Land Back! We Gotta Talk About it!

If there is one. Well, no. Two words that can get a room of non Indigenous people freaking out. And of course I've seen a few examples of that over the course of my 15 year career in Indigenous Canadian reconciliation. But way at the top of the list is the term or the phrase land back. Let's talk about it. Bonjour, Mishko Paganan Kwei Nadishna Kasman. Hi everybody. My name is Sandy Bouget. 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 as I mentioned in the opening today, I want to talk about land back. But first, I do want to try once again to follow the Medicine Wheel journey. The baby stage, the youth stage, the adult stage, the elder stage. Baby being all of you viewers that are brand new to our reconciliation journey, we're going to have that simple conversation at the beginning to help you move on your journey. Youth stage is more advanced learning. Adult stage is an action stage, the elder stages reflection. Now, I had suggested last week that I'm going to try to use that format in the four stages in upcoming videos because I, I just thought that would be a really good idea, especially since I'm only doing videos once a week now to really give you that solid foundation of learning. Okay, who of you are surprised I'm not going to keep doing that? Why? You know what? It's the decolonizing process. And for those, I'm going to go baby stage on you for a second. For those not familiar with what decolonization means, an elder that I came across and had a chance to listen to his words when I was out in Manitoba put it quite clearly, remembering who we were before the others came. So decolonizing means for an Indigenous person to be moving away from colonial systems and remembering how we did things, putting ourselves into a box, coming up with a standardized agenda is colonial. We as Indigenous people, it's more free thinking. It's more what is creator telling you you should be doing right now? What is your spirit saying? Does this feel good to you? That kind of thing. So even though it makes great sense, it actually felt like it was pushing against my own spirit to put myself into those boxes. So I will probably be sharing four things in future videos. I don't know if I'm going to share four things and I'm definitely not going to restrict myself to baby stage, youth stage, adult elder. That's just too restrictive and doesn't fit in an Indigenous centered space like my YouTube channel. By the way, I'm going to go off on the tangent for a second. So many exciting things going on in my world. The result of going to one video a week. So for those of you on my email list, hint, hint, hint. You know I'm writing a new book, but instead of just sitting here writing a book like I've done four other times, I am writing it on substack and I just thought it'd be neat. Let me know. Does that sentence make sense to you? Does this resonate with you? Is there a typo in this morning? I released an excerpt from the second chapter this morning and there was a typo and one of my followers emailed me back and I loved it. Absolutely perfect. So if you are interested, the book is called There's Nothing Wrong with you and it is really focused on any single marginalized person who has ever realized they don't fit in the box that someone else is trying to put them in. If that's you, then you should be following me on my sub stack because you're gonna appreciate it. It's gonna resonate with you. And I just got an email coming in that there's a new subscription on the sub stack. Love it. I got the notification. Silence. That. That was worth celebrating. Even though I probably just snapped your eardrums with that little squeal. Sorry about that. Next school, don't know if you've ever heard of it. School. I have a school, I guess it's called the community, called the Reconciliation Classroom, where I Post comments and PDFs and videos and there's the chance if you want to have a discussion. What I'm trying to do is replicate not only the safe space space, but the amazing dialogue I have with audiences when I do live events. There's a bunch of you that haven't had a chance to be at one of my live events. The Reconciliation Classroom is the virtual representation of that. It doesn't cost you anything. It's free. You bop in there. It's. It's a great place to be. It's positive as opposed to so much social media that's negative these days. So check it out. Check it out. You're gonna want to follow that link. So I don't even know why I shared all of that except that all of that fits my spirit, fits my need, fits my way to do things to help you learn. And of course, it starts with these videos. So this time I am going to follow the four stages and I'm off. I'm going to be referencing Quite often land back. It's a Yellowhead Institute red paper. If you heard of the white paper, Pierre Elliot Trudeau's white paper, this was the response, the red paper. The indigenous had something to say about it. I'm going to keep my eyes on the clock here. Tight schedule today, so let's start baby stage. Before we start land back or decolonization or any one of those conversations, what you need to do is do some unpacking. So think of that suitcase stuffed full of stuff slowly, with your adult mind now and your logical thinking, you're going to look at the stuff you were handed, the things you were taught, the stuff, stereotypes you heard, things that you believed up to now without judging or condemning yourself, you're going to take the things out of your suitcase that no longer fit, no longer make sense. So what were you taught now if you're indigenous, what were you taught about white people? What were you taught about? Like trust me, I, I love joking around in seminar that we have as many stereotypes about non indigenous people as they do about us. And it's true, to do the work I do, I had to unpack those stereotypes. If I believed that every non indigenous person was two faced and out to get you and just for money and could never be trusted. Those are the kind of stereotypes I grew up with. I can tell you right now those are as accurate as, as all the stereotypes about us. They may apply to some people, they definitely do not apply to the entire group, which is what makes stereotypes so ridiculous because nothing implies to an entire group of people. So except maybe the language they speak, but definitely not the stereotypes. So if you're indigenous, what were you talking about? White people. And if you're white, what were you taught about indigenous? There's so many horrible stereotypes. Welfare bums, lazy, all of us are alcoholics or addicts, we don't raise our own kids. We, we are just, we don't want to work that, that laziness we were drained on the public coffers, all of that crap. And after you've identified everything you've been taught, then you get to ask yourself, is this helping me? Is believing this gonna help us bring this country together? No. And I hope you realize, like I said, any belief that you think belongs to an entire or applies to an entire group. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. So that would be the baby stage. Now you stages higher learning. So this is where you start investigating what happened in the residential schools. What is the 60 scoop? What are the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? 94 calls to actions and do they apply to you? How can you help implement them? Yes, Start doing the research. Where? And that's where Land Back, the Yellow Head Institute's red paper comes in. Now, right off the bat, they identify what does land back mean? Because like I said, if ever there's a phrase that could get people up at arms, that would be the one. So they identified this came out in 2019, by the way, October 2019. And one of the first things they identified that any kind of reconciliation must include a re. I'm looking at my notes here. Must include a revitalization of knowing and being. That's the decolonization I was talking about earlier. So you can't have reconciliation. If we're going to stay assimilated, we have to have that resurgence of our language and our traditional knowledge. Approaches. I love this. Approaches to Land Back must avoid replicating oppression, dispossession and harm, which means, and I have heard people say, or I've been informed that there are people out there that think it's not reconciliation, it's retribution. This identifies that it absolutely is not that reconciliation is not about doing to others what was done to us. That goes directly against our traditional teachings. It. And that would be more assimilation. So that doesn't even make sense. So it's. We're avoiding oppression or disposition or possession. It's not taking right that. That we're not going to do to others what was done to them. So now what else? I just want to look at my notes here. Okay, here's a direct quote. Land Back encapsulates the work of land defenders and water protectors, Indigenous thinkers, activists and warriors into two small words. That's a quote from Amy Norman. She's a nook. I'm part of the Land Back movement. I guess this was amazing. This phrase. Next phrase that I'm going to share with you, I want it on a T shirt. I want it on a billboard. I want it. I want it everywhere and anywhere. The quote is that Land Back is a demand for not symbolic gestures, but material restitution. I don't know about you or the Indigenous people watching this, but I'm kind of up to here with symbolic gestures showing that you're involved rather than doing the hard work. Totally. Because up until now, one of the problems, the main problem identified was the needs of Canadians are prioritized over the needs and rights of Indigenous people. And I live in northern Ontario and we've got Premier Doug Ford who wants to push through the Ring of Fire, come back or high water Polly of is saying the same thing. To heck with what the indigenous people that will be directly affected because this is happening in their backyard where they're we. I'm in northern Ontario, but not that far north. They are going to have to deal with the tailing ponds and everything that's left after Canada gets what it wants. Which is why we're screaming. If the water table gets poisoned because of the mining, it's our kids that are going to get sick. And Canada doesn't necessarily care a whole big bunch when it's indigenous kids that get sick or die. The residential schools taught us that. So that gives you an idea of land back. One other quote. What does land back mean to you? It's a demand for integrity. And one last quote. Assimilation is cultural genocide. So every single time an employer, a non indigenous employer wants an indigenous person to act like they are mainstream and non indigenous and just do it our way, that is cultural genocide. You are taking a step step to get that person to forget who they are. Don't do that. Which brings us into number three. If you are interested in this, I downloaded this this document. I will put the link in the description notes under this video. It is so worth looking into. So that's adult stage, baby stage. Unpack what you were taught. Identify what's not helping you throw it out of your suitcase. Youth stage. Get up to date online back right. Because you need to know that. Adult stage the action. Share the course of this video. Practice and demand integrity from Canada. Make sure you're not being performative. Make sure you're not just doing those, you know, performative. I'm gonna wear an orange shirt. I'm not gonna do anything else when I'm gonna wear an orange shirt. I'm gonna support and buy indigenous earrings. But I'm never gonna say anything else. I'm not promoting and sharing my work or the work of other indigenous people because someone might say something. If you're not supporting us, then what was that quote? Putting Canadian needs before the needs and rights of indigenous people. You would be part of the problem. So help me do. I'm doing all the talking, just help me by sharing it. Last but not least, the elder stage, the reflection. In the white paper the focus was eliminating status Indians, eliminating the Indian act and the treaties and was identified that they are acts of assimilation. I am not saying that is wrong. What I'm saying the red paper fought against was the fact that we would lose our distinct status. We would lose the first part of the First Nations. We don't have treaties with the provinces. So handing over to the provinces just means they don't know what's on going diddly squat. And it is so easy to walk away from a contract if you've never done your part. We're just not going to let Canada get away with that. And the Just a personal piece of sharing from my own journey because this wouldn't be my video without it. When I was doing this, when I was taking this course, when I'm taking any of the courses that I work on daily and have for 15 years, probably longer than that, you know what I really realized? I realized I'm my mom. Because if you've never heard my mom's story, my grandfather didn't believe that girls should go to school that they needed to. And it wasn't. My mom was 14 when finally the truant officer showed up at the door and told my grandfather that he had to send his daughters to school or than would be taken. And my It's a period of time my mom really didn't want to talk about. Like so many indigenous don't want to talk about their residential school experiences, talking about your traumas is not an easy thing to do and a lot of people choose not to. But when my mom did share about that time she would talk about she would only mention two things. The fact that she was taller than her teacher. And then at the age of 14 she didn't fit into the desk. So my mom stuck it out as long as she had to until her 18th birthday. Which meant my mom had a grade four education. But she also wanted to be the kind of mom that would be able to help her kids with homework. So my mom used to belong to four different book clubs, remember Columbia House and Doubleday. And all of those four books arrived at our house every single day. And in the house I grew up in there were floor to ceiling bookcases on two walls of our living room. And we all knew the rule. The book didn't go on the shelf till mom had read it. The book she was reading at the time was next to her lazy boy chair with her dictionary. My mom educated herself in her own way, in her own time, going after the topic she was interested in in a totally decolonized education style. And guess what I'm doing every time I choose to take a course. And the fact that I have found yet another way to follow in my in my mother's footsteps doesn't upset me at all. So the next time you hear land back, get the course, find out the information. It's a bunch of cute little videos. I decided to download the paper as an extra read. But I will put the link to the course and to the document in the video. Notes notes under the video to hear parts. Learn so that the next time someone gets bent out of shape when they hear the word slam back, you can educate them and that makes you action stage and part of the solution. Until next week. I love you. Take care. Bye Bye.