Sandi L Boucher uses a houseplant as a metaphor for personal growth and how environment shapes us. She connects this to the challenges Indigenous communities face in Canada and why creating nurturing spaces for future generations matters.
Chapters
Foreign. Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan. And I'm a proud member of Seine River First Nation in Northern Ontario. And I'm here with this week's Tuesday teaching. And as always, I have some props. So this week we're talking about the teachings found in an ordinary, everyday houseplant or actually any kind of plant you can think of. So what I got going on here is first we got the little planter and this was actually, it looks like a coffee mug, but it was actually given to me by my grandchildren and my daughter and my son in law and, and we got some soil in there. So that's how you start, right? You're going to have a houseplant and then you take your cute little plant and you plant it in the soil and yes, that's a fake leaf. Don't judge. And then of course you're going to have to take care of the plants. So you're going to add. Can we see that? Yes, Water. And we're going to water it and we're going to make sure there's nutrients in the soil. That's how you have a healthy houseplant. Well, let's remove this for a sec. Now, the teaching part. I want you to think about your life. The reality is, long before you're born, the environment you're going to be born into was created. This is your family, this is your community, this is your home. You weren't part of deciding whether this is healthy or not, whether there's nutrients in this or not. This all happened before you were born and then along came you and you have had to grow that environment. And as a child you didn't have a lot of say in what you were fed. Like the reality is, if you're in a nice healthy home, we got our. Can you see that again? Water. Okay. If you're in a nice healthy environment, then you get watered on a regular basis and all is good and you're going to grow and you're going to be healthy. But then there's other environments that don't add the healthiest things yet. You beat yourself up for not being able to grow healthy and strong. Unfortunately, what we see often in our communities is as our children grow, they get to the point where all you hear from them is they don't care. They actually choose the gasoline. They say they don't care about their future, that they don't care if it's a good choice, they just want to have fun. What I wanted to share with you. Today is your future and the future of your children depends on the environment they grow in and what we feed them. And for those children that are now older and deciding that they don't care, I want to share a fact with you. Indigenous people in Canada are an identified oppressed group. They have been held down as a group, as a whole, for a long period of time. It's a proven fact that members of an oppressed group respond in one of three ways to that condition, to that environment. The first way is violence. And we see that in our communities. You get sick and tired of being oppressed and you lash out, often not against the people oppressing you, but sadly, against the person standing right next to you. It's a natural human reaction, but it's not the healthy choice. The second way natural human reaction to oppression is a $15 word, acquiescence. It means giving up. It means choosing gasoline over water. If you're doing that, you're not doing that because you're deciding your way, or you're deciding not to care. You're doing that because you're a member of an oppressed group and you've been brainwashed into thinking that way. I'm telling you, you can choose another way. The third way, the third natural human reaction to long term oppression is non violent resistance. Every single time we say, no, you can't look down on me. No, you can't do this to my community. No, you can't talk to me that way. Every time a youth group creates a video to talk about the conditions they live in. Every single time one of our amazing youth go on a walk to protest something. All of those, a letter to your mpp, standing up and running for chief and counsel. All of those are examples of non violent resistance and that's how we overcome oppression. You deserve a healthy environment. And if you weren't born into one, then let's be part of the solution. Work with me, work with the people in your community to create a better environment for the next round of kids. Maybe you couldn't choose what you were born into, but you can definitely choose what your children are born into. And you deserve so much more than gasoline. Until next week. I hope that resonated with you. I hope that made sense because your future depends on it. You deserve nurturing and if you're not getting that, well, let's take some steps to change that. Until next week. I love you. Talk to you soon. Bye bye.
