Sandi L Boucher argues that academic shorthand like "residential school era" and "intergenerational trauma" minimize Indigenous suffering by compressing multigenerational pain into tidy phrases. She urges people to unpack inherited beliefs and use language that acknowledges the full extent of harm rather than sanitizing it with convenient terminology.
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We really got to discuss $15 words and why we have to stop using them. Bonjour. Hello, everybody. My name is Sandy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan and a proud member of Seine River First Nation in Treaty 3 Territory in Northern Ontario. And once again, I'm here to all things reconciliation with a video based on the blog post I shared this morning. And this morning in this blog post and in this video, I'm talking about $15 words. And it's something. It's a phrase I grew up hearing from my mom. And my mom had a real issue with any big, long academic word or words. It might be a phrase, any phrase or word that took something huge and condensed it down into something that's easy to say because in her mind, when you do that, when you minimize something huge down into something small, you make it really easy to minimize the reality of that situation. For example, she would have hated residential school era because of how multifaceted it was and how many people were involved and just how much pain was inflicted. Now, in today's blog post, which you can find underneath the video, as always, I touched on another phrase, one that keeps coming up in conversation, tends to be in conversations about indigenous people, but sometimes even in conversations with indigenous people. I've heard indigenous people use the phrase that I have an issue with. And that's okay, we can disagree. Indigenous people disagree with each other just like any other group. The phrase is intergenerational trauma. Even the word trauma, it's like a normal word that we use now every day that minimizes what trauma is and how big it is and how life altering intergenerational trauma. I can speak from personal experience on this one is heartbreaking. And I come at that from the lens of a mom, because my mom's not here to tell me about her experience, but I'd be willing to bet she had the same one. When you see things playing, play out in the lives of your children and you know where that came from, you know that was because of the mistakes and things that you have done and you tried to heal from and didn't do it fast enough to keep your children from going down the same path, that's intergenerational trauma. The kids are being affected and so are the parents and the pain is continuing. It's not a choice. It's not. I'm just going to mimic my parents. I'd be willing to bed if you said, if you haven't done this yet, I highly suggest you do. Sit down and unpack the things you do or the things you say or the things you feel about a group of people just because your parents did, or your mom did, or your dad did. Specifically, you're an adult now. You get to decide what's in your suitcase. And for people that have experienced trauma, and that's indigenous and non, often what we also experience is intergenerational trauma, especially if you're a marginalized or oppressed. A member of a marginalized or oppressed group. It is not just a phrase that social workers use. It is not just an academic label. It's a whole lot of pain that inflicts a family and takes forever to get past. So what I'm encouraging you to do is be really super mindful when you use terms like that. Because often we use them because they're convenient. And we know convenience is not reconciliation. You cannot take the pain out of a discussion on reconciliation because if you do, you have reduced something incredibly painful. Just statistics and an academic discussion. There was pain. There is still pain. And we have to acknowledge that if we're going to fix it. I hope that makes sense. One more video for this week. I'll see you tomorrow. I love you. Take care. Bye. Bye.
