IT'S GOT TO STOP HAPPENING!

Hello, you absolutely amazing person, you. It's Sandy Boucher here once again with my weekly video. And once again I have some what I consider awesome stuff to share with you. Not as heavy as the last one, I'm gonna admit, although we do touch on some serious issues and specifically something that just has to keep hap or stop happening because it does keep happening for indigenous people. So this week's video is going include a serious fangirl moment. Consider yourself warned. It's going to contain yet another offering from Zenith Lily because it speaks to that issue. Then I'm going to share a rant I shared on LinkedIn speaking to the same issue. And then I actually have an update for you on some of my social media, specifically my Facebook page if you follow me there, and the Reconciliation Room, my school community. So let's talk about it. Foreign. Hi everybody, My name is Sandy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan, a proud member of Sane River First Nation in Treaty 3 Territory in Northern Ontario. And as I said once again, I am here with my weekly video and I get to start with a fan girl moment. So in case you're not familiar with the phrase, and I think everyone's familiar with the phrase, but just in case a fan girl moment is when you meet someone that you totally admire, you totally respect, you engage with them, you have a conversation with them, come to think of it may not be necessarily meet with them, but you connect with them in some personal way. So it's not just a mass email or something. You're having a direct conversation with them and you're over the moon, excited fangirling because this person is everything to you. And I have to admit, recently I had a fangirl moment. So if you have watched my videos of late, it's no surprise to you that I am a huge fan of Zenith Lilly and her writing. She speaks truth. She speaks truth to power. She puts our thoughts and our experiences into words that people can comprehend. It's just I love, love, love her work and I've shared some of her work before. I actually will be sharing one again in this video and I believe a few weeks ago. So she interacts on LinkedIn or at least that's where I discovered her. And not that wow, that sounded so subtler where I discovered she existed before I knew she existed. So I don't want to pull a settler discovering Canada kind of moment here. That is not what I meant. So before I realized this amazing person existed, I found her on LinkedIn or you know what I mean? You know what I mean? Let's not beat that up. But I believe I followed her profile. Then I ended up sending a message to her saying how much I appreciated her work. And she responded. And at that point it was very business, like, very academic. And then the rant that I posted on LinkedIn that I'm going to share with you later in this video, she responded to it. And when an Indigenous person responds back and they're laughing, the LOL is part of the message, then you know you've connected and. And her words just resonated with me and ended up having a couple back and forths and it just made my flipping day, week, year, life, whatever. And I even bragged to my daughter that you're not gonna believe who I'm talking to. And she's awesome, she's amazing. So. And I don't care how old I am, I am never going to get too old for a fangirl moment. In fact, later this week, now I won't fangirl because I already done it to her several times. But this week I'm actually doing an event locally and Pam Palmer is the keynote. And I have definitely done my fangirling moment with Pam, but now we, we follow each other on TikTok and I have her cell phone number and we text every now and then, not to harass each other, but when it's relevant to our work. So I absolutely love that. So fangirling moment over. Zenith Lily completed section two. Now is I am going to share yet another Zenith Lily LinkedIn offering with you. And you know the drill. It always happens with. She has that meme that just that one sentence that gets your attention and then she shares her words, a blog post afterwards. And any Indigenous person watching this video, this sentence would have resonated with you, I guarantee it would have got your attention as well. And all it said was in her usual mic drop kind of way. Not everything that touches you belongs to you. Of course. That made me want to read what she had written. So that's exactly what I did. And this is what she said. Now, the very first line of the blog post is actually in quotation marks. And that's because it's another mic drop. And all it says is drink some water and go talk to your own people. I want that on a billboard, like billboards all over Canada for to explain. I will read you her blog post. There's a reoccurring pattern that many Indigenous thinkers, artists and community leaders quietly endure messages from non Indigenous People filled with personal awakenings, emotional confessions and requests, spoken or implied, for validation, guidance or reassurance. Let's be clear. These moments are not relationship building. They are extraction. Even when wrapped in reverence, deep listening, or spiritual language, these messages often serve the same colonial impulse to turn Indigenous presence into a site of emotional, intellectual, or moral consumption. If you are non indigenous and committed to deconial. I always screw up that word decolonial learning. Ask yourself, why do I feel compelled to share my emotional process with Indigenous people? Who am I centering in this conversation? What do I hope to receive in return for my quote, unquote vulnerability? Here's the uncomfortable truth. Your personal reckoning is not our responsibility. Your guilt, guilt, grief, or curiosity. Your guilt, grief, or curiosity is not something we are required to hold. If you're genuinely committed to justice, you must shift the locus of your work not towards us, but towards your own people. Talk to your families, talk to your colleagues. Talk to your communities, talk to your church, your union, your dinner table. Talk to the systems that made this erasure feel normal. That is where your work lives. And when it feels heavy, when the grief, shame, or responsibility feels like too much, don't hand it to us. Don't come to our inboxes or ceremonies or teachings seeking to be made whole again. Instead, drink some water, take a walk, read the literature, pay the scholars, support the land defenders, fund the healing work, hold yourself accountable, and talk to your own people. Decolonization isn't a spiritual experience for settlers. It's a political and relational commitment that begins with refusal, especially the refusal to center yourself in someone else's story. Round of applause. Round of applause. And what's the phrase I often use? It's not about you, boo. It's not about you. How often on this YouTube channel do I post something and someone says, well, it's not like that where I live. Well, it's not like that where I live. It's not about you, boo. It is this way, here. And you get to listen and learn about it. You don't need to point out that it's different. You don't need to point out that you disagree. You get to learn. That's amazing, because it's not about you, boo. Way to go, Zenith. Way to go. Way to go. Which brings us to my rant. I had an interaction. Maybe I'll read the rant first and then I can give you the backstory. Maybe that'll make more sense. So Here is Sandy's LinkedIn rant. Okay, I lit and I called It a rant. I'm. I'm all about transparency. This is what I wrote. Okay? Rant warning Ignore if not in the mood. Non indigenous gonna say this loud for those in the back. Learning something new about any of the challenges indigenous people face is new to you, not to us. Wanting to share what you have found an article or video is cool. Nice to know you're thinking of us, but don't be offended if we aren't blown away. Again, these issues have been in our lives since we took our first breath. Love that they made it to your radar. Just don't assume they haven't been on ours. So the journey continues with a little less white fragility, preferably because boy do they get offended when we aren't thrilled with what they have found. Rant over. So in the case what fed this was a colleague. I will consider her a colleague. We belong in the same speaking network. And she sent me a video from an an indigenous person. I don't know what to call her. An influencer, A speaker, whatever the case may be. A video this person had created and I had mentioned land back. Anyone watching my videos knows I've mentioned it quite a few times because I'm completing the land Back course from the Yellowhead Institute. And she shared this video because this person who had shot the video mentioned giving land back to indigenous people. So I went to watch it. Now what I'm going to share is my personal opinion and my personal opinion alone. I realize a lot of people are okay with it. I'm not. I have a problem when influencers, whether you're a public speaker or video creator, content creator, whatever the case may be. I have an issue when people mix up traditional indigenous teachings with other things. I have come across a few speakers that have now there is nothing wrong. I have heard some speakers who have shown the commonalities between say Christianity and indigenous teachings. That's not mixing them together, that's comparing the two. Nothing wrong with that. But I have also heard speakers that totally intermingled the two and that's just confusing as far as I'm concerned because. Or it's that. That assimilation. I'm going to assimilate you into Christianity, right? No, you got to be okay with practicing our teachings for the sake of our teachings. Work on your healing. In this case, the woman that had shot the video that was shared with me use tarot and spoke of zodiac signs as well as being indigenous and offering that perspective. That's a whole bunch of mixed messages as far as I'm Concerned. And the video started with her talking about Tarot. Now don't get me wrong, I have a tarot deck. I never use it, but I have one. Would I ever like it? To me when I pull a tarot card, it's another way creator can tell me something I should be thinking about. I obviously don't do it very often. I don't for a second try to promote that tarot has anything to do with indigenous teachings. We did not have tarot cards. We did not use zodiac signs. I saw somewhere an indigenous zodiac. Give me a break. Like, like the, the, the. What's that word? Just mainstream teachings trying to get into ours is just ridiculous. So as soon as this woman started talking about tarot cards, I was out. And at that point I didn't even know if she was indigenous or not. So I mentioned that to my friend. I thanked her for sharing it with me because land back is a serious issue. But shared how personally I wasn't going to watch this video because. And I explained what I just explained to you. She was not impressed with that. She came back with, I've been listening to her for a long time and, and yes, she uses tarot and zodiac, but she mentioned land back. And I was like, yeah, so this woman is non indigenous from the US And I was like, yeah, a lot of people talk about land back. And she shared how well it was new to me and I wanted to share it with you. So now she's getting upset and it's like, wait a minute, I didn't ask you to research land back. I didn't ask you to share it with me. And when you shared it with me, I have the right to say this is not someone I'm interested in listening to. That's not a shot against you. I thanked her several times for sharing with me. What I ran right smack into was white fragility. White fragility is when a non indigenous white person gets highly offended. Either because you just pointed out what they said is problematic, you correct them, you called them out or like what Zenith was talking about or what I shared in my LinkedIn post, that they share something with you and they want the pat on the back, they want to be recognized as I'm a great ally or I'm on the right side of history and, and when you don't come back all gushing, they want to bite your head off. That's white fragility. And that Robin, Robin, I can't remember her last name. There's an amazing book about it. I will Put the information in the show notes because I cannot remember talking to white people about white fragility. I think it's called Robin d'. Angelo. Yeah, I think that's right. I will check it out, but definitely worth reading. Mind blowing for indigenous people. I can't. I'm certainly be mind blowing for a lot of people, but I know which holy moly's did it blow me away? Because it kind of described what I deal with so often and long before I started this career. So check yourself, right? Like, what were those questions Zenith asked? Why do I feel compelled to share my emotional process with the indigenous people? Are you looking for validation? Are you looking for the bad on the back? Then don't send the email. Who am I centering in this conversation? If it's all about you and the recognition you want to get, don't send the email. And what do I hope to receive in return for my vulnerability? Well, if you're looking for that pat on the back, don't send the email. Okay, so that's. I hope that made sense. So I did my thing, girly did my sharing with Zenith, Lily sharing her amazing words because you just cannot improve on that. And then I shared my rant. Oh, the last thing. I am all about trying new things. And I'm always about trying to find more ways to reach people. But if something's not getting traction or doesn't seem attractive, then I don't have 5 million hours in a day just like you. And I have a lot of different things to do. So I make sure that my time goes to the biggest bang for my buck. I'm going to reach enough people. YouTube allows me to reach people. Which is why I may not do a daily video anymore. Because that was a lot of work. And it's not even just shooting the video, was editing the video. That's a lot of work. And uploading it and sharing it and sending out an email. Blah. But so the weekly video format works for me. That will not change. Posting on LinkedIn, that will never change. LinkedIn is my playground, so I meet so many amazing people there. Sending out an email to my list, the fact that I'm now on what I was going to say Shutterstock. Not, not it. Substack. Writing my new book is something I wanted to do and being able to share it on Substack just makes it fun. But now I. You would have had to have followed my career to know this. But when the whole Trump Zuckerberg thing came to light, I was one of many people who left Meta, I left Facebook, I left Instagram, I left Threads. I wanted nothing to do with it. Which was all well and good, really made it hard for family to stay in touch with these they would normally do. So I don't want to be a burden to my family. So first I came back just on Facebook, only my personal page, which because everyone assumes you have Facebook when you're a business meant Now a whole bunch of business people were trying to contact me through my personal page, which is an entanglement I did not want to do. So then the Facebook business page came back and then Instagram came back. I have not gone back on threads. So I went from 17,000 people on my Facebook business page to I think I have 70. Which, that's fine, that's fine. I'm going to post there. And. And it works. It totally works for me. But I was posting a blog post every single morning. I may or may not still do that. I don't know. But one of the things I'm playing with is because I realized the power of my voice and my emotion and my enthusiasm and my passion. So I started recording an audio message and I started releasing it this week on Facebook. We'll see if there's any kind of reaction, could be entertaining, could fall flat on its face. But if you're interested in that, then follow my Facebook page because that is the only place those are going. I might do them in my speakers community. Not sure about that. What is a really good chance of ending is the reconciliation room, the school community. So I had created that community because I wanted to replicate a full seminar experience. I wanted people to be able to interact and ask their questions. And I think I have like 18 people in the school. It is very small. People read the posts and I so appreciate that they don't tend to comment or if they do, it doesn't become in turn into a conversation. So it's definitely not what I had hoped. And I'm also going to own the fact that I completely understand that the things that prosper are because I pay attention to it. The flowers that grow are the ones I water. So YouTube, I pay attention to LinkedIn, I pay attention to Facebook, I'm paying more attention to now with the exclusive audio messages. The reconciliation Room, I really have not. And like I said, it is just not doing what I had hoped it was doing. If I'm going to end up sharing full seminar experiences, probably going to do it here on YouTube. Like I talked about a couple of videos ago with the 50 Missing Pieces seminar and wanting to share that with you. So if you have any comments or feedback on that, feel free. The decision is not carved in stone yet, but it's pretty much carved because I tend to make a decision and then I make a decision. So that's that. Facebook. I know people like my blog posts. Let's see if they like my audio messages. I love recording them. I'm having fun with that so that's kind of cool. It was just to find a place to share them. Oh and I guess they get shared on my Facebook business page as well as my Instagram so you can follow me on Instagram too. For some reason I didn't lose my followers on Instagram even though I deleted both. Who knows? Who knows? But I don't believe the reconciliation room is going is doing what I meant it to do. And I have other fish in the pan beginning to fry. So I hope you found this video entertaining. Enjoy. Enjoyable, informative. Especially if you're non indigenous. There's nothing wrong with being excited, but like Zenith suggested, share that with your people. Share that with your colleague and your family, not us. That's the work on your side of the feather and I for one super appreciate when you do the work. Until next week. I love you. Take care. Bye Bye.