What made me sad, what stopped me in my tracks, and what I mean by "consider this". Watch & learn!

What are we talking about this week? We're talking about white centeredness. We're talking about people who have just discovered they're indigenous and what they shouldn't be doing. And we're talking about the benefits of being here. And that's not all. So check out this week's blog post review. 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 once again with a peek inside the members vault with this week's blog post review. Now, just a reminder, I share these blog posts on social media once and then they go into the vault. If you become a member of my membership, you have access to all of those blog posts, not only from this year, but last year. And those don't exist anywhere else and they're not going to either. So if you want that exclusive access, watch right to the end of the video. I'll tell you more about the membership at the end. But for now, let's look at this blog post review. And we are talking about the week April 24th to 28th to 2023. I almost said 2000. So yeah, no, Monday. The blog post was called Read Me. And it was all about white centeredness. And it, it happened because a friend of mine shared a video. And the video was of some black artists, musicians. They were talking about how they had unconsciously been producing music that would appeal to mainstream read, not black, read white. And how they realized what they were doing. And that's internalized oppression when you're putting yourself in a box. So what the one suggested was don't do that. Produce your music as you would honor your spirit, your soul, be you. And so I shared because by watching that video, I realized how many times I had been put in a box. Not this time. I wasn't highlighting the times I did it, and I've definitely done it, but the times. Like my editor, my first book, telling me that I needed to explain who elders were, their significance, because people wouldn't get that meaning. Non indigenous people. There were so many examples I shared in the blog post and I was blown away by how many times I was marginalized, not just as an overall reality, but in my face personally. So I just wanted to bring that up to the readers. And what kind of made me sad was to see how many people commented, just be you foreign. I'm sorry, that's like this close to condescending, if not all the way that is really easy to say when you have white privilege. And yes, I know how fair I am. I do have tons of white privilege. But that is so easy to say when you're not being marginalized. So we gotta quit it with those comments because they sound like you're minimizing what I'm trying to share. And what I'm trying to share is the reality for many people who. Who have not been heard when you say, just be yourself and minimize it, they're still not being heard. Okay, so that was Monday. That's the way to come out of the gate on the beginning of the week. On Tuesday, a special blog post about the newly found indigenous. And what I meant by that is it happens all the time. Just. I know some people. I know people that have just discovered their indigenous, whether they're Metis, First Nations, Inui, whatever the case may be. And these. But these people have been raised white, raised to have privilege, raised to have a voice, whatever the case may be. And they bring that into their indigenous knowledge. It's like the kindergarten student on their first date trying to teach the class, and they go out are. And they tend to be overcompensating. They are so angry. And I'm not saying indigenous don't have the right to be angry. Hang on a sec. They are so angry and outraged about injustices that they've never felt, we're going to ignore my phone. And they don't know the history. They don't know the knowledge. They don't have the life experience. They are just blowing smoke. And it is so frustrating for us who have walked the walk. So in this blog post, I'm just saying slow it down. Slow it down. And they know why they're doing it. They're scared stiff. You find out you belong to a group that a whole bunch of people love to hate. So you're going to scream from the rooftops that you're proud to be indigenous. So hopefully it shuts down the attacks before they happen. I get it. I so get it. But you got to learn what it means to be indigenous. You got to unpack. You got to decolonize. You got to go get those teachings that you were denied for so long. And I honor that. That you were denied. But park your butts and just slow it down until you know what it means, because you need the teachings. And not just. You don't speak of the trauma without speaking of the resilience. Our elders warn us of that all the time. You haven't learned the resilience part. Part yet. So just a heads up, feel free to share that with whoever. Well, I guess you could share it if you saw it on social media, but encourage people to go to my membership. Seriously, how can you say you're serious about reconciliation if you're not willing to pay $19 a month to have an ongoing education? And if you pay the annual rate, it's $16 a month. Right around 16. So again, more at the end of the video on Wednesday. Holy moly's. This one actually stopped me in my tracks for a second. I'm going to acknowledge and admit that on the weekend. I did a seminar last weekend, obviously, and it was mentioned to me that some extremists, and I'm not saying everyone here, I'm acknowledging their extremists were saying that it's not reconciliation, it's retaliation. There was so much to unpack in that one sentence. And I go through all of that in the blog post. I'm not going to reiterate that here, but the one thing I loved right at the end of the blog post, I pointed out, wait a minute, if you think we're going to retaliate, that means you're acknowledging you did something wrong or what else would we be retaliating against? And for these extremists to acknowledge that what they're fearing is that we're going to do to them what they did to us, maybe you should stop doing that to us. Just saying that one's definitely worked. There's so much to unpack with that statement. So many things that need to be understood. That's a blog post worth checking out. Thursday the 27th. Now, that post was like three weeks incoming. Every now and then I see a post on social media from someone that belongs to another marginalized group, LGBTQIAP or black or whatever the case may be. And often as a marginalized person, I read it and go, wow, that could so easily apply to the Canadian Indigenous in Canada experience. But can I say that I know I feel it. Should I deny my feelings? Well, that's not going to happen. That's not authentic. But can I say that? And after pondering it for a long time, that's what unpacking is. When I ask you to sit with something, that's what I mean. Three weeks I sat with this. So don't think I'm asking you to do something I never do. I do it all the time. It's an Indigenous practice, Anishinaabe practice. I finally came to the realization that, no, I can relate to the post. I just can't type that because if I were to say that same for us on the thread, that's taking away and distracting that deflecting to another group and totally ignoring the group that the post was about. And I can share that post, but again, if I put in the header that this applies to us to, I'm taking the focus off the group that was trying so desperately to be heard and focusing it on indigenous people. So in that post I shared that I'm going to be sharing a lot of those because I think there's a lesson to be learned in each one, even if it's just a reminder that we're not the only marginalized, hurting people. And I think it's a call out to the indigenous people reading those posts. We recognize that pain. We know what that feels like. Why would we not be allies with them? My answer, of course we're going to be allies with them. Like we can't if marginalized, stuck together, we would get some stuff done. Last but not least. Now, this one was interesting. Isaac Murdoch. I shared it on my page ages ago. He was being goofy, he was being a smarty pants and he wanted to do an acknowledgement that he's on Mark Zuckerberg's territory and was his territory, as in Mark Zuckerberg's one, first point and two, that he received benefit from being there. And I was like, holy crap. That is exactly what our land acknowledgments have been missing. Those who do land acknowledgments, just acknowledging that this is our traditional territory without acknowledging it's still our territories is not. Is problematic. It's not a step towards reconciliation. Further, if you're not acknowledging that you benefit from being here, that you have a job and a voice and in the political system you can vote, they actually listen to you because they're your political party. The fact that you can practice your faith, something that was denied us, we couldn't practice our culture and traditions, you can acknowledge that because in acknowledging the benefits, you acknowledging the hardships that are still faced by us today. So if you're going to do a land acknowledgement, make sure it acknowledges the benefits you receive from being here, the benefits so often denied to us. So there you have it. That is the quality of the blog posts that are in my membership. You want to understand reconciliation. You, you want to be an active part, whether you're indigenous or non, because there's a lot of indigenous pride in my membership. There's no attack for the non Indigenous People worrying. There's no attack. I have no interest in shame or guilt, never have. But I'm not going to minimize the reality either. It's an educational process, one that you can take at your pace. You check off every time you read a blog post. You can leave it unchecked to come back and read it again, whatever the case may be. And you can take the time to ponder what you need. So more on the membership coming up now. I hope you enjoyed this week's blog post review and I'll see you next week. I love you. Take care. Bye bye.

Hello again, you amazing person, you. Sandy Boucher once again coming in on my own video to tell you all about my brand new all inclusive membership program.

Program.

And seriously, if you like any part of my work, whether it's the blog posts and my writing style, my seminars, my speeches, my courses, you are going to want to be part of this. I mean, look at everything it includes. It includes my 2023 blog post that I'm reviewing in this video. It includes all of the blog posts from 2022 that you can't get anywhere else. And the best part, look at this. You get to read whichever one you want in whatever order you want based on the day, based on the title. It's totally up to you. You check it off as read and come back as often as you want. Talk about honoring your path and you doing this your way. On top of that, the entire 52 steps to reconciliation video set is available in the membership again only place you can find it. And again, watch it in whatever order you want to. There's courses, the path, the path away from lateral violence, missing pieces, and even a day that can change everything. That includes so many of the teachings.

That I live my life by.

And if something comes up in your workplace, maybe you need to bop into one of my courses to review one of the lessons again. Watch them in the order that you need and there's PDFs for you to download. This is everything I've got and it gets updated on a regular basis and it doesn't affect how much you pay. So how much do you pay? Well, $19 a month. That's a lot of content for $19 a month there when you need it at your fingertips or pay the annual rate and you save any more, even more. And if you want it for your staff or group, well, I have a price for that too. I am here to support you in any way I can and this membership fits the bill. I can't wait to see you in the all inclusive membership.