The Story of the Woman Who Created ME!

Bonjour. Mishko Pocanon Kwei Nadishnikas Magn Dodem. Hi, everybody. It's Sandi 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 shouldn't have said I'm here because I'm not really here. This is an illusion. Me and my team are actually on winter break right now. But there was no way I was leaving, leaving you without content. I value you way too much to do that. Today I have a special sharing with you because today it's another clip from the keynote that I did for the Canadian Nursing Students Association. This time I'm sharing my mom's story with you. And I know so many of you have been so fascinated by, some of you are even in love with my mom. And I absolutely, absolutely love that I can understand how it happened. Here's my mom's story, what she faced. And it'll help you realize how absolutely amazing she is. The fact that she didn't let her past change how beautiful she was. Let's talk about it.

Now that we understand why stories are important. I want to share some tonight's story with you. And tonight's story is about my mom. That's my mom and me looking. Wow, I was 17 in that picture. That's like almost 40 flipping years ago. Wow, that's a long time ago. But that's my mommy, Alma Lorraine Boucher. She was a beautiful Anishinaabe Kwe from Kuchaqing, first nation in Northern Ontario. She was funny and loving and caring. But one of the things she was incredibly embarrassed about was the fact that she was uneducated. You see, my mom was born in 1927. Her mom had very little education and her dad didn't want to send his daughters to school. My mom had eight sons, sisters, and one brother. And my uncle went to school, but the daughters stayed at home. At 14 years of age, my mom used to tell the story that what was then called a truant officer showed up at the door and informed my grandpa that if he didn't send the girls to school, they were going to be taken away. My mom, at the age of 14, got sent to kindergarten. She didn't talk about that time in her life very much because there was only two things she would share with us. One, that she was taller than her teacher, and two, that she didn't quite fit into the little tiny desk. Every time my mom shared that, you could see the shame and embarrassment come over her face. And even though she was definitely daddy's little girl and adored her dad, she always held this almost hatred for him, for him not sending her to school. It took years for me to realize that she was able to maintain all of her amazing wisdom because she didn't go to school until she was 14, because she stayed at home and all she was surrounded with were our teachings. But eventually, my mom became an adult, got married, had us children, and my mom believed she had one mission in life and in her words, it was to give us, her children, everything we would need to go on without her. My mom would remind us that one day she wasn't going to be here to figure out our problems, to encourage us, to support us, and that the sooner we learn to do that for ourselves, the better. But my mom never forgot her lack of education. And when we were much younger, she started to get worried that she wouldn't be able to help us, that. That she wouldn't be able to help us do our homework or that we'd start using words that she didn't understand and we'd be left behind. Education has long been a divider in indigenous families, and she didn't want to see that happen in ours. So now I'm about to share my age with you. And for the younger people in the group, you're just going to have to trust me on this one. But back in the day before the Internet, you used to be able to sign up to what we called book clubs. And I guess it's kind of like Audible, except in book form, and Columbia House and Doubleday. And you could sign up to these book clubs, choose what kind of books you liked, and every single month, a new book would arrive in the mail. For my mom, if you had ever come to the home I was raised in, we had a huge living room, but on two of those walls, one of the longest walls and one of the short ones was this L shaped bookcase, floor to ceiling, filled with books. And every single one of us, me and my brothers, knew the role. The book did not go on the shelf until my mom had read it. My mom had a grade four education. It wasn't until after she passed away that I put those two puzzle pieces together that I realized this woman with a grade four education had read all those books. She really had an uncomfortable feeling about formal education, but but she knew the value of education. She decided to homeschool herself with her dictionary and her books. As I mentioned, my mom was funny, articulate, wise, Strong, beautiful in so many ways. At home, my dad was French. I was incredibly young when I noticed for the first time that the world seemed to treat mom differently than they did. Dad. And the mom I knew at home disappeared as soon as we left the yard. Whether we were going grocery shopping or picking up school clothes to start a new school year, it seemed like as soon as we left the yard, my mom tried to disappear. My brothers and I used to laugh and say, look, she's trying to become wallpaper again. Which meant she was trying to blend into the background. Because my mom understood that her mere presence, the look of her face, offended some people. We laughed at that as children. As an adult woman, I realize it's not funny at all. At the age of 72, my mom had struggled with high blood pressure most of her life. But at the age of 72, my mom received a diagnosis that scared the daylights out of her. My mom was told she was diabetic, and to my mom that was almost a day death sentence. So she did something that she never did. My mom was a huge fan of letting us walk our own path and make our own decisions. She never demanded anything of us. But all of a sudden, out of the blue, one day, me and all of my brothers got a call that we had to show up at my mom's apartment at six o' clock that night. We kind of all arrived at the same time in the parking lot and we were all saying the same thing, like, what in the world's going on? Mom has demanded our presence before, like what in the world? We walked into her little apartment and it's one of those, you have to go through the little galley kitchen and in the kitchen were these boxes of food my mom had received her diabetic diet. What she could eat and what she couldn't eat. And in true stubborn style, and only my mom could do it, she went through her cupboards, pulled out everything that wasn't on that diet plan, and was instructing us to get it out of her house. She didn't care whether we ate it or gave it away. She was no longer allowed to eat it. My mom was allowed to have 6 ounces of orange juice first thing in the morning. She went out and bought six ounce glasses to make sure that she didn't overdo what she was allowed. And my 72 year old mother started walking for 45 minutes twice a day. She had struggled with her weight her entire life, but suddenly, after six months, they canceled her knee surgery because she had lost so much weight. She didn't need it anymore. Her high blood pressure medication had to be adjusted because she was so much smaller. For five years, my mom controlled her diabetes only with diet and exercise. No medication at all. But eventually, things started changing. Readings weren't what they were supposed to be, so we ended up back at the doctor's office more often than the norm. And now, looking back at this part, this is the part that almost breaks my heart. And it's the part I so wanted to share with you guys tonight. We would be in the doctor's office, and the doctor would ask in the sweetest, caring, most supportive way, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the doctor's behavior. And he would ask my mom, what's wrong? And you could bet on the answer. The answer was always, nothing. Nothing. Nothing's wrong. If they asked, what's the issue, Alma? What's going on? Why are you here?

Nothing.

Nothing's wrong. Even though she had just finished telling me all the things that were going wrong in the face of the doctor, the answer was nothing. Now, if you don't understand why my mom was scared. My mom was scared of the judgment. She was scared of being told she was doing something wrong, that she wasn't living her life properly, that she hadn't followed instructions. It's that judgment that indigenous people, people know all too well. And why it almost broke my heart was the fact that her fear was so great that she was willing to put her health at risk. Rather than admit things weren't going right. She'd rather just say, nothing was wrong.