Sandi L. Boucher (Red Thunderbolt woman, Loon clan, Seine River First Nation) uses a personal anecdote about her mother's "puzzle pieces" metaphor to argue that the familiar rules of interpersonal consent—ask before, ask during, ask after—should be applied to Indigenous engagement. She urges non-Indigenous actors to include Indigenous peoples from the start ("a seat at the table"), to check in through the process, and to debrief afterward; doing so is framed as a form of decolonizing practice and respectful collaboration.
Chapters
I wonder if you realize just how often I'm thinking of you or at least thinking of these video messages that I want to share with you. Because I can be on a plane, I can be in an airport, I can be relaxing after an event. And if an idea for a video comes up, I'm writing it down right away and just anxious to get back to my home office so I can shoot the video for you. And that's what happened on my recent trip. Because what I realized. We talk about puzzle. My mom used to always talk about puzzle pieces. I'll explain that in this video. But two puzzle pieces came together for me. I realized a conversation that everyone's having, indigenous and non directly applies to indigenous engagement. If you take these rules and apply it to indigenous engagement, you're standing on very safe ground. And you already know these rules. We should talk about it. Bonjour. 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. What a nice way to end the week. We started off with that rant and that was. I didn't like that at all. But we're gonna finish off with mum's teachings. And that makes me smile. So my mom, I don't know about you, I don't know if you're one of those people that like putting together puzzles, you know, those 500, a thousand piece puzzles. And my mom was one of you. I'm so not. But that's besides the point. And often my mom used the metaphor of the puzzle to explain so many things. And often when I would go to her as a teenager and say I had a problem and I didn't know what to do and I'd explain the situation to her. Now remember, my mom was adamant that she wouldn't give me the answer because she knew if she gave me the answer, then I believed in her wisdom. But if she helped me find my own answer, I'm building my own wisdom and my own confidence. My mom was adamant. She knew that she wasn't going to be here for my entire journey. She believed it was incredibly important that we learn to believe in ourselves so that we're not dependent on someone who may not be here for the entire trip. So often when I would come to my mom with a problem or challenge, her response would be, it sounds like you need more puzzle pieces. And what she meant by that is, imagine a 500 piece trip puzzle and you only have 495 pieces, you're not going to be able to finish the puzzle. It's going to be frustrating. You know, you need more puzzle pieces. And if you have a challenge that you're facing and you can't figure out the answer, you're probably missing information. You're missing puzzle pieces. So I wanted to share that today because while I was on my recent trip and while I was hanging out in an airport, I had like, three hours between planes and something else happened. That's a video for next week. But while I was sitting there, I don't know what sparked it, whether I saw a poster or I was reading something, distinct possibility, reading something in the news on my phone, whatever the case may be. I mentioned in the opening that there's a conversation that's going on on a totally different topic that if applied to Indigenous engagement, would totally wondering if you've had these conversations. What I'm talking about is consent, right? The conversation about consent before any kind of intimate activity. So literally, like, I can remember when this whole conversation first started, it was a little cartoon I saw on social media, and it was a boyfriend, girlfriend talking, and the boyfriend was complaining about consent and saying, like, do you mean I'm supposed to actually ask you if I can give you a kiss before I give you a kiss? And the girl's response, the cartoon woman's response, was, I'm literally right here, like, meaning it's really easy to ask me. And the other point of consent, if you've had these conversations, you know that you don't ask once, you ask before, you ask during to make sure someone's mind hasn't changed, and you ask afterwards to make sure everything's okay. That's Indigenous engagement. So how about before you touch the land, before you think about touching the land, before you start talking about doing something with the land in our traditional territories, before you write the proposal that you want to present to us, how about you ask first consent? How about you include us? When you hear indigenous people saying, we want a seat at the table, that's what we're talking about. We don't want to improve your plan after the fact that we want to be there for that initial conversation the same way you were, that's reconciliation. That's when things change. And by the way, if you want to do something with indigenous peoples, whether it's the land, whether it's the community, whether it's us as individuals, you ask beforehand when you're starting this relationship, and then as the relationship's going on, how about a touch Base check in. How's this working for you? You still comfy? The process is working for you? And then after the fact, what could we have done better? Is there anything that made you uncomfortable? What would you like to see different next time? That would be epic Indigenous engagement. If we could just apply the rules of consent. You already know about the rules of consent. Now you just got to think them in terms of Indigenous peoples. And you know what? That's decolonizing. That's. That's undoing the horrible past. Because if you think about Indigenous people, Canadian history reduced us to a lesser than status, that other people knew what we needed. Other people were going to make decisions for us, other people were going to raise our children. Stopping that requires that you see our opinion and our collaboration as equally as important as any other partner you bring into this conversation. And if we are not on the same level as those other partners and collaborators, then you're repeating Canadian history and you're effectively becoming part of the problem. If you see us as equals, which is really easy to say and harder to prove, then we should be at the table. Why would you consider doing something to your mom's house without asking her? Would you consider doing something to, you know, digging in your wife's purse without asking her first? Would you consider going into your teenager's room without saying, you know, do you mind? There's so many examples. When we value someone, we ask. So this is your chance to finish off this week proving. Proving that you value Indigenous people. And you do that by asking first, asking during the process, and asking afterwards. I don't think it's that difficult. I do it with my staff all the time. You can do it, too. I have faith in you. So that is another week of videos. What did you think? Were they valuable? Were they worth your time? I absolutely hope so. I hope you have a super duper double delicious weekend and I'll see you again on Monday. I love you. Take care. Bye. Bye.
