Sandi L Boucher explains why Indigenous peoples often operate on different time than Western schedules, rooted in worldviews that don't prioritize clock time. She draws on Anishinaabe feather teachings and her experience in museums and hospitals to argue that forcing punctuality is assimilation, urging institutions to design scheduling that respects both approaches.
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Do you work with Indigenous people? Have you ever run into Indian time? Do you try to schedule appointments? Do you see how the two clash? Does it frustrate the daylights out of you? Today we're going to talk about that. Hello everybody. My name is Sandy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan, a proud member of Seine River First Nation in Trinity territory in Northern Ontario. And we're going to talk about assimilation, specifically what I shared in this morning's blog post, the June 28 blog post called the Assimilation of Scheduling. Now, to give you a little bit of a backstory, I do a lot of work with non indigenous groups. I've worked with museums, I've worked with school boards, I've worked with universities and colleges. I've worked with hospitals, with clinics and doctors and nurses, with health care associations, with a lot of groups. And one of the things that keeps coming up is the frustration over appointments. Most recently I had someone come up to me and explain that when they go into the community, they have an appointment time slot scheduled every 30 minutes. And no matter what they do, the indigenous clients they're trying to work with don't show up on time. What can they do to fix that? Remember the feather teaching how I told you to imagine an eagle feather and half of the eagle feather represents you, the other half represents the other person. In this case Indigenous, non Indigenous. Remember how I reminded you the answer is always on your side of the feather? In Anishinaabe teachings, in our worldview, we don't run our lives by a man made clock. That makes zero sense to us. Getting totally stressed out, trying to get somewhere just because a clock says we should makes no sense. And you know what? I would rather get up in the morning. I haven't used an alarm clock in years. I go to bed at a reasonable time. I get up seven hours later, I savor my coffee. I do what I have to do. If I had my grandchildren or my children here, I would take time to talk with them. I don't have to say I have no time, time to talk now because I have to get somewhere by 9 o'. Clock. It's not worth the blood pressure, the high blood pressure. It's not worth the stress. And honestly, if you're one of those people that are getting totally stressed out because we're not accommodating to your schedule, that's assimilation. Trying to make us adapt to the way you do things. What is wrong is the process. What is wrong is you thinking you can force us to do things the way you want to do instead of finding a way to swim in between the lanes of the two road wampum. Right. So that's not going to work. I am not now do I run seminars at 9am? Of course. And I actually get there probably an hour early because I get up three or four hours before I have to be there. Respect is one of our teachings too, but I do that and I don't have little kids in the house. And honestly, if I could turn back time and do it again. It breaks my heart to think of all the times I had to rush my own kids and get mad at them so that I could be someplace at a certain time. I was going to get there. I'm going to do quality work no matter what time it is. It's not worth treating my children that way because the clock says I have to. And trust me, if I could do it again, they wouldn't have been in a mainstream school and I wouldn't be in a situation where I had to do that to them. Food for thought. If we keep thinking, if you as non indigenous Canadians, if you're a non indigenous person watching this, keep thinking that the only way to do it is your way, then we're not getting any closer to reconciliation. Meet us in the middle. Let's design something that works for both of us. Because the way it's working now, you already know it. It's not working. I hope that makes sense. Would love to hear your comments. Comment below. Don't forget to subscribe. So you get all of my videos. And by the way, if there's a topic you'd love me to discuss or you have a question, put it below. I'll either answer you right in the comment section or if it's something worth doing a video on, something I need to expand on, I will definitely do that. Until tomorrow. Take care. I love you. Bye Bye.
