Sandi L Boucher, Red Thunderbolt woman from Seine River First Nation, tells non-Indigenous organizations to ask themselves one thing before reaching out: are you willing to change your structures and behaviours, or do you just want Indigenous people to fit into what you already do? She won't help organizations seeking engagement to boost statistics or reshape Indigenous people.
Chapters
Today I'm going to try to head the problem off at the pass. This is a special message for all those people in the future that may reach out to me because they want me to work with them. And I'm speaking specifically to non Indigenous entities in this case because before you reach out, I need you to do a self check. Yeah, gotta make sure something's not going on before you reach out. Let's talk about it. Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy 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 today I want to talk about those non Indigenous entities who reach out to me because they want to improve their Indigenous engagement status statistics. They want to do a better job, or at least that's what they tell me on the phone. They want better statistics. They want to be able to show to their board of directors that they are engaging with more First Nation communities. But. And here's the but, here's the self check. How willing are you to. To change how you do things? Because unfortunately, after 14 years of doing this, I've run into one too many audiences where after the seminar, when we're doing those conversations afterwards and just answering specific questions, it becomes very obvious that they wanted an Indigenous engagement session because they wanted to learn how to teach the Indigenous people to behave differently. I hope you realize how problematic that is. Like white supremacy, assimilation, like. Like there's so many things wrong with that. Repeating the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The definition of insanity. But if you think that what has to change is Indigenous people, then you're still on the wrong side of the feather. You have no power there. And thanks for the judgment, by the way. That's. That's burning bridges, that judgment. We have had enough of the judgment right up to our necks. But you can change things on your side. You can learn how to communicate in ways that actually resonate. You can understand our values. I can share with you an Indigenous perspective, perspective that will help you understand why what you were doing in the past is problematic. If you are willing to look at your structures, your processes, your way of doing things, then I can help you change your results. But if you're coming to me to learn how to change Indigenous people, don't bother sending the email, because that's something you have to unpack before any work can be done. Because any bridge you build with that attitude is not going to last. And Indigenous engagement statistics here and now prove that we have to change things. And we can change things. I'm not saying you got to give up who you are. I would never say that. But if it's not working, doing it the way you're doing it, why do you want to keep doing it that way? I can help. Give me a call. Only if you're willing to change. Have a great, super duper, phenomenal weekend. I know. I'm going to. And I'll see you next week with yet another set of videos. Until then, I love you. Take care. Bye. Bye.
