White People NEED Safe Spaces Too!

Oh, I got another one for you. Settler to settler reconciliation work. Settler descendants working with Settler descendants with no Indigenous people in the room. Is it worth the time invested? Does it change anything? I definitely have an answer for you. Let's talk about. 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. And I'm here talking all things Canadian Indigenous reconciliation because there's a whole bunch of missing information out there and there's confusing terms and there's people trying to work together and they want to hurt any Indigenous people. They don't want to say the wrong thing, but they're scared to move. So I'm here to kind of help with that. So today, as I mentioned in the opening, I wanted to talk about settler to settler reconciliation work. And this has come up several times over my career where, and you know what I think it is and correct me if I'm wrong. And this was actually an eye opening unpacking experience for me when I realized I'm going to backtrack for a sec. Indigenous people need safe spaces. That is a huge part of reconciliation. We need places everywhere where we can go and not be criticized or crucified for being Indigenous for being who we are. It was such an eye opening experience for me when I started working with non Indigenous Canadians and helping them to understand what we needed and what was going on. And all these crazy terms. White people need safe spaces too. That was mind blowing for me because I was meeting all of these people, heart in the right place, confused, didn't know, like, why is it so hard to be Indigenous? What's going on in their communities? I don't understand what these terms use. Why? What has this got to do with me? They had so many questions and no place to ask the questions, or worse, no place to get the answers. So my hashtag is I create safe spaces. That became my career. I created this bingo card of inappropriate terms and. And we have the best discussions over terms that people have used and don't understand why they're offensive. Well, now they know. My audience always end up with holy moly. I had no idea. I'm never saying that again. I think that might be at the root of Settler Settler reconciliation work comfort that they need a space to ask their questions without getting crucified to be able to say, I don't understand this. Someone please explain this to me and please don't judge me for it. And I so get That I don't want unsafe spaces for settlers. Two wrongs don't make a right. I don't ever want to do to settlers what was done to us. The that's ridiculous. I know how awful it feels. Why would I do that to someone else? So I understand where that might be coming from, that they need the safe space. But the question was, does this help? Do these sessions help? And my answer is unequivocally, no, it doesn't help. Largely because, for one, those seminars are centered on settler comfort. And reconciliation is uncomfortable. It involves having uncomfortable conversations. A safe space doesn't mean a comfortable space. A safe space means a place that's safe enough to have uncomfortable discussions. So if you're focused on, if you're a settler and you're focused on your comfort, you're thinking of the wrong people. You're trying to work with indigenous peoples. We've been uncomfortable since the settlers arrived. So gonna change that a bit. I have a handy dandy card again. I know you're surprised. 2. Just to simplify things a lot here, it's the blind leading the blind. If you don't know and they don't know, how is this going to help? If you have no idea why indigenous people are doing this, a room full of settlers is not going to give you that answer. Your time is valuable. Let's put you in a safe space where you can get the answers you need. So blind leading the blind, you're going to end up with guesswork at best. And guess what? So many of the problems we're experiences today is because of misunderstood misinterpretations. Miss. You know, you looked at our communities, for example, when the settlers arrived, they didn't see churches in our communities. They assumed we didn't have spirituality. That was a misinterpretation. That's what happens when one culture tries to interpret another culture without guidance. That's what's going to happen in a settler to settler discussion. So I just. You have a higher risk of perpetuating the problems than solving them. That I don't think that's what you want to do by having those sessions. And last but not least, exclusion is not reconciliation. It's part of the problem. If you want to learn how to work with indigenous peoples, find indigenous people to help you with that. Not the ones that are going to attack you. Not the ones that are going to judge you for not knowing. Not the ones that are unable or unwilling to do this work. Because trust me, I've had to do a lot of personal healing and preparation to be able to do this work. But you can't do it without us. The problem is everything in this country, the way it was set up was done without us. We were just pushed out of the way, marginalized, oppressed, squished of the way so Canada could happen. Excluding us from reconciliation discussions is more of the problem. And I know the people that are attending these sessions don't want to be part of the problem. They're trying to be part of the solution. You need a safe space with indigenous to guide you. Okay, I hope that made sense. Again, as always, comment below. I would love to hear what you think. If you have like a specific question, send me an email. I answer all of of them as quickly as I can. If I'm in seminar, that might take a while, but I hope that helped. I'm no, no on the settler to settler reconciliation work. Just know and even here's one last point that wasn't even on my card. Ever played the telephone game when you were a kid? You know, you sit in this room, maybe even as an adult icebreaker at a conference, you sit in the circle and the first person whispers into the ear of the second person like one sentence and they whisper around the circle and by the time you get to the end, the sentence is never the same as the original sentence. That's what happens when a settler chooses to go to another settler with Indigenous engagement experience and wants to learn from them rather than the Indigenous. Because no matter what that first settler, the one that was engaging with Indigenous people, whatever they learned when they tried to pass it on, it's going through their cultural lens. They're going to phrase it their way. And everything that was authentic when it came from the Indigenous is now getting changed and warped. They're not intentionally trying to change it. It's just going to happen because another culture is trying to say what we were saying. You should never be the Indigenous voice in your company, in your organization and your friend group. If you have access to Indigenous knowledge, what you should be doing is diverting all the people that are interested back to your source of knowledge. This is not. I'm sorry, but ego is playing into this. This is not about you being the one with all the knowledge, but you can be the one that knows where they can get the knowledge and can send them there. Give them the authentic teachings by giving them access to the person you learned from. So again, settler on settler reconciliation. Work hard, pass wasted time. We are literally right here. And for the ones who can and have done the work, able to do the work. Had the privilege of being able to do the healing work to do it. We're here to help you. Until next time. I love you. Take care. Bye Bye.