People Watching as a Reconciliation Skill Building Exercise

Hello, you super duper, double delicious person. You checking around behind me. I don't have kitty litter on the floor anymore. I think I got the notifications turned off and I think I have the volume turned up on my microphone. We are gonna get this. And I appreciate your feedback. Thank you very much. Today I got a crazy question to start us off with. Have you ever done the people watching thing? I mean, you're sitting in a hotel lobby or in a food court in a mall. You're by yourself and you're just watching people. I'm not talking about judging them. That's a whole different ball game. I hope you're not doing that. But just watching them and wondering, like, does that woman look frustrated? Does that person look tired wondering what's going on? I love doing it either in an airport or in a hotel lobby because then you can imagine, are they on business? Are they on vacation? You. It. I. I enjoy it. Now, why are we talking about people watching? Because if you practice that, it's actually going to help you up your reconciliation skills. Let's talk about. Bonjour, Cosmo Dam. 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. And as I mentioned, today, we're talking about people watching. I know when I first moved to Southern Ontario, to the big city. Well, actually, I was in Brampton. I was going to say Toronto. I was in the gta, the greater Toronto area, but I was actually in Brampton. And the apartment building I was staying in had, like, I don't know, like 18 floors, 22 floors bigger than any apartment building I had ever been in. Can you tell? Small town country girl. And me and my partner used to sit on the balcony in the evening and the apartment building faced, like four other different apartment buildings. And you could see the light was on. And I would love imagining, are they making dinner? Are they exercising? Are they relaxing after a hard day? Are they talking to their friend on the phone? Like, just people watching. It's something I absolutely love doing. And one of the things that you may not understand if you do this implied in the practice of people watching, is the idea that they're doing something different than you. Unless you're imagining that they're looking out their window, looking at you, looking at them, which is kind of creepy. You're assuming that there's something else going on for the other person, whether they're tired, whether they're focused on their Career, whether they're stressed about traveling, whatever it is, you know, it's different than what's going on for you. Have you figured it out yet? Have you figured it out? It's back to back teaching. They see something that you don't see. They see the stresses in their world that aren't obvious to you. You see the stress in your world that aren't obvious to them. I can think of so many employee conflicts where someone thinks the other employee is ignoring them because they're being rude. That other employees spending all their time worrying about their teenager that's going through a rough time, they weren't even thinking about you. That's back to back teaching. So every single time you can remind yourself that just because I see this or I think this way doesn't mean the other person does. You're practicing back to back teaching. And that's the kind of perspective we need to reconcile, especially when it comes to cross cultural communications. You definitely have to remember, just because you see it or it looks obvious to you back to back, they may not even see that area of the room. So I have a little game for you to play, a challenge, if you will, for the next 72 hours. So that's three days. Every time you have an opinion about something. So you take a bite of your sandwich at lunch and you think it's gross or you hear something like, I mean, we're hearing so much nowadays. Whether it's in person, you overheard a conversation in the staff room or you heard something online. Whatever it is, imagine you overhear something and you think that's dumb. I want you to stop. Every single time you have an opinion on whatever, I want you to stop and ask yourself, but what would others think? So, for example, you just took a bite of that sandwich, you think it's pretty gross. It's not anything you would want to eat. But what if you hadn't eaten in three days? What if you're homeless? Could you see the value in the sandwich then? And those people that shared that opinion that you think is dumb, why do you think they believe that? What are they scared of? What are they, Are they overwhelmed? Are they isolated? Is there a fear that they're going to get marginalized and left out? What do you think is driving them to believe what you believe? Practice that. You're practicing the skills we need for reconciliation. Now, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but in my book the Path, which is available on Amazon, ca just type in the path Sandy bought. You'll Find it. I identified four different stages of the reconciliation journey and I believe every single person is at some stage, whether you're indigenous or non, you're on this, this, I use the medicine wheel in the book. So if you end up, if you're ever discussing indigenous reconciliation or indigenous engagement with someone, it's in your best interest to know where you are on the path and even more importantly, where they are on the path. Because you're not going to start talking stage three to a stage one person. They're not going to get it. You got to meet the people where they are and that includes meeting yourself where you are. So think of the life stages, those are the stages of the reconciliation path. So we start out as babies, baby stage is the first stage, which means everything is new and exciting. We're learning. It can also be really scary and really intimidating. These are the people that don't want to engage in reconciliation. If they're scared of doing something wrong or hurting people, that's a huge heads up. They're on baby stage. Either they don't know anything about indigenous peoples, they don't know anything about reconciliation, or they're very well versed in all the indigenous stereotypes. You might run into someone who thinks they know a whole bunch about indigenous people and then they spit out all these stereotypes. That's stage one. They bought the bs, but they haven't started their actual learning yet and they're going to stay in stage one until they do. So I always say be super care for your sake, for your own self care, mental health, mental well being. If you engage or interact with come across a stage one person, choose carefully whether you want to try educating them. There is a really good chance they're not ready to hear you yet. And there's a really good chance you get a better reaction talking to the wall. So don't exhaust yourself. Talk to the people that are open to learning and willing to hear you. They may just not be there yet. And that's okay. That's where they are. Okay. And hopefully by watching you and you're at more advanced stages, they'll be tempted to join in. The next stage is the youth stage. Our teenagers. So think of it, they're in high school, university, college, so this, this is a learning stage, just like the baby stage, but it's now higher learning. Right? They know some stuff, they've unpacked some stuff, but they still have more learning to do. Feel free to share with these people, share what you have learned. And by the way, remember, don't Speak for us, please. When you're sharing something you've learned, also share where you learned it so they can go back to the original Indigenous guide. This is not, and I want to stress this, this is not the stage of the allies. Even though you're going to find a lot of people who think they're allies at this stage. And this is where the phrase a little bit of knowledge comes in. This is the stage where those people that have a little bit of information and get all gung ho to want to help us and they jump in before doing the necessary learning and they actually end up hurting people or causing harm. So focus on learning. I know you want to help get the education first. The next stage is the adult stage. Now, the adult stage is an action stage. If you're at the adult stage and all you're doing is learning, you're not at the adult stage. Because the adult stage requires action. This is where the allies should be, that they've done their education, they're now taking action. Often, unfortunately, they're not taking the action. They got comfortable with the learning. They want to learn more, they want to observe more, but they're not saying or doing anything. They're not helping. All they did was add to their own knowledge base. But knowledge not shared is wasted, right? Like they're not helping. They. We got to remember that at this stage, one of the actions, and you're not speaking for us, we never ask you to do that. But this is the noticing there's no indigenous people on your planning committee. Even though indigenous people are part of your customer group or who you want to be in your customer group, point that out. These are the people that, if you are going to a meeting and you believe an indigenous voice should be included in the discussion, you invite an indigenous voice along. You're literally holding the door open for us. That's the kind of allyship action. It's not about what you say. It's about making sure we're in the room to speak to the issues. And last but not least, in our culture, at least in Anishinaabe culture and in many, many Indigen cultures, the elder stage. The elder stage is the reflection, the evaluation without condemnation. This is looking back on all that was learned, all that was done. This is honest, vulnerable sharing. You know what? That really didn't work. That didn't help, that caused harm. This is where you identify it. This is where you apologize. And most importantly, this is where you try again, even if it means you go back to step one one and know this path is not linear. You can get knocked down to different stages at any given time. That's just humility teaching. So based on that information, I'd be dying to hear. Where are you? Where are you? Are you just beginning your knowledge? Or maybe you're not interested. Why are you on my channel if you're not interested? That makes no sense. Did you get lost? Do you need directions? It's okay. You stage that higher learning. If you're still asking, well, why are indigenous people doing this? You're definitely in the learning stage, whether it's baby or youth. If you're in the adult stage and you know what? You're never going to know everything because you're not indigenous. Don't use that as an excuse not to take action. And once you have with humility, look back on how it worked not to beat yourself up. Can we stop doing that? Don't beat up the indigenous. Don't beat up yourself for trying. Just keep trying. Okay? One of the things that the path highlights is the four sacred tools that make up the word path. Patience, awareness, tenacity, and humility. Be patient with yourself and others. Be aware of what's going on for others. That's the back to back teaching. Tenacity, don't give up, and always, always do it with humility. I hope that made sense. I wanted to share some. Oh, I got a question for you. Just to wrap this up. Okay, here's the truth. I could so easily make a blooper reel if you knew what goes on behind the scenes. I'm working with my daughter now. I shared a clip with her yesterday. Maybe I'll attach it to the end of this video. Probably not. But if you would be interested in me creating a blooper reel and maybe I release it once a month just so you can see the reality of shooting daily videos. Let me know because. Oy, until tomorrow. I love you. Take care. Bye. Bye.