What Can an Individual Do to Advance Reconciliation?

What can you do as an individual to help advance reconciliation? Often we're talking about what you can do as a corporation or as a business, a municipality, even a nonprofit group. But what can you as an individual do? That's what we're talking about today. And the one thing you shouldn't do, even Blue knows you shouldn't. Let's talk about it. 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, Canada. And I'm on the road. I am not sitting comfortably in my office while you're watching this. I'm actually on the road, heading back to my office. So I have two more very practical videos for you. And then it's going to be time to release the next episode of our podcast. So it's going to be an amazing week. Now, as I mentioned in the opening, I wanted to talk about today about what an individual can do. Not a business, corporation, not even a small business, not a group, an individual. And they did mention there's one thing you totally shouldn't do. And that's kind of what resulted in the handout I'm going to be referencing for the next two videos. So to give you the backstory, some context here, a while ago, several years ago now, pre Covid, a group, a local group here in the city of Thunder Bay, where I live, reached out to me. And this was a group that was educating participants on how to become leaders. And they invited me to speak to reconciliation work. And what could an individual do to advance reconciliation? All of that is amazing. If you have the power to be able to invite that kind of speaker to speak before your group virtually or live, please do. That is huge. That is amazing. The problem I was given 10 minutes to talk about national reconciliation, to talk about how we undo 150 plus years of harm and oppression. Now, if you know me, I'm up for a good challenge. I don't shy away from that. So I thought, how do I make an impact in 10 minutes? And what I did was came up with a handout and every single one of them got a copy. So even if they didn't have enough time to really consider it while I was speaking, the hope was that they would take the handout and consider the points after I had gone. Now, this video is probably going to be longer than the 10 minutes I was given. So that you don't want to do. If you're going to take a step and try to discuss or engage with anything to do with reconciliation, please give it the time it warrants or at least more than 10 minutes. So if you are not aware, maybe you thought of something when I said I live in the city of Thunder Bay, I travel across Canada and people across Canada know the name of this city because it is known for its anti Indigenous racism. Even though many non Indigenous here would still deny that and say it's an unfair reputation. I can tell you as a white presenting Indigenous person, it's horrific. So the title of this handout is what can we do as individuals to move forward so that all Indigenous peoples people have a positive experience as residents or visitors in the city of Thunder Bay. And that's a huge part of reconciliation work. Feeling accepted and welcome on our own traditional territories. Now this was specific to the city of Thunder Bay, but this literally applies anywhere. And since it's about individuals, you could so easily be that individual. So I'm going, there's 10 points, I'm going to run through them and let's see how far we get. I'm probably going to touch on five today and five tomorrow and then that'll take us. May 1st will be the podcast and by May 2nd and 3rd I will be back once again speaking to current affairs or topics of interest. So thank you for sticking with me while I did my road trip and went off to help amazing people trying to do good things. So what can we do as individuals? Number one, I'm going to read it out and then I'll expand on it. Number one, in a time when so many feel powerless, responsibility is power. Own that. Making people welcome here is a responsibility we all carry. So there's a couple things there to unpack. 1. Responsibility is the antidote to hopelessness or helplessness. Helplessness. Responsibility is the antidote to helplessness. So any single time, let's do it in reverse. Any single time you're feeling absolutely helpless, the path out is what can I do? What is within my control, what isn't I can't touch, but what is within my control. And then doing that, taking the responsibility to do that. Once you take the responsibility, you no longer feel helpless. So you're out of money, unexpected bill, hint, your car broke down. Whatever the case may be, you're totally out of money, you're feeling totally helpless. What can I do? I can go for a walk to clear my mind. I can take some time to play with my children or grandchildren and focus on building a healthy relationship with them because that has nothing to do with My bank account. I can make sure to eat something healthy out of my cupboards. Not ordering food so I'm not making my situation worse. I can go to bed early and get a sullen sleep because this is going to take all of my clarity and I won't be able to concentrate and deal with this if I'm exhausted. Responsibility is the antidote to helplessness. The other part was that we are all carrying that responsibility. That's the social contract that I talk about so often. If you don't care about other people and you don't care about how you treat them and you want to be able to say whatever garbage you want to say, then you need to go live on an island by yourself. You don't want to be part of society or behave like you're a part of society, then don't be part of a society. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. If you are part of this society, then I'm sorry, Part of that is behaving like a person that belongs to the society, carrying the responsibilities to support and encourage and at least get along and not attack each other. Point number one, definitely going to take two videos to do this. Point number two, own your privilege. No, your experience is not the experience. Take the quiz. And of course I'm talking about Peggy McIntosh's unpacking the invisible Knapsack quiz. It's available online. You go through it, it's what, 25, 26, 27 statements that she wrote, realizing they were her truth as a white woman. And the idea is you go through and you check off how many apply to you. And then I always encourage people to go through the list and imagine living as a person who can't check. Yes to all of those points. And now you understand what it's like to be marginalized. So understand cultural lens. Like here in the city of Thunder Bay, a lot of people love to highlight just what an absolute beautiful city this is. That, you know, just the landscape is absolutely amazing. We live in the beautiful northern Ontario and it is gorgeous here. But that is often the view of the privileged who can be out on the lake in their boats or they're on their ATVs out hunting in the bush or whatever the case may be. It's a totally different reality to be indigenous in the city, especially if you're indigenous and impoverished. I've long said there are two entirely different cities. So just because it looks amazing to you doesn't mean it looks amazing to everyone. That's the back to back teaching. Yes. The way you see it is right for you, but you don't see the entire room. And I see things you can't see. You see things that I can't see. But when we come together, share and actually believe each other, it's when we can finally both see the entire room. So own your privilege, know your truth is not the truth, and take the quiz number three. Know that choosing to do nothing or to stay silent is a great example of your privilege. Others can't take their skin off. A dark skinned indigenous person being treated horrifically in a store or in a restaurant cannot choose to be lighter just to get better behavior. And if you're in there and they're not treating you like that and they're treating you better and you don't say anything, you are enjoying your privilege and officially, in that moment, become part of the problem. I am white presenting indigenous person and you can bet I speak up every single time. I am speaking up for my family members who would experience that because they're darker, including my son. Silence is acceptance. Do not even waste my time saying that you want to be part of reconciliation. If you're not speaking up, that's just reality. Sorry about that. I had to take a second to get rid of a very pushy salesperson. My phone went off and it was someone and they presented the product they were selling. I explained to them I was quite happy with the product I'm using and they acted like I said nothing and just kept talking. And at that part, at that point I hung up. Because if you can't respect me enough to hear my voice, I'm not going to respect you enough to stay on the phone. I have time and things to do. Whether you want to respect that or not. That's called healthy boundaries. But back to what I was talking about. Point number four, be an ally. While understanding that ally in this context is a verb, not a noun. Take action and in brackets it says shut up, listen, do only what is asked. So once again, someone packing here, the grammatical people out there are freaking saying, no, ally is a noun, it's not a verb. What we're trying to say is ally is not a job description. It's not a job title. It's not something you put on your business card or on your name tag. Sorry, you, you are an ally when you are in action, when you are introducing the person to an indigenous leader, when you are sharing an indigenous message without adding to it, when you're bringing indigenous people to a meeting that they hadn't been invited to but you know they should be there. There's so many ways you can be an ally. And the one thing is, if you're an ally to a group and they recognize you as such, you should never self identify as an ally. No humility there. But if a group identifies you as an amazing ally, for one, that's a huge compliment. Kudos to you, pat on the back. But that does not make you an ally to every person belonging to a group like that group. So if you're an amazing ally to a First Nation, don't come up to me and introduce yourself as an indigenous ally. Because when you say that, you're telling me I can bring my defensive wall down. I'm safe with you. I'm not going to do that just because you say that. That is something that I'm going to decide to do based on your actions, not your words, your actions. You may prove to be an amazing ally to me, but that is not something that is just automatically assumed. So humility teaching, that's the first part. The other thing, now you can google this. There are so many articles out there on how to be an amazing ally. One of the best I ever found was like three quick points. Shut up, Listen. Do only what is asked. You want to know how to be an ally? Shut up, be quiet. Listen to the group you're trying to be an allyship with. Listen to what they say. And when they ask us and say we need people to do something, that is the only thing you do. You do not add to it, you do not expand it. That's your privilege talking. You do only one is asked. So shut up, listen, do only what is asked. That's how to be an amazing ally. But even then you wouldn't introduce yourself as an ally. You would do the action. This is not about words. Last but not least for today, we're definitely going to do the other five tomorrow. Educate yourself on what internalized oppression is and what it looks like. Recognize the three ways humans react to long term oppression when you see it. Violence, acquiescence, non violent resistance. So just to review this, internalized oppression is what happens to an individual who belongs to a marginalized group, an oppressed group that has been oppressed for a long period of time. What happens is that oppression, all those stereotypes and that judgment is internalized. So the person starts to believe the stereotypes about themselves and their own people. They are putting up barriers, stopping them, holding them back before anyone else does this. And what's most important about this is understanding that there are three natural human reactions to oppression or internalized oppression. That is violence. That is the yelling and screaming. That is the bullying. That is the physical violence violence. That's the lateral violence, the domestic violence. Like there's so many forms. There's the acquiescence, the complete and total giving up. And then there's the nonviolent resistance. The people who decide, I'm not, I'm going to break the stereotype. I'm going to prove that doesn't apply to me. What is most important about this is not knowing the academic definition. It's being able to recognize, recognize it. That indigenous youth that is isn't bothering going to school. That is internalized oppression. They don't believe they can succeed or they don't believe it's going to change anything for them. That's what you need to resolve. It is the indigenous parent not sending their child to school because it didn't change anything for them. It's the indigenous employee never bothering to bid for a job because they don't really believe they can do it. And it is the homeless, intoxicated person on the street who thinks, why bother? So instead of judgment, it is educating yourself and knowing what you're looking at. Those are the first five things that an individual can do to move us closer to reconciliation. Tomorrow I'll share the final five. I can't wait to hear what you think. Comment below. I love you. Take care. Bye bye.