Sandi L Boucher responds to being told "you were never Indian to me" by explaining why claiming not to see Indigenous identity is a privilege. She shares a high school reunion story and describes the defensive wall Indigenous people maintain as survival, urging non-Indigenous viewers to understand and earn trust.
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So if you're a non indigenous Canadian or a non Indigenous person, and you consider yourself a friend or an ally to Indigenous people, and you've ever uttered the phrase, but I never thought of you as Indigenous or Indian or Ojibwe or Anishinaabe or whatever word you want to use, you were just a friend to me, then you need to watch this video. And if you're indigenous watching this, you're probably going to get a kick out of watching this video because I'm pretty sure what I have to say is going to resonate with you. Maybe you've even tried explaining this to other people. Today. I'm going to take a shot at it. Let's talk about it. Hi everybody. My name is Sandy Boucher. Red. 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 today I'm talking about the September 12, 2023 blog post that was called but yout Were Never Indian to Me. So to give you some context, some backstory here, recently I had the chance to go back to the small Northern Ontario municipality that I was born and raised in. And through a series of events, synchronicity, meant to be coincidence, whatever you want to call it, I ended up having the opportunity to chat with two people that I went to high school with that were from the same hometown that essentially I grew up with. And both conversations were absolutely amazing. It made the trip so, so absolutely phenomenal. But this blog post centers on the second conversation and Brad and I had an amazing time. I totally enjoyed the conversation. We reminisced about the good old days. We talked about all we've achieved since then. We talked about what our lives look like now. And then, in this very authentic, heart touching moment, Brad simply looked at me and said, but you were never Indian to me. You know that, right? And he used the word Indian, I believe, on purpose, with all the negative connotation that goes with it, because that was his point. He was trying to say that he never looked at me and he referred to my best friend who's also Indigenous, also grew up in the same small town. He was referring to us and the point that he never saw us as less than he never saw us as Indian. He saw us as friends living in the same small town that went to high school with him. And I kind of just looked at him and I appreciated the comment, but my response was, but you realize we never forgot you were white, right? And in that moment, I believe it Clicked for him. We continued the conversation a little bit more. But my point was to not see someone else's color is a benefit of privilege. You don't have to, so you have that luxury. You can whitewash everyone and it doesn't matter. But as long as our experiences are totally different, it very much matters to us. And for an Indigenous person in Canada, we don't ever forget if you're non Indigenous because it minimizes the chance you can inflict harm on us. We're going to look at you as non indigenous and assume there's a whole bunch about us you won't understand. Really good chance. Maybe we're wrong as we get to know you and we realize your experiences. But as a general rule, as a survival mechanism, we realize we have different worldviews, we come from different places, even though we're both born within Canadian borders. And I'm saying that today so that all the people that are tempted to use that phrase realize we can't forget who you are because you and your structures and your ancestors have inflicted and continue to inflict incredible harm on Indigenous peoples. And until that changes, we have to tread carefully. I've talked about my defensive wall before where it kind of just hovers when I'm walking in someplace new or meeting someone new. And if I get that vibe from you that you're very respectful and opening, you may know nothing about Indigenous people, but if your humility is showing, I'm going to lower my wall. I'm going to realize with you I'm safe, this is safe space. But if you say that off colored joke or you mention go into a whole diatribe of what you know about indigenous people, the wall is going a lot higher. Or it might just hover in the middle until I figure out who you are and who we are together. So it may be all well and good that you don't see us as Indigenous, but then you are choosing to deny what our experience within these borders is. We need you to understand that. We need you to understand why we're not just going to jump on the train of being your best bud or working with you because we don't know if we can trust you yet. So you may not think of me as indigenous, but if you're non indigenous, I'm definitely chalking up that fact until I'm certain that I no longer have to. I hope that makes sense to you. Don't judge. Try to understand. Until tomorrow. I love you. Take care. Bye Bye.
