were going to do that effectively, they should involve Indigenous people. I thought they were way ahead of the game. And ever since then, that's when I really got into reconciliation. And for anyone who's followed my channel for a while, you know, that's when I started balancing the feather. If you think of an eagle feather and one half representing first nations people that live within Canadian borders and the other half representing non Indigenous people that live within Canadian borders, I work equally on both sides of the feather to balance the feather. I think for many, many years there was training for Indigenous people with that underlying assumption that there was something wrong with us and we had to learn how to function in mainstream. The assimilation was continuing, but there was no corresponding training for non Indigenous people on how to work with us and how to support us and how to have an effective cross cultural relationship. I set out to change that. So every single. My books, my keynote speeches, my seminars and this YouTube channel are all what I call Indigenous centered space. Which means here the Indigenous worldview is the norm and other views they learn. The Indigenous perspective, which many non Indigenous people have been denied, that was not something they ever accessed. But because of that, because it's Indigenous centered and not mainstream European centered, often that means the table changes, the questions change. For example, we don't discuss the problems for Indigenous people with the education system. We discuss the characteristics of an Indigenous education system pre contact, what did work for us, how can we build the bridge? Right. So looking at it from an Indigenous lens, for many, many years, unfortunately in Canada we have been suffering under this save the Indian mentality that the poor Indigenous people, we must support them, we must encourage them. Poor, poor Indigenous person. That is literally how we got in this mess in the first place. I don't feel sorry for any Indigenous people. Some are struggling, some, some need healing, that is a given. But the resilience, the strength, the fact that they're still here, still having children, still hoping for the future, and still work, willing to work with non Indigenous Canadians despite what the history has been, I think that's something to be admired, not pitied. So when it comes to Indigenous people, I have Zero interest in saving Indigenous people. I don't think they need it. They need encouragement. They need someone to highlight how strong they are. They need someone to illustrate for them their resilience and all the mountains they have already climbed. They need to realize that the mainstream opinion of them is a mainstream opinion. It is not fact. There is a difference. If someone doesn't like me, that doesn't change. The fact that I'm an awesome person just means I don't fit with that person. Different puzzle piece, different puzzle. So I help them realize that in so many times, so many cases, their only problem is they've listened to the wrong people for far too long. They listen to critics. They listen to. Sadly, teachers can be critics, non Indigenous people can be critics. Indigenous people can be critics because they listen to the wrong people. And I help them unpack that. They don't need saving. They need education. They need someone to help them clear the fog. And that's what I do. Because Creator is not a critic. You want to believe in a damning God, that's your business. That's not Creator. You don't have to earn Creator's love. Love. Creator loves you unconditionally. Creator is a parent. In the same way we love our children, even when they're making bad decisions, I help them to realize this. The people that have been working hard to save from themselves are the non Indigenous people I work with. The people that have bought into the stereotypes, the misinformation, the people that don't yet realize how much information they're out now missing about their own history, Canadian history. We're not talking about Indigenous history, we're talking about Canadian history and how Canada has harmed Indigenous people and continues to. So they're the ones. Because they are still making decisions that cause harm and often to themselves. Often I'm asked to review a marketing campaign and it's. You don't want to phrase it that way. Do you want me to tell you how that comes across? To me, it's often maternalistic, it's. It's condescending. It's. That save the Indian mentality and I save them from themselves. I help them realize how this is not going to help build bridges, it's going to build walls. I help save them. Often this is just the truth here. From their peers that carry very harmful impressions of Indigenous people and even worse for many employees, I help save them and help arm them against their superiors. Helping them find a way to say this isn't working and this is not helping us before the entire Entity gets blown up with the ridiculous new reputation because you don't want to be on the wrong side of Indigenous empowerment. We have seen when a company does something and the chiefs come together and the people rally, I don't want that to happen to anyone. The people I work with, the entities I work with, I don't work with problematic entities. I definitely am not tokenism. I'm not like, you know, they get to put my name on their website and say they worked with me, which gives them an excuse to do whatever they want. Which is why I don't certify companies now just because I came in to do training, I have no power over your decisions. You don't get to put my name on your work. If you're still making bad decisions and if you're making good decisions, you deserve the credit, not me. So I'm often saving them from themselves because as I said in the beginning, there's work to be done on both sides of this feather. So in case you had a misinterpretation of the work I do, I believe in the people I work with, whether they're indigenous or non. I believe in Canada, even though I am most definitely a critic of many of the things this country does. But I wouldn't even put in the time and the energy or waste my words if I didn't believe we could fix this or if I believe that no one wanted to. I believe we can do this. I believe many amazing people want to do this. So I'm going to do everything I can to help. I hope that makes sense. Feel free to share this with anyone, especially those entities out there that could use some help before they destroy everything by trying to do something with missing information, misinformation or stereotypes. Indigenous, we're doing our healing and I can definitely help you with that too. But non Indigenous, you got some training to do. I hope that made sense. Oh, tomorrow I do reaction videos, like Monday and then I do revelation videos and that is definitely how I built my wisdom. I'll just be doing my life, cruising along, doing whatever, never work related. And all of a sudden a thought goes through my head or I realize something and tomorrow I'm going to share one of those situations. A revelation that came to me just last weekend and it's a powerful one. Now to understand it, it's going to require that I explain to you our four sacred medicines and what they mean to us and why we use them, because the revelation involves one of them. But that's tomorrow. Subscribe so you don't miss anything if you're a subscriber. I love you. Thank you so much for supporting my journey. Until tomorrow. Take care. I love you. Bye bye.