Sandi L Boucher recounts emceeing the Nuja Mawing Sokotegaying Ontario health team leadership session, a gathering of Indigenous healthcare providers and frontline service workers. She highlights a keynote (Dr. Lana Potts) and parallels with Michelle Derog—both invoked the phrase “land on the inside,” using it as a metaphor for internal self-care. The clip’s main message: tending to one’s physical and emotional health (self-care) is an act of self-respect and must start with the individual.
Chapters
Foreign. This one is amazing. Okay, so I had the opportunity to emcee the Nuja Mawing Sokotegaying Ontario health team leadership session. Frontline service providers knowledge session. It was amazing. Basically they brought together everyone in the indigenous healthcare field to come together to share resources. It was phenomenal. And every year, well I guess twice a year now they do this event. This was the third one we just did. I've had the opportunity to emcee them all. I love it. And they. The keynote this year was Dr. Lana Potts. So she is CCFP. She's a medical doctor, family physician. She has over 20 years experience, experience in indigenous health care provision. She's phenomenal. Just did such an amazing presentation and she was talking. Now I can't remember what kind of surgery she had to have but she realized that, oh I know what it was. I think she donated a kidney. That's. That's what it was. She donated the kidney. Maybe that might be Michelle I'm talking about. But anyways she was talking and she was talking about the land on the inside is the phrase she used. And I stopped dead in my tracks and I just realized Michelle was talking about the exact same thing. Michelle Derog, another beautiful. She did donate a kidney and she was talking about the land on the inside too. Interesting how that came together. That was obviously a message I needed to hear. But what they both pointed out is we are a lot better at defending mother earth and taking care of the waters and the lands and the trees. But we're still falling short on taking care of the land on the inside, you know. How's your liver doing? I know there were many, many years I abused that one. How's your kidneys doing? You eating well? Your brain, your heart, right? Like how your tummy? How's the land on the inside doing? Self care is self respect. And I believe we have been taught not to respect ourselves, that we weren't worthy of respect. And now many indigenous get really irate if someone else disrespects them them. Yet mom would be the first to say we teach other people how to treat us. We don't respect ourselves. How can we expect anyone else to? If we're not kind to ourselves, why are we expecting them to be? If we don't respect our own boundaries, why should anyone else? Again, I guess the message of this, the overarching message of this video is it starts with you. So I don't know, how good are you at taking care of the land on the inside? One more. Next.
