Reconciliation Work for Non-Indigenous Entities

Good morning, you super duper, double delicious person. You, Sandy Boucher, here once again discussing all things involved in reconciliation and bringing a country together. Because seeing indigenous and non indigenous work together in a respectful, mutually beneficial way makes me happy. Now, if you know anything about me and have spent any time listening to my work or even work directly with me, you know that I am the biggest fan of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship. I can say the word honest, hugest fan, and the reason I love it. Now, before I go on, I should say I now know, and I do understand, that not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. Some people really need and enjoy the security of a paycheck every two weeks. I easily gave that up for the freedom of running my own business. And I kind of like the idea that the sky was the limit, that I got to decide how much money I was going to make in a month, that the salary wasn't set by someone else. But I now realize that's not for everyone, but for the people that could do it. What I love about entrepreneurship, especially as Anishinaabe Kwe, as an Ojibwe female, is the fact that it'll knock the ego right out of you. Like in the beginning, you need to believe you have this big, wonderful plan and you have an amazing product or service to offer. You should always believe that. But if you get caught in the trap where you don't think you have to tweak it or do things better, you are going to run into trouble. If you're one of those people that blame everyone else for your problems, entrepreneurship is going to be a valuable but very hard journey for you. Because as entrepreneurs, we realize we are often the problem, whether it's being stubborn, whether it's a mindset that's holding us back, an unwillingness to try something new, whatever the case may be. And this morning, I realized that that mindset, that willingness to look at what you're doing and improving it is what we need for reconciliation. Let's talk about. Hi, everyone. 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 yes, I have dedicated my energy, my time and my life to reconciling this country now known as Canada. I am Anishinaabe. I am an Ojibwe female born and raised within Canadian borders. And I understand that there's a lot of misunderstanding and stereotypes out there. We got a lot of work to do, and I'm happy to do my part. Now, in true Anishinaabe style or First Nation style, the first eight years of my 15 years in business, I was completely focused on helping First Nation communities, helping them to heal, helping to remember the power of our teachings, helping to remember our resilience, helping them to remember that not only did we have to heal, but then we have the power to. We have the ability to stand up. We do not depend on someone else for that and we don't need anyone to rescue us. But I now realize that mindset of looking at your own side of the feather, improving how we do things, healing and making ourselves stronger for our benefit, is 100% an Anishinaabe and an entrepreneurship way of doing things. But after the eight years were over, I started working with non Indigenous Canadian entities. And for the most part, the people that reach out to me, like, let's get real, the problematic people are not reaching out to me. The ones that want to point fingers and blame us for all of the problems are not asking me to do a seminar for them. The people that reach out to me are looking to see how they can change things, even if they're not yet at the point where they're looking inside and internally. And that's the problem. Because whether you're in business or just doing life, you can't fix a problem until you identify a problem. And you can't identify a problem until you realize there is a problem. Which got me thinking this morning. How many of you are looking at your business entities, your nonprofits, your ministries or departments and realizing there's a problem? How many of you are wishing you had more Indigenous staff or just more staff and realize there is an Indigenous group of people that could so easily fill that need? How many of you are wishing to not only attract more employees, but keep them? How many of you were confused by the turnover in your Indigenous staff or wondering why they never apply for your jobs? I'm telling you, if you are pointing at us, you are missing the boat. There is something wrong in your environment. The way you're advertising, the way you're going about hiring, the way you're selecting people. And you're not going to see it because that's the back to back teaching. If you want to know why what you're doing is not working for Indigenous people, you need to ask Indigenous people and you need to be able to set the ego down. Because when we tell you not attacking, but when we inform you of what the issue is and you come back with well, no, you misunderstood or it's just the way we always do it, or I'm certain we don't need to change that. That can't be the problem. Then you went and picked up your ego again, and nothing's going to change. We are working on our side of the feather. But if reconciliation is going to happen, you need to work on yours too. And you need to get comfy with the fact that the way you have been doing things up to now is not working, or you would have Indigenous staff and you would be retaining them. Now, I hope. I realize it's pretty naive, but I would hope that every Canadian entity, business organization, nonprofit, whatever the corporation, whatever the case may be, I would hope that by now you realize you need us, that we are the growing population, that we are the consumers of the future. The end. We happen to be one of the most loyal customer bases. You want to guarantee the future of your business, get really good at serving Indigenous people. But you're not going to get really good at serving Indigenous people until you identify the issues on your side of the feather, start figuring out how to fix them. Like I said earlier, you can't do that without us. So if you're interested, send me an email because that is definitely my wheelhouse and I would love to see you fix the issues so that way more of us can be working with you. I hope that made sense. I hope in whatever relationship you want to reconcile, you're not still pointing fingers at the other person. You start looking at, and you're looking at you might need to change on your side of the feather. Until tomorrow. I love you. Take care. Bye. Bye.