STOP the Blanket Exercise! (And other stuff on this RAW video version of THE PATH PODCAST!)

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 I'm here with this week's episode of the Path podcast. And I'm doing something different this week. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I'm actually shooting a video of this as well, which I never do. You know that I just. I prefer the just you and me having a conversation. And honestly, if a friend was here sitting on my couch or at my table, we wouldn't care two beans what we look like. It's not about the hair or the makeup. It's about about the conversation. And that's why I never shoot a video of my podcast. I love having these conversations with you, but if I'm going to shoot a video, that normally means I got to do the face. I got to be aware of what I'm wearing rather than just what I wear around the office. Well, today this video is as real as it gets. I don't have makeup on. Has anyone ever told me if someone had told me one day I would release a YouTube video without makeup on, I would have told them they were nuts in the head. But I wanted to release this video to get the podcast out to more people. I'm not going to keep doing this, by the way. This is just like a one off. I might do it once in a blue moon, but definitely not regularly. But I wanted to explain my different offerings. To start today, I have three different things I want to do. So the first one, I want to talk about the different offerings and where you should go to find what. Then I want to talk about racism and allyship. I'm struggling with a head cold. I'm trying not to sneeze on you. I apologize for that. And then last but not least, we really need to talk about the plan blanket exercise. I will explain that when I get there. So, first off, to my non indigenous followers, and I want to speak to you specifically for a second. If you are looking for insight, guidance, guiding principles, maybe even teachings that can help you on the reconciliation journey. As a non indigenous Canadian or interested party, you need to be on my email list. You need to be getting the daily blog posts sent to your phone or computer, tablet, laptop, whatever, you can read those on Facebook. But rather than, you know, requiring that you log into Facebook every morning, if it comes directly to your phone, then no matter where you are, you'll get the message it's always like a five minute read, if that. I would say more. Two, three minutes. Just something for you to consider because reconciliation is not something you can bop into once every couple of weeks when you have the time to think about it. It's an ongoing journey. It's unpacking, it's changing how you feel about things, see things, it's adding to your understanding. It's an educational journey. So. So I highly, highly suggest if you want that support, it's not going to cost you anything. Which is for ongoing support throughout the entire year. By the way, the emails are Monday to Friday. I leave my your weekends alone. That's not true. I send out something on Saturday, but the emails are Monday to Friday next. You read the blog posts during the week and one of them. Huh, you're not sure? Little confusing again, I'm still talking to the non indigenous followers, listeners, readers. On Saturdays I send out a blog post review video and I add in context and explain why writing and releasing that blog post was so important to me. So if there's something that confuses you or you just want deeper understanding, you should be subscribed to my YouTube channel and listening to those Saturday videos, this podcast and if you're following my podcast for when I absolutely love you, I appreciate you and thank you so much Chimiqu, for doing that. If you're following this podcast, these are my reactions to the world, what's going on in the news. This is probably the most current. So think of the blog posts and the blog post video reviews as your education. And then the path podcast is the education being applied in real time. So I hope that makes sense. Now if you're an indigenous follower, reader, listener, do whatever the heck you want. It's your decolonization journey. If any or all support your growth, your decolonization, your building of your self esteem, your unpacking of your internalized oppression. If it helps with anything in any way, feel free that I am not putting any restrictions or giving you any guidance outside of that context. This is your journey, baby. And you do it the way you need to do it. Yay. Yay. That was number one. I'm trying to consciously not make this a really long podcast episode, but we got some important stuff to talk about. The second thing, Racism, being a racist, allyship being an ally. Neither of those terms are absolute. Neither one of those once awarded is permanent. What do I mean by that? You can be an ally and say something racist. You can be an ally one minute and a racist the next. You can Say something racist and then be an ally in the next five minutes. Those are not absolute. So if you say something racist, why I'm sharing this is. I'm hoping. Yeah, okay, that's not going to be fun. No one wants to be called out. But see that as part of your learning journey. And it doesn't mean racist forever. Every cell in your body is racist. It means what you just said or did is incredibly problematic. We need to unpack and change that. So we shift you closer to the ally side. And I'm seeing way too many allies getting way too comfy. They did one good thing or they read one good book, or they follow one good influencer and suddenly they think they everything about them, every cell in their body, is allyship. I'm sorry, Unpacking is unpacking. And as I shared in the blog post this week, that's a lifelong process. And I'd be willing to bet. The thing is, it's so often unconscious you say something that's racist because you've heard it your entire life and never unpacked what that sentence or statement or phrase means. And that's why unpacking is so important, that ongoing education. So we gotta stop wearing these like name tags, either one of them. It's action based. What did you just do? Was that an allyship or was that racist? Right. And let's lean to doing way more on the ally side and way less on the racist side. And by the way, I think non indigenous people for one, do your healing first. First and foremost, before anything else. I don't care. Another person's education can no longer be at the expense of our pain, period. Across the board, that one is absolute. So healing first. But once you get to the point of healing and you meet someone worthy of hearing your story, in the words of Brene Brown, then you have the opportunity to be an ally too, and helping someone understand why that sentence was problematic. So just from an indigenous to indigenous perspective for a second here, healing is so worth it to get to the other side so that you're not triggered all the time where you can enjoy that peace and contentment. I've been there, done that. I remember the triggers, I remember the pain, I remember the hurt. But to not live there anymore. I can't encourage you stronger to do that healing. Please. For you not to bring Canada together, not for your community, whatever. For you. Because you deserve that peace and contentment. Okay, so I highlighted my offerings. We talked about how racism and allyship are not absolute. They are not constants. They are very fluid, depending on what you just said, did, or thought. Holy moly's. Now we got to talk about the blanket exercise. So how it works in my world, especially where my writing is concerned, and it has always been this way. I cannot tell you what the blog post for next week will be because I have not yet received the inspiration to write those. It's something I see, something I hear, something I experience, something I think. And I believe. Those are creators sending me tips and tricks and hints and clues to what my followers, friends, and fans need to hear. This is not an ego trip. I have no idea what you need to hear. I don't know you. I don't know your challenges. I don't know your strengths. I don't know all the things that I know you've overcome. And I would never put myself in a place to think that. I do know that. Like humility teaching right out the window. No, thank you. So I have always depended on creator and what happens every now and then. By the way, that applies to my seminars, too. I have a framework, the skeleton of a seminar, but the stories and teachings I share in a seminar, I never know beforehand. I believe if a story pops into my head when I'm on stage, that that's crater telling me that someone in the audience needs to hear that teaching. And I'm so totally comfortable with that. But. And now I lost my train of thought. Oh, I know what it is. Every now and then in my life, something will happen. I'll see something. Usually someone says something to me, I'm having a conversation with someone, and I think, wow, yeah, maybe I should speak to that. Maybe I should write about it. And depending on the circumstances, I'm out having dinner with my family or something. I may not sit down and write it right away, but every now and then, you know how something just keeps happening? Well, that's what happens to me. The same thing, the same topic will keep coming up with unrelated people. So not the people that work in the same organization or live in the same first commercial, first nation community, but totally unrelated people will bring up the same topic to me. And when that happens, I always tip my head back, look at this guy, and think, I got a creator. I got it. I. This one I have to speak to. And that's what this is about right now, the blanket exercise. Now, I don't know what is it, Kelso? I can't remember who sponsors it, does the training for the blanket exercise, but here's the reality, wrapped up in my opinion, that Exercise is incredibly informative, insightful, educational for non indigenous people. It can be incredibly triggering for indigenous participants. I believe as employers, as community members, as managers and supervisors, we have to stop assuming that our indigenous staff people are all healed, that they've just had so many opportunities for healing that nothing's going to bother them anymore. And again, I said it earlier, non indigenous education can no longer come at the price of indigenous pain. Three different times in the last couple of weeks, three different organizations, three different entities, three different times, indigenous people have reached out to me for support, guidance, healing, because they were traumatized when their employer decided to offer the blanket exercise for their employees. No elders on site, no support offered. We're just going to do this together. So they're thinking team building. And again, reconciliation is a topic of discussion for non indigenous people. It is lived experience for indigenous people. This is not some non emotional history, an academic lesson that we're talking about. We are talking about our communities, our families, the children that were taken, our grandparents. And that is triggering. So if you want to offer the blanket exercise for your non indigenous employees, feel free to do that, offer it to them. Let the indigenous decide if they want to attend, if they want to, then I assume they've done enough healing or, and please give them a heads up that this could be incredibly triggering. But to make it for the entire staff and a mandatory training for them to attend is heartless. It's cruel, it's. I can't believe this is now happening. We have to think, we have to think of the people, we have to stand back to back with the people we work with and if something's about to happen that's going to hurt a co worker, we have to say stop because what, we have to quit assuming the victim has healed enough that they're able to say stop. An indigenous person who is still on a healing journey, and seriously, we all are, we will be till our final day, may not be able to say how much this hurts because they're hurting in that moment. Allies, where are you? Shut this down. The blanket exercise is incredibly valuable as a training tool for non indigenous people. It could be horrific and triggering for indigenous people without those disclaimers. Do not offer that training. And anyone who has a problem with that, you can reach out to me and talk to me about it, but that enough for me to start getting these calls and getting these emails from incredibly traumatized people. And don't you dare point the finger at them while they need more healing. You are the one that just hurt them as the employer, that's on you. Any employer that's hurting their staff, that's on you. I hope that makes sense. So this is my reaction video for this week. Again, if you want principles, guiding principles, teachings, whatever, you need to subscribe to my email list Sandy or go to sandy boucher.com click on get on my list. If you need more context on any one of those blog posts, watch the weekend video Back videos are all on my YouTube channel. Subscribe to my YouTube channel so you get those videos. Or if you're on my email list, it's going to be emailed to you. Last but not least, every Friday there's a new podcast episode letting you know what I think of what's going on in this crazy country we call Canada. Thank you once again for joining me on the Path. For those watching this on YouTube in video form, I hope you enjoyed this. No makeup look. This is the last time I'm doing it in video form. Well, the last for a long, long time. But you can check out the new episode, the audio version, every Friday on Spotify. The Path podcast until next week. I love you. Take care. Bye bye.