Sandi L Boucher, from Seine River First Nation, urges Ontario voters to show real allyship by voting in the February 2025 provincial election. She criticizes performative support like land acknowledgments without action and calls out Premier Doug Ford's Ring of Fire mining project, saying voting out his Progressive Conservatives is how allies actually help Indigenous communities.
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I have no idea how this video is going to turn out. That's probably not a statement that a content creator should say. I know the topic I was going to speak to, but then I also know where my emotions and feelings are. So I don't know which way this is going to go. First off, let's just say if you are in the province of Ontario, you are a resident of the Province of Ontario over 18 years. And there's one other condition. I don't know. Vote. Vote. You need to vote. So this is to Indigenous people, to non Indigenous people, to allies, to people that. Why are you not an ally? I don't even want to go there. I assume everyone is an ally, even if they don't realize it yet. If they don't want to be an ally, it's because they don't have enough information. Maybe that's what we need to talk about today. Not what I was planning on, but we need to touch on performative action. Performative allyship. Let's talk about it. 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 I have dedicated my life, my time, my energy, my passion, my intelligence, my determination to Indigenous Canadian reconciliation, partially in the beginning, part of my career, completely in the last 15 years. I believe in balancing the feather. I believe there is work to be done on both sides. Indigenous and non Indigenous need to heal. We need to remember the strength of our teachings. We need to realize that we are different and that is valuable, that we bring a different perspective to the table. That is literally my entire career, bringing an Indigenous perspective to non Indigenous people so they can understand, understand why their Indigenous engagement efforts to this point have not worked. And that's what I do on the other side, the non Indigenous side. Everything from helping them to indigenize their policies to Indigenous humility training. Not like cultural humility training, not cultural competence, not cultural sensitivity. Cultural humility puts them on solid ground. I help them to understand why that poster is insulting and why the wording of their ad is not going to get them the results they want and maybe even a lot of negative backlash. I love the people I get to work with on both sides of the feather. But Ontario, where I live, is in the midst of a provincial election tomorrow, February 20th. I guess you're watching this on February 27th, it's election day. And right now we have a premier, a Conservative Premier, Doug Ford, who has blatantly said that he's pushing through the Ring of Fire mining project. If you don't know what that is, please Google it. Or you can watch yesterday's video that we, the indigenous people in the north, are especially the ones in the remote communities. I'm not in a remote community. I couldn't do this if I was, because the Internet wouldn't be able to sustain it. Just throwing that out there that they're too far away to negotiate with. I'm sorry. If you can't handle how big the province of Ontario is, you shouldn't be its premier. And how after 20 years, he's just pushing through the Ring of Fire project. No matter what their. Their concerns are, let's not address the concerns. Let's not solve the concerns. Let's just push through. And I have seen in the report after report after report that the first nation chiefs from those communities are saying, sure, you can put in roads. Roads to our communities, not roads to a mining project. What's your intent? Let's remind Doug Ford that indigenous people have voting power and not just federal voting power. Now, I went to the polls yesterday. I voted. I was reassured to hear how many people, how busy they've been, how many people have come out to vote. So that's reassuring. But if you haven't, please do. It was under 50% the turnout the last time. We can do so much better. We need to. To make, you know, walk the talk. Don't just talk the words. You got to walk it. You got to get out there and you got to vote, and you got to take Doug Ford out of the position of Premier of Ontario. Which brings me to what I spur of the moment decided is the topic of this video, which is performative allyship. So normally, when we think of that, we think of, well, two things come to mind absolutely immediately. The first one, if you are a business entity, a nonprofit, a corporation, a school, a hospital, whatever, and you use a land acknowledgment at the beginning of your events or gatherings, you share that you're on the traditional territories of whoever, and you do nothing else, you're still not engaging with indigenous people. You're just talking about us. That's more the problem. That's not the solution. Talk with us, not at us, not to us, not about us, but with us. Because if you don't, then that land acknowledgment is a waste of air. It is performative. You're performing to try to get the brownie points. Okay, so that's the first one. The second performative allyship action that came to my mind was wearing an orange shirt on September 30th. Do not get me wrong, it's a great first step, but if that is all you do and say you're an ally, that is just performative. You want to be seen in the orange sugar and you want to get the brownie points, but you do nothing else. And it's not even like you have to run for political office. If no indigenous content comes across your social media feeds, maybe you need to add in a few people to follow. That would be engaging and make sure they're indigenous, not non indigenous. Talking about us yet again. And then when we post something that you agree with, like getting Doug Ford out of office. Share the post. All you're going to do is share the post. You don't need to comment on it. Please do not change our words. Just share the post to help us get reach and if you're worried about the backlash, if you're worried about friends or family members reacting negatively or because you support indigenous people, then honey, you need to look at your friend and family group. Why are you not speaking up to them? Why are you? Why is this a surprise to them? If you're an ally, they should know this, right? This should not surprise them at all. And if they don't like it, they can unfollow you what that did. What's that quote again? If you're an ally and you're not getting hit by the rocks thrown at us, you're not standing close enough. If your allyship is a secret, it's performative. If you only support indigenous people on indigenous channels and posts and never share it, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's performative. And if you honestly, genuinely say you support indigenous people and you live in the province of Ontario and you're over 18 years old, you cannot vote for the Progressive Conservatives. Not after what the Premier just said that he is literally just going to run us over. How can you be pro reconciliation and pro that bully mentality? To heck with our concerns, he's just going to do it anyways. Imagine if you had a concern about your community, your family, your children, and the leader of your province said to heck with you, we don't care. So I need you to prove your allyship today. That's what I need you to do. If you live in the province, in Ontario, I need you to get out and vote. And we need to show Premier Ford that his time is up, that that attitude of just running over indigenous people and to heck with our concerns is past tense. And so was he. So I hope I can count on you. Get out and vote. No more performative allyship. Let's put our money where our mouth is. Let's walk the talk and let's shut that crap down. I need you to take action today. Go vote. I love you. Take care. Bye. Bye.
