Unpacking the Titan Submersible - The PATH Podcast for June 23, 2023

Foreign. First they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. Bonjour, Mishko paganan kwei na dishna kasmang dodem. 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 my weekly podcast, the Path. Hopefully, through listening to my words, through doing some research or maybe even some unpacking, you will be able to move along with me on the path to reconciliation. Now, I don't know if you've ever heard me say the phrase creators showing off. And I'm using air quotes here. Creators showing off. It is the phrase. My audiences have definitely heard me say it. It's the phrase I use to describe those moments when pieces come together, puzzle pieces come together that, say, seem to be totally unrelated, but they come together and fit perfectly and you had nothing to do with it. And in my mind, in those moments, that's when Creator is showing he's got this, he's got it, and he's putting the things together that need to come together and that we are here to be part of that work. I share that with you because my plan plan was to talk about unpacking in this episode. It may or may not be a phrase you have heard before, and what it means to unpack is to look at or consider those things you have never considered before. Rather than just reacting to something or feeling a certain way about something or someone, you ask yourself, why am I having this reaction? Or why do I feel this way? That's unpacking. And I believe it is an incredibly powerful personal empowerment tool because it stops you from just mindlessly doing what the people before you have done. We've all My mom used to talk about the suitcase that you can imagine we all receive on the day we're born. And almost from the very first second, people start putting things into our suitcase. And the things in our suitcase include everything we see, everything we hear, everything and we experience and everything we taught and how we interpret those things. And we've all inherited crap from the people that raised us. And that's not a judgment against our parents because they inherited crap. And if they've never had the chance to unpack, this just continues. So for me, as a mom and a grandma, one of the best parts of unpacking is less shit gets passed on to my kids or grandkids, and excuse the expression for those that may be offended by that word. But the more I unpack, the more work I do, the more I use my adult brain to look at what I was taught about other people, about circumstances, about even my own abilities and limitations. The more I unpack that, the more I live an authentic life. And it, again, I have zero interest in any aspect of my life in judgment. It's about learning and becoming better. And that's just totally in line with the Nishta Bay teachings. So, as I mentioned this week, I wanted to talk about unpacking. And for me, when I think back on the things I had to unpack, it was a lot of behaviors and beliefs. For example, my mom was a very stereotypical indigenous woman. Like, you looked at her and you knew she was indigenous, as opposed to me, who confused the daylight set of people because of my fairness. And my mom was born in 1927. So my mom understood that her walking into a room with her indigenous dark skin offended some people, and she didn't bother to go to judgment of those people, which is why I love my mom so much. Instead, she just accepted that this was going to happen. And because as a human being, as the woman she was, she really hated offending people. She developed this habit of trying to be invisible. And me and my brothers, at one point in our younger years, we were laughing and commenting on, look, Mom's trying to be wallpaper again. And of course, we were innocent kids at the time. We didn't know what we were seeing or even what we were commenting on. But I do now. I recognize the internalized oppression. I recognize why or how and why she was trying not to take up space. And yes, it breaks my heart, but what in line with this unpacking conversation, what freaked me out? Because anyone who knows me knows I'm an outgoing, confident person. But when it came to so many new situations where I was with a new group of people or in a new place without thinking about it, and that's a key that that's something you probably need to unpack without thinking about it, I would consciously become or unconsciously become wallpaper. Until one day I realized, why aren't you doing this, Sandy? Like What? What? Why are you trying to hide in the background? You were invited here to use your voice. And I realized what I was doing. I was mimicking my mom. Again, no judgment. I know why she did what she did, but it does not fit in in my world. So I took it out of my suitcase. Now I had to unpack a lot of things. I had to unpack as a young woman, the belief that boys raised in houses with indoor plumbing wouldn't want to date me because I didn't and I assumed they would judge me. I built the wall. Now of course, did I meet some that fit that criteria? Absolutely I did. But believing they all do makes it a stereotype. And I know how devastating indigenous stereotypes have been to me. So I'm definitely not going to create them about other people. That's. Yeah, that's, that's another comment that I actually comment on in a blog post coming up this week. I had to unpack why so many people in my small little northern Ontario town couldn't understand why I wanted to leave town town, why I wanted to graduate high school and move away. I had to unpack why I thought affluent people and this, I gotta break into my own sentence here. Affluent to me was anyone who could afford more, could afford more than just the basics because my family was definitely paycheck to, to paycheck. I never felt poor. We had the essentials, but we definitely didn't have the extra. So affluent definitely wasn't a millionaire, was just someone with that nice house and nice car. And I had to unpack the belief that they would look down on me or not want to be my friend or whatever the case may be. And again, some did. Some fit them that stereotype, some did look down on me, but I had to unpack and realize I was assuming they all would. And that's a barrier, a wall that I built and I think the one and I've definitely shared it in seminar quite often the biggest one for me, I live in the city of Thunder Bay and I have, I don't want to do the math for over 30 years. And in 2004, thanks to some personal life circumstances, I actually chose to move to Toronto and I was there for five years and it changed my life and probably has a lot to do with why I have the career I now do. But while I was there I met non indigenous people of all different backgrounds who were genuinely interested in my Anishinaabe heritage. And I have to admit at first I thought they were setting me up for a bad joke. I thought they were kidding. I thought they were, you know, being condescending. And it didn't take long for me to realize their interest was authentic. And also didn't take me long to realize they had never heard of residential schools. They had no idea what Indigenous people were going through. And please don't judge them for not knowing. I think the not knowing is incredibly intentional. If there's one thing the Canadian government was amazing at, not only the complete oppression and inflicting violence on Indigenous people, but making sure no one else knew what they were doing. So they get points for that because they were definitely amazing at it. But after five years in Toronto, I realized, because you see, if you had asked me when I moved to Toronto, if you had asked me if there was any such thing as a non Indigenous person who cared two beans about what happens to Indigenous people, I would have told you you were nuts in the head that no such person existed. And then I went to Toronto and I met the people and I realized there's a huge difference between not knowing and not caring. And when I moved back to Thunder Bay in 2009, I felt like I wanted to run through the streets screaming out to all my Indigenous friends, it's not that they don't care. They don't know there was a huge, huge difference. And that unpacking has allowed me to be effective in my career because honestly, I wouldn't waste two seconds speaking to non Indigenous people if I thought they didn't care. I've always said I can work with I don't know. It's I don't care that scares me. And then a couple years ago, I guess if that long ago again unpacking, when I started doing seminars on how to create safe spaces and quickly realized that non Indigenous people need safe spaces to learn just as much as Indigenous people do. And I can honestly say that blew my mind. But non Indigenous people need safe spaces to be able to ask their air quotes here, quote, unquote dumb questions. They need to be able to ask a question and not be crucified if they don't know the proper terminology because no one's taught them the proper terminology. So again, unpacking changed everything. I had to unpack to have a better life. And I think in my humble opinion, a lot of people that live within Canadian borders have a lot of unpacking to do if we're going to make this country better and bring it together. And never was that more obvious than yesterday, which is where the creator, you're showing off part comes in because I don't know if you were glued to your news channel or to YouTube or whatever news station you follow to watch about the Titan sub and to see if the massive rescue efforts were going to be able to save those five people. And we know how it ended, and we know that they weren't able to save them and that five people lost their lives. But what I'm referring to is even before we knew the end results, and I've seen a few people comment on this, and I want to add in my two cents. Holy moly's. With the memes and the comments and the judgment. It was nauseating to see how many people were out there posting that these people were rich, that they had no business being there, that they were stupid to try this endeavor, that this exploring is just the privileged. And every single one I saw made me nauseous. And it reminded me of that poem I read at the beginning of this episode. Because if we're going to sit in judgment of other people, then we can't complain when they judge us. If we're going to be racist or classist or whatever type of prejudice you want to entertain. If you're going to be that way, then don't complain when they come after you. We can do better. It does you know what a debate for another day. We can debate whether they have the right to be there. But five people died. And if you want, as Anishinaabe kwe, if I want people to care about missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, then I need to care about when other groups lose people too. I can't expect what I'm not willing to give. And that's what I wanted to talk about. We have to unpack that crap. It's the same with racism, by the way. If you're racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, whatever, don't expect other people to care about the racism that's directed at you. If in the next section or a second you're gonna attack someone else, we need to break these chains. We need to be an example of a better way to do things. Because yesterday was ugly. I saw no empathy. I saw no compassion. And as Anishinaabe kwe, I ask for both of those on a regular basis when it comes to the plight of indigenous peoples living within Canadian borders. And I sure as hell can't ask for it if I'm not willing to give it. I hope that makes sense to you. I'm not sitting in judgment of you. I'm begging you to unpack that crap. We can do better. A life lost is a life lost as a life lost. And if you have an issue with people with money and they're just going to assume that they're horrible people, you need to unpack that. Because in my mind, there's nothing that's not any better than people judging those that are impoverished. It's classism and it's ugly. So thank you for creator, for bringing these puzzle pieces together. Thank you, creator, for giving me the opportunity to do this work and to have this podcast. Please, if you hear my words, share my words. Let's work together, because we all deserve a better Canada. Until next week. Take care. I love you. Miguet.