Indigenous Centred Spaces, Sexual Consent & Indigenous Engagement, & a NEW BOOK!

Hello, you absolutely amazing person, you. First off, I want to say I am feeling as enthusiastic as always. If that does not come across to you, it's because I am sore AF this morning. I will explain that later. I have so much I want to talk to you about today, including the difference between Indigenous exclusive, an Indigenous centered space. And I also want to talk about consent and how that plays into Indigenous engagement. And I have some great new news for you, and I'll explain why I'm sore. So let's talk about it. Bonjour, Mishka Paknon Kwei Nadishnikasman. Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy Boucher. I'm trying not to move. My name is Sandy 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 today I am sore af, but it is for the best reason possible. This is not going to mean a lot to many people, but if you're an Anishinaabe, especially a traditionalist or a powwow dancer, you will get it. Yesterday, I returned to the powwow circle. So coming up on two years ago, it's not two years yet, but soon. I lost my elder. My elder, who helped me get through the passing of my mom. My elder, who has taught me everything I know. Like traditionally, my. My bead work, my. So many of the teachings. She helped me unpack my mom's teachings. Elsie Quantumman's, or Nana, to me, was absolutely everything. And coming up on two years ago, we lost Nana. Now, every year, I live in the city of Thunder Bay in Northern Ontario, and every year up here, the Powwow Trail, which is what we call the First Nation communities in northwestern Ontario. Oh, I got notifications on again. Of course I do. They have a powwow every single weekend. So you could literally work and do your life and then go to a powwow every single weekend at these different First Nation communities. And that's called the Powwow Trail. So the Powwow Trail in this area traditionally begins or usually begins with the Lakehead University Powwow here in the city of Thunder Bay. It's held in and around March break. And it was. You're gonna see this on Monday. So it was the past weekend. And I have not danced or gone to powwow or heard the drums since Nana passed away. I just couldn't. I just couldn't. And Lakehead Universe, there were certain powwows that I used to attend all the time originally with my ex Husband and then on my own. And you could count on Nana being there. And Lakehead University Powwow was actually the last powwow that I attended with Nana. And actually there was a special song done for her, just rather than waiting until she passed, celebrating that she. Celebrating her journey, because we knew it was coming to an end, and it was heartbreaking. Now, in line with my teachings, when you're grieving, when you lose someone closest to you, you back away from the powwow circle, from the wearing your regalia and drumming. And it's not because those things won't hear heal you, because they absolutely will. It's. It's a commitment to maintain your regalia and to do that routine. And the idea is, you take a year off and you focus on your grieving and your healing. And when you're ready, you come back to the circle. When I lost my mom and when I lost Nana, a year was not enough. I was in no way ready after the 12 months passed. But yesterday, I was basically puttering around at home and just enjoying my weekend. And I saw a post on Facebook that announced that the Lakehead University Powwow was this weekend, which I didn't even realize. I hadn't seen any notifications. And all of a sudden, it was like, should I go? And it wasn't that I didn't want to go. I didn't know if I could handle being there and hearing the drums without her, totally, honestly. So I decided to go, but I decided not to go in regalia. I put on one of my ribbon skirts. I dressed appropriately, but not in regalia. And I went and I cried when I heard the drums. And Crater just lined up. The most amazing friends I ran into almost as soon as I walked in the door and big hugs and got to cry on their shoulder, Literally. Michelle, thank you. And. And after about maybe 10 minutes, I'm gonna guess I was like, you know what? I need my regalia. It's time to dance. So I came back home, and I changed, and I went back and I danced hard, and I had a great time, and I smiled from the soul. It was so beautiful to be back in the circle. And that is why I am so sore today, because look up. Jingle dress dancing. My dress weighs, like, 40 pounds, and it's a bouncing step. Enough said. I'm sore. So that's why I'm trying not to move my body as I do this conversation. So one of the things I wanted to touch on today when I shared with you, and again, this is fed by A comment I received on one of my videos recently. There is a huge difference between Indigenous exclusive and indigenous centered space. And someone I'm paraphrasing here to the nines, but someone had made a comment something along the lines of why no, this space is for indigenous only. But blah blah blah and that's not true. This is not indigenous exclusive space which means indigenous only. It's indigenous centered space. And that means how do you explain this? If you went to Japan, everything there would be done the way Japanese people do it and you would not be surprised that you're in Japanese centered space because you're in Japan. The same would apply to any country or any territory. This YouTube channel is indigenous centered space which means I am discussing things and commenting on things from an indigenous lens. From my perspective as an Indigenous female living within Canadian borders, it is remember the back to back teaching. I am sharing with you what you can't see. If you're non indigenous, I am sharing with you the corner of the room you are blind to and that's why it is open to everybody. But privilege rears its ugly head on my YouTube channel on a regular basis. And privilege in this case is the fact that North America and many other places are now white centered spaces. People of that white people, I'll try to explain this as simply as possible, are used to being able to comment on anything and everything because the space is centered on them and they tried to bring that here. And I see comments, I shake my head all the time that start with well I'm not indigenous but I think this, or I'm not from Canada, but I think this. Why are you talking? Why are you talking? You have announced that you know nothing about what I just shared back to back teaching. Take it as my truth and use it so you can see the whole room. Don't question it. And by the way, if you're white, I'm sorry but we don't need to hear, we marginalized people don't need to hear your perspective because we hear your perspective every single day. Every other space is white centered, not here. So I need you to understand that. I need you to listen. You don't need to comment, you don't need to talk, you need to learn. That's an Indigenous centered space. That is my entire membership training program that's on my website through Indigenous eyes, open to all, welcoming to all. And by the way, just because your opinion is is not welcome here as a non indigenous person doesn't mean you're not right. It's just that your opinion is not relevant here. And if you have an issue with that, that's your ego problem, that's your privilege problem that you need to go unpack. I guarantee you, as marginalized people, we know this all too well. We do not walk around telling people our opinions because we know we're in white centered spaces 90% of the time. And people are just going to dismiss us or attack us or whatever. Which brings me to another point, by the way. There is a total difference between calling something out and attacking someone. When I point out that a word you used is offensive, I'm not attacking you, I'm informing you. If you get all defensive about that, that's your white fragility. That's not me attacking. And to the people that are doing the calling out, please make sure you're calling out and not attacking. Inform, educate, don't attack. So I don't attack anyone. But this is an indigenous centered space and I need your help maintaining that. Which means, and I've said this before, but I have a whole bunch of new subscribers, so I'm just reiterating it. So now what was. Oh, okay. Next we're going to talk about consent and how it relates to indigenous engagement. Consent is a conversation women could have a very interesting conversation on. And. And I was memory lane tripping. I'm 61 years old now. I've been single for a large part of my adult life. Sprinkle in some marriages there. No comments. And so consent, it always blows my mind. Now, I am a very direct person. I'm going to tell you what I want. I'm going to tell you what I need. Because I learned a long time ago, especially when it comes to guys, I date guys. That's why I'm talking about guys. I realized a long time ago the guys suck at reading minds, that if I make a face, he's still not going to know what I'm thinking. But if I ask for what I need, I got a way better chance of getting it. And if I share why something upset me, there's way greater chance he's gonna understand. But maybe because of that, it never ceases to amaze me. And these are true stories. Like both of these things actually happened to me at different points in my life. So the first one, I was staying at a friend's house who happens to be a male. Maybe we were interested, maybe we weren't. That hadn't been decided yet. I was in town to attend an event. Like, I wasn't there just to see him. And he was like, you know what? You're going to be in town anyway. Stay at my place. I have a spare bedroom. We can spend some time getting to know each other, blah, blah, blah. So when I went into the spare bedroom, now this may or may not be weird to people, I didn't think it was weird to me, but the. The bedroom door was. It had one of those stoppers to hold it open because the. He had warned me the heat really doesn't circulate in the house very well. And if I close the door, it's going to be cold. So I thought, you know what? I'm just going to leave the door open. I'm wearing jammies anyways. That'll cover your body from head to toe. What the heck? And he's a respectful dude. Whatever. Anyways, long story short, middle of the night, suddenly I got company in bed with me. And I'm like, wtf? And his response was, you left your bedroom door open. That means you wanted sex. Does it though? Does it though? Like, really along the same lines now? This totally different scenario, different time, years later, different individual, whatever, had just started dating this person. We came up with some spontaneous plans. So we decided, like, okay, we're gonna take a nap because this is gonna be a late night. So laid down on the bed, fully clothed to take a nap before we head off on our adventure. More cuddled. So some kissing happened. Totally consensual, which led to. To things again. Consensual. I'm not complaining. Afterwards, I mentioned because he had said he wanted to take things slow, so I was kind of surprised where that went. And I mentioned it again because I'm the direct community communicative type. I mentioned, like, I'm kind of surprised. We went there. You said you wanted to take it slow, right? And his response, I'm not gonna lie, you kissed me with an open mouth. That meant you wanted to have sex. Do you know what means I want to have sex when I say I want to have sex, or if you ask me and I say yes, that's consent, right? And I know there are some women out there that. That are thinking right now, I could never do that. I could never say I wanted to have sex. And if someone actually asked me, I'd be totally embarrassed. You know what's my opinion? If you can't handle that conversation, you're not emotionally mature enough to be having sex. I don't care how old you are, right? If you can't have a conversation, you shouldn't be having an intimate, physical relationship. Just saying. What has any of that got to do with indigenous engagement? The exact same thing. Quit trying to figure us out. Ask us. Don't do the well, they did this. Those people never come to our agency. They must not want our services. No, that may not be the case. Ask us. Maybe we're not comfortable in your environment. No one ever signs up for our event. They may not need these services. No. Again, ask us. Don't assume based on our actions, because there's a really good chance you're assuming wrong. So if we do this, this or that, it doesn't mean we don't want to engage. Ask us. That's the way. You know what? You're no better at breeding indigenous minds as the guys I date are at reading my signs. Don't read signs. Ask questions. Let's have a conversation. So that's that's what I wanted to share with you today. I'm going to get into my news for one for those of you who have followed my career for any length of time, you know I started as an author. I am an author first and foremost. My first book came out in 2010, honorary Indian, now decolonized because I reprinted it, has been helping men and women heal for over a decade and I love it. So two things happened this weekend. One, the first one, I signed up for Substack and I am going to be doing writings in there once a week. Way more in depth than my morning post on Facebook and more personal and nuanced than I do in my videos. If you are interested in personal growth and would be interested in learning the teachings or the perspective that empowered me, you're going to want to subscribe to my sub stack now. If you don't, you go for the free subscription. You're still going to get some stuff. Obviously you're getting everything, including the archived. If you do the free thing, the post disappears after a while, as I understand I'm new to Substack, but if you subscribe, then you can keep them all. Which is where I'm leading with the second surprise. Now I'm trying to get caught up on my reading and I started reading she Builds by Jada Sellner the Anti Hustle guide to grow your business and nourish your life. Yes, I'm an entrepreneur. This is how I know I'm an author first. Because the littlest things can spark a book. On the very first page of this book, I highlighted it. This is the quote the beloved author Toni Morrison said, if there's a book you want to Read. But it hasn't been written yet. Then you must write it. So guess what? I'm writing a new book I'm writing. I should have looked up. Do I. Did I give it a title? I don't think I gave it a title. Hang on to set. Oh, yes, I did. It's called this book is for you. G.G. let's go back.

I want to see the description.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I should.

This book is for you. Dashboard Description. Where is the description in an overview.

I know I wrote it out. I know I wrote it. Why do I always do this to you guys? I started looking for something that I should have had.

Where is the description View?

There, there. This is a book to indigenous youth, to indigenous women and men, to those who know they don't fit in. Those that make the mistake of thinking that it's because something is wrong with them. To be clear, there isn't. Like that Toni Morrison quote said, I'm writing the book I wish I had read when I was desperately trying to be someone that someone else wanted me to be. I wish I had found this book. And that's the book I'm writing. So will it resonate with indigenous peoples? Yes, but it'll resonate with many, many, many marginal, including women, because that's a marginalized group. No matter what your cultural background is. What I am debating now, normally I write a book. Obviously in the background. You don't know anything about it until the book comes out. This will be my fifth book. I'm thinking for my subscribed substack that I'll actually be sharing excerpts from the book there. Like, what do you think of this part? What do you think? Should I add to it? Did this resonate with you? So I'm excited and your suggestions will be considered. And if they're included in the book, I will make sure to mention you in the acknowledgments of the book. If I know your name, I don't know under substack if I'll know your name. So make sure I know your name. So there it is. We covered so much today. The difference between Indigenous Exclusion Exclusive and Indigenous Centered Space. How Consent plays into Indigenous Engagement. And I have a new book coming out. How exciting is that? I can't wait to read your comments. Until tomorrow. I love you. Take care. Bye Bye.