Sandi L Boucher recounts a personal story explaining the cultural and emotional significance of a pair of over-50-year-old earrings that belonged to her mother. She frames storytelling as an Indigenous pedagogical practice and describes how the earrings were gifted by women from Lac Sewell First Nation—an exchange tied to gratitude toward her father—and how it took years for her mother to embrace and wear them, making them meaningful family heirlooms.
Chapters
I wanted to share a story with you, which I think I want to do more often or as part of future videos, because that is how so many indigenous nations educated their children. Rather than teacher student hierarchy. It was sharing a story. And in the story was the information the child needed. And it's just such a beautiful way to teach without centering anyone out or causing stress. It's just sharing a story. So I'm sharing the story because of the earrings I'm wearing. And for indigenous people watching this, you might have thought, oh, wow, that's a very traditional style. And that's because these earrings are over 50 years old. They belong to my mom. And I remember the day she was gifted them. My mom did not do traditional beadworks. We were on the main street of our tiny hometown and Lac Sewell First Nation was across the lake. And often they would come in by boats to shop for groceries, whatever the case may be. Now there's road access. There wasn't at that time. And I remember there were two or three indigenous women, same age, same shade as my mom. I don't know where they were going or what they were doing, but they saw my mom and they said hi to her and she smiled at them. And one of the women said that she had something for my mom, which my mom was really super surprised. And she gifted her these earrings and went as far as saying it was because of my dad. And my dad is always so super friendly to them and welcoming and always made them smile with how friendly he was. And as a thank you, they wanted to gift mom these earrings that they had made. And I remember thinking this was such a beautiful exchange. But I also picked up on something else which so totally plays into my modern day work. One of the women, there was three of them, so one that was doing the talking, another one that was standing next to her very enthusiastically smiling, and a third one that was a little further back. And just the way she looked at my mom. Now, my mom would have been dressed nicely, not extravagantly, we didn't have money, but always dressed nicely. And these women were dressed more, I want to say, more traditionally for an unreserved community. She looked like she felt sorry for my mom. That's what I picked up on. And I pick up on those kind of things. And at the time it didn't make sense to me. But now I think my mom would have looked very colonized. Beautiful, but beautiful by my standards any day of the week. I don't care what she was wearing, but she definitely was dressed more like a settler than an indigenous person living in a community. And I believe that part of the reason of gifting her earrings was allowing her to celebrate that she was indigenous. And it took years, not only for my mom to be proud and comfortable with being indigenous, but to wear the earrings. So when she passed, I was thrilled to inherit them and wear them with pride. Just wanted to share that with you.
