Sandi L Boucher speaks about lateral violence within Indigenous communities—gossip, bullying, passive-aggressive comments—and argues it is a colonialized tactic that keeps people "small," limiting joy, success, and political power. She describes delivering a lateral violence seminar at Fort William First Nation and strategic planning with the Indigenous Domestic Violence Committee in Thunder Bay, and calls on Indigenous people to unpack internalized messages and on non-Indigenous people to recognize how Canadian systems (e.g., frequent elections under the Indian Act, token consultation) sustain marginalization. The tone is direct, reflective, and action-oriented.
Okay, so this is part of the full video or I guess it's going to be Wednesday's part. So if you follow me on social media, so specifically, I guess it would be not threads, Facebook, LinkedIn. Oh, Instagram, I guess is the other place that I post every single morning. And last week I shared that I had two different events. I had two full day events back to back. So Tuesday I did a lateral violence seminar with the some of the amazing men and women that dedicate their time, energy and expertise to Fort William First Nation. And then on Wednesday I worked with the the Non Manuan Domestic Violence Committee, Indigenous Domestic Violence Committee here in the city of Thunder Bay with their strategic planning. In other words, I had two days of meeting violence head on and discussing it and dealing with the ramifications and talking about solutions. I love my job, so. But what. When I was preparing for the lateral violence session specifically, you may have seen that post where I'm paraphrasing my own words here now, but it said something along the lines of that ending lateral violence in our communities is the first step to healing and decolonization. Because personally, if I don't care how well you dance at powwow or how well you speak your language, that's all well and good, but if you're still describing destroying your own through gossip, I'm not impressed. So upgrading designing that seminar really made me realize that lateral violence in all its forms, the gossiping, the bullying, the passive aggressive comments, lateral meaning coming from someone at your same level, it may be your boss, but same community, that kind of thing, or another family member, whatever. The lateral violence is designed to keep you small. It is making fun of you when you get the A. And I've heard so many indigenous students talking about that, it is you get the job promotion and someone else says it's no big deal or to quit bragging. And in that instant, you pull back your joy and you hide your success. Excuse me. Of course I'm gonna yawn. This is ridiculous. But I was thinking about that and all the different ways that in our jokes, our passive aggressive joking, that we succeed in keeping our own small. And my brain instantly went to, well, who wants to keep us small? And instantaneously the voice in my head said, well, du Canada, because Canada, like, as long as we keep fighting each other, we're not going to have the strength that we could have to take on the issues with Canada. And what I want to invite you to do today, I do not want you arguing that in the comments. I don't even need you agreeing with it. What I want you to do is sit with it. If you're Indigenous, I need you to unpack all of those messages and comments you've heard and believed, never realizing they're just lateral violence. It's just an attempt, our own attacking our own. They're not true. It's part of colonization, right? It's, it's trauma bonding. It's our own identifying with or trying to identify with the power of the oppressor. It's not true. So you can put that BS down. And for the non Indigenous watching this, I need you to really sit and look at Canada and look at all the ways they keep Indigenous people small to eliminate our political power. Did you know that we have elections every two years in our community communities. Thank you, Indian Act. And that is to keep us in a state of political unrest that either you're brand new or campaigning. It's ridiculous. And that wasn't our doing. That's Indian Act. The times when we are consulted, when we say we want to be at the table, that means we need to be sitting with you before the decision is made, before solution is suggested. Don't bring the solution to us and ask our opinion. We should be in on the development of that. And if we don't agree with you, and that's something else that came up this week, I'm now referring to fake bridges. It's the youth stage of the path to reconciliation. Remember baby stages where everything's new and you're just starting to learn about Canadian history and all the oppressive tactics. Youth stage is where the phrase a little bit of knowledge is dangerous really applies because I see this, and intent is not required to cause harm. It doesn't matter that you didn't mean to hurt anyone. You can still hurt someone. And if you did, you got to own that intent is not required to hurt someone. But what I'm seeing is so many people have a little bit of knowledge and then come up with some great idea to support Indigenous people. And so often that idea is going to cause harm and it's because they had a little bit of knowledge, right? So I need you to look at all the ways that Canada is continuing to oppress Indigenous people. And one of the ways is they ask our opinion of something, we give our opinion, we usually get interrogated for that opinion. And I use that word deliberately because it's not just questions. If you ask someone their opinion, that's their opinion. You can ask for clarification, but that's not what we get. We get argument. And then so often what we say is dismissed because we just don't know what we're talking about. It's contrary to the back to back teaching, which I'll talk about later in this video or later in the week, depending on how you're consuming this. But we got to do better because this lateral violence is ridiculous and it's intentional. As indigenous people, we got to quit siding with Canada to harm U.S. and Canada. If you can work on quitting the oppression of us, that would be amazing. I know that's probably not happening, but a girl can dream. So that's the second topic on lateral violence and keeping us small and why Canada sees the benefit in that. On to the next. Last.
