Sandi L Boucher, Anishinaabe from Seine River First Nation, uses her story about hiding her hands with designer nails to explain why Indigenous communities need time and space to heal. Attacks and judgment have to stop first.
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Foreign. Hello, everybody. It's Sandy Boucher here once again. 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 here on my YouTube channel, we talk about all, all things reconciliation, everything from assimilation to healing to decolonization, the whole nine yards. And if those words don't make sense to you, stick around. I guarantee you there's a video that'll help you explain it. And the best part, I think the best part, as Anishna Beque, as an indigenous woman, as an Ojibwe woman specifically, is the fact that I use the stories of my life to express, explain things to you, to hopefully, if you're non indigenous, to help you understand what life is like being indigenous in Canada so you can understand the challenges of us working together. If you're Indigenous, hopefully you can relate to my words and realize you're not alone. You're not imagining this. It can be emotionally exhausting. I got you. We're gonna be okay. So I am looking at the blog post for June 26th today, and it's called Hate Assimilation or Fun. And the reality is, if you look back over any of my videos, you would probably notice my nice, long, fancy designer nails that I have worn for more than two decades. But the reality is doing that consistently for so long has pretty much destroyed my natural nail beds. And I know it was goofy. You don't need to send me the hate mail. I know, I totally know. But I had to own that. The reason I wore them so consistently. Are you ready for this? Sadly, I think you're going to be able to relate to this. I hated the sight of my own fingers. I have long fingers and as a young woman, I would get teased that I had man hands. And it was something I was incredibly self conscious about. By putting on the long designer nails, my nails became attractive and everyone commented on them. But you know what? I like my long fingers and I happen to think they look really cute with short nails and a really nice nail polish color. The problem? I'm not showing you my nails right now. I'm kind of going to sit on them because after abuse for so long, they look awful. They need time to heal. Healing is not pretty. And you know what that reminded me of the Indigenous peoples of Canada. We need time to heal. And if anyone out there just said, how long is it gonna take? Well, you go unpack that. Because first off, the attacks need to stop. So it's not one step forward and two steps back. But please remember that when you're looking at our communities or agencies, if you see infighting or judgment or if you're tempted to do that, healing isn't pretty. It's ugly. It's going to take time. So please don't stare or, you know, gasp in shock at the state of my nails or the state of our communities. Both just need time to heal. I hope that makes sense. I'll see you tomorrow in the next video. I love you. Take care. Bye. Bye.
