Community Inclusion

Recognizing and understanding privilege can be a hard pill to swallow for some. It means admitting you’re not perfect and possibly “looking bad,” which we were all taught growing up not to do.

In today’s episode, host Calan Breckon unpacks some of the hard questions around community inclusion with guest Raymond Jordan Johnson-Brown and the work they do as an indigenous wellness leader. Raymond, who uses they/them pronouns, is passionate about creating connections for marginalized groups and having courageous conversations around these sometimes hard topics.

Together they explore questions like…

  • How do you think people are “missing the mark” when it comes to inclusivity for racialized folks?
  • How has your lived experience inspired your work?
  • What is intersectionality?
  • What are some of the ways the queer community has contributed/participated in systems of harm?
  • What could a path forward look like to create an equitable world?

By the end of this episode, you’ll have a better understanding of how you can be more courageous about getting uncomfortable and having those sometimes difficult conversations around inclusivity.

Follow Raymond on Instagram: @TheOnlyRJJB

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Transcripts

All right. Welcome to gay men going deeper, a podcast about personal development, sexuality, and mental health. Today I’m your host Calan Breckon. And I am joined by a very special guest. Raymond Jordan Johnson-Brown. Raymond uses they/them pronouns is a two-spirited genderless, queer, ethnic anomaly ignited by the opportunity to work towards collective healing through courageous conversations.

They’re a leader in indigenous wellness and are passionate about creating community connections from, for marginalized groups. Today, we’re going to be talking about all sorts of amazing things, but the main point is going to be community inclusion. This podcast and YouTube channel are listener and viewer supported. If you enjoy what we’re creating, you can support us by subscribing to the early access option on apple podcasts and gain early access to new episodes.

All your support helps us to continue making great content for you and supporting the community. And we thank you in advance. So welcome to the show, Raymond. So happy to have you. Thank you for joining us. No, thank you for having me. I’m always excited by the opportunity to have deeper conversations. And I think that’s as queer folks,

we don’t necessarily always go into the deeper stuff. And so I’m really valuable that you have this I’m really grateful that you have this big Amazing. Well, thank you. I’m very excited to dive into the conversation with you today. So how about we start off with who you are and a little bit of your history and the work that you do. Yeah,

that’s a great, who am I? That’s a question to myself every day when I wake up, who am I today? Who am I showing up as? And how am I showing up? But I I’m, I’m really grateful and I want it to touch on in my intro, this word, ethnic anomaly. And the reason why I used that is because my mother is an Afro,

make my woman. And then my father is European. And I remember growing up, a lot of folks wanted to put me in this or that either or recognizing. I also have a ton of white passing privilege in this work. And so I landed on ethnic anomaly a couple of years ago because that’s a blend of it all. And it’s not really,

it’s not really any one thing. It’s an amalgamation of all things. So I just wanted to touch on that as a first thing for folks who might be like, what is that? But for me, who I am, I call myself a modern day, Hannah Montana. I get an opportunity to, to do indigenous wellness work here in BC provincially,

supporting service providers in providing culturally safe care, bringing a Searchie ceremony back into just the regular Workday through a place called Foundry BC. So I get to lead that amazing indigenous wellness work. And then on the other side, I still have an amazing career as a professional dancer. So I get to travel around, get to dance and film and TV. And so I really get the best of both worlds.

Nice, cool. So we’re going to lead down less of the dance. We’ll do that maybe another time, but today we’re going to focus on a lot of the other work that you’ve done. And we’re going to start off with this question of how do you think people are missing the mark when it comes to inclusivity for racialized folks? I think about this question a lot,

and I think my answer changes depending on the time, but the biggest, I think flaw in action is finding a right way or saying that there is a right path. So for example, I’ve seen folks who would say, well, my indigenous friend said that two spirit identity means this. And therefore, when I say a two-spirit identity means this, I am now invalid.

And so what happens is you’ve got this person of privilege who has now demeaned my experience as a two-spirit person and limited my experience based on one engagement with somebody else. And so when I think of how we miss the mark, it’s using that binary black or white, this or that right or wrong kind of thinking, and then using that to justify our actions.

So it’s, it’s, it’s, we have to sit in, in a bit of that, that nuance. And we have to be able to just ask folks, Hey, how do you choose to identify, what does this mean to you? We have to ask folks questions, but more often than not, people want to live in that safety net of understanding.

And so they, they make decisions or they make actions based on this or that. And that’s something I think that we’ve just been built into that we’ve been conditioned from, from all of our earliest education from growing up in this, in this country here on turtle island. It’s yeah. It, it it’s, it it’s through all experiences. We’re always trying to fit into boxes and categorize humanity.

And it’s one of the things, the biggest flaws of the, of understanding how to really be inclusive because in and of itself, we are aiming to make as much space as we can for absolutely everyone. And so that means that we have to get messy. Sometimes that we say, go ahead, get messy because it is messy. We are messy,

human beings are messy and complex beings and we have to be okay with that. We have to find peace within that. And I think when we can find it in ourselves, then we can give that to other people and other identities. I was just going to say, actually, the question that I wrote down is do you think that that kind of interaction when somebody says,

oh, well my friend, this or this person said that is, do you think there’s a fear of being wrong? And that they’re like, look, I’ve done my work and now I don’t want to be wrong anymore because it makes me uncomfortable to get messy. Do you think that that has a part to play? Yeah, because I mean, you,

you, we grew up celebrated for winning and doing things, right. You go to school, you do, you want to do good so that you can do well to continue to thrive and in the world. So yeah. Nobody wants to be wrong, but wrong is actually the right answer. And I think that that’s like the paradigm shift that I think I encourage folks to really sit into is that’s,

that’s the missing purpose. That’s the missing point, I think right there. so how can somebody engaging in this kind of conversation? What would have been a better interaction in that one instance? When the person’s like, oh, well my friend said this, what would have been a better choice for them to make in that moment? I think it’s okay to say,

I heard that this person who shares in an identity like yours, that they said XYZ, but what does that look like for you? And then it engages this really curious conversation. And of course, I always say at the forefront of any engagement like that, like it’s, it’s, I think it’s interwoven into all of our indigenous teachings is this idea of relationship first.

So I always say, I wouldn’t just go to like a stranger and be like, Hey, tell me about what it means to be a trans woman, right? Because there’s not that foundational relationship that starts that relationship. So then we’ve got a wealth of conflict that can occur in that, that space. But you know, when you have a relationship,

I would say, get curious and share what, you know, say, Hey, I actually heard this. And I thought this was really interesting. And again, what does that mean for you and allow that person space to show up as they are and allow your relationship to grow closer and your knowledge to be expanded of what non binary can mean, what a two-spirit person can mean.

Nice. I love that. And yes, curiosity, we always say on this podcast, like lead with curiosity, because it just opens the doors to everything when you’re curious and open to it. So how has your lived experience inspired the work that you do now in this field? That’s a, it’s a big question because, you know, my entire existence has been shaped by the systems that have had power over me growing up.

So I often share, so my mum was a survivor of the Nova Scotia home for colored children. And for those who don’t know, this was where a lot of mixed and African kids went in Nova Scotia. When they went into care in this home, there was all sorts of abuse, sexual, physical abuse, emotional and mental abuse, and really horrific conditions.

And so that earliest touchpoint is what my mom survived and came through. So when I came into the world, my mother was deep in alcoholism as a form of self-medicating and coping with all of that trauma and all of that. Can we swear shit? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. This is a swearing podcasts. We have that button or dot. Okay.

So with all that shit that she had to go through and so, and then welcomes me into this world. And so when I was 10 and she went on a path to actually went into the foster care system. So again, another moment in my, my experience, my family’s experience, where we’re touched by a system that we again was, everything was done for us,

but nothing was done with us from, I actually will say though, shout out to the brown school where my foster family, they obviously, my last name is hyphenated with their name. They were a foundational part, part of how I was able to get to where I am now. But again, the, the systems that a foster care, if something happened,

a conflict happened, I was taken into the stabilization program at a group home, just taken from my home and put here for X amount of days. It was quite regimented and I was never a part of the conversation. And so when I, when you asked the question of like, what is my lived experience, the biggest piece for me is that every service I provide,

all of the work that we do with my work at Foundry is engaged in community first. And that the communities actually are defining how the services look and that there is space because my work is provincial. Is there space for each community to show up as they are? Because of course, you know, I’m here in Vancouver. I go over to Richmond,

the community looks different. And though it’s, it’s 30 minutes away. The community looks different. And the centers that support young people that need to be reflective of that. And I’m sure you could say the same for Ontario, Ontario, Toronto, then you’d go out to like, it’s Scarborough. Is that far Scarborough Mississauga, Right? Like it’s, it’s,

there is it, you see, when you go to those places, there is a distinct community and there has to be space for, there has to be space for nuance, for discomfort, but thing that I will always, probably that’ll be the hashtag for the Discomfort, But discomfort as the positive in your experience, not a, a negative, not a denture.

Exactly. Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable because that’s where we grow. Right. That’s where the, that’s where the space we grow in is, And that’s. Yeah. So that’s I say with that lived experience around systems has really, really navigated so much for me and gotten me, I think, to the place that I am in this world and, and having those courageous conversations.

I remember being in, in junior high school, like I was the kid, I didn’t really have any friends. I remember in junior high, I was called instead of RJ. Cause he usually go by RJ. They, they called me fat Jay and are gay and then they just mixed it together and they said fat gay. So that will one day be the title of my memoir.

But, but why I say that is, I remember being this kid who just like went around and like hug people in the hallways and like was awkward and random. And they felt a lot of shame for a long time about how extroverted and outgoing I was. And then I realized that that very energy I was building created now who I am, where I go into organizations.

And I’m like, this is actually really unhealthy. This is not going to build a better future. This is causing a lot of harm to communities. So it’s interesting now at 31 to look back at that version of myself and not knowing this or that, but then other folks coming in and shaming me for behaving in this way, that was outside of the box.

And then me internalizing all of that shame and then coming out of it saying, wait a minute, no, this is a strength. And I need to hone in on that. And so that, yeah, it’s like just a really, I don’t know where that memory came from, but it just, just popped up and said, Hey, we’re going to tell it now We’re here,

we’re here. So I’m curious about your work with Foundry. What does that work look like? That’s a great question. I love blank canvases in a lot of ways, because that creates not only for me, but then everyone who works on the indigenous wellness team and Jedi work, which justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, it allows us to create a path forward.

That makes sense for us. And so one of the things in that things that we do within that work is we, we provide what’s called journey to cash. And so cash stands for cultural agility, safety, and humility. And we call it journey to cash because we recognize that again, we can’t prescribe exactly what everything is going to look like, but we can invite folks on a path or a journey together.

So when we talk about cultural agility, cultural agility is the ability to be responsive. So like I said, in that earlier example of, of shifting the game in that conversation of, Hey, my friend, instead of in that moment, when we’re having a conversation, if we bring an idea up to someone and that doesn’t work for the other person,

we can then be responsive and say, okay, well what does work instead of having a clear plan path forward? I think when you look at like a lot of clinicians and, and mental health professionals, there’s a path sometimes to how a therapeutic or helping relationships should look. And so cultural agility is about starting in a space that maybe feels comfortable for you,

but recognizing that, that might completely change and being agile and working through that, the other piece is safety. And I love safety because safety is the outcome, the outcome based on the engagement. So does the person that you’re providing a service to actually feel safe and we can never prescribe safety because what’s safe for me. And what’s safer for you is going to look very different.

And it’s also going to change. There are words, you know, things that I find as I grow older, that I really get uncomfortable by. I never used to care. Someone called me or referred to me as sir, for example, but now I really get uncomfortable. Or if a person says like, Hey man, what’s up does really gendered terms quite make me really uncomfortable,

but they weren’t always that way. I didn’t feel that way maybe in my early twenties. So it’s important, I think to be aware of cultural safety and that it can change and it can continue to evolve. So there needs to be that foundation of relationship to allow that. And then the last piece is humility, which is my favorite because it’s about me.

It’s internal work. These helping relationships are transformative. A lot of service providers think that it’s, it’s about me helping you and I’m here and you’re there and I want to help you get here. But instead it’s about rebalancing and finding that balance in that helping relationship. And it can be valuable for both people. And so that humility is that, Hey,

what are my biases? What are some of the things I was taught maybe in my schooling or in my work experience through a supervisor that doesn’t resonate anymore for me, or doesn’t work in my practice and asking those questions. So introducing, and then following up with centers and service providers, that’s really a big piece of, I think the work that I get to do and that I’ve done and yeah.

Nice. Love it. I love all that. It’s so fantastic. So this is something that kind of came up earlier in the beginning of the conversation and is intersectionality of like your life and who you are. So can you explain a little bit more about what intersectionality is for those listening, who might have kind of no idea what it is? Yeah.

So intersectionality we’re, we’re talking about the intersection of marginalized identities. Recognizing when we look at, see the queer community, there is a, a high percentage of focus on, on white gay men. That is just a reality. And we have to acknowledge that in order to move forward. But what we see is that being queer as a marginalized identity being gay,

or however you choose to identify under the gender and sexually diverse umbrella is a marginalized identity, but then we’ve got other systems of oppression, like if you were black. So if you were a black trans woman, we see what continues to happen in America. And even the hate that happens in Canada, you don’t ever want to isolate America as a, you know,

as much as those deaths are very significant, there is still harm happening. And though it might not be as finished as what happens in America. It’s still exists here. There are still harm’s being done. And when we look at indigenous trans women and two spirit identities that are, are dying here, like it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s obscene. And I,

I can’t even believe that it’s a reality. But when we talk about intersectionality, we’re talking about how those intersections of marginalized identity further add to an individual’s experience and further push them away from being able to really live up a good life, whatever that good life looks like for them. Nice. Well, thank you very much for that, that explanation’s, that people can understand what’s going on.

And you kind of said in there about, you know, this is white gay. So what are some of the ways that the queer community has contributed and participated in these systems of harm and how can we go about starting to change them? We all know that change doesn’t happen overnight, and that it’s going to take a while, but what are kind of some of the things that we can do?

So what are the, some of the ways that there’s been harm and then what are some of the ways that we can kind of work on it? I think it’s interesting. Some of the, I think some of the ways that we’ve been harmed is the, is the lack of engagement. Like we talk about a community inclusion, you know, five years ago,

or I would say, I’m going to say five years ago, you know, you’d look at a pride poster and it was always like white gay men with fit bodies and that was the party. And then you go and it’s always a party, right? And I will never shame someone who wants to party. I love to party. I love to socialize.

I think that’s such an important aspect of a queer identity, but in that nobody was asking the question of like, wait a minute, who’s not at the table. Who’s, who’s not being represented here. And so I think some of the biggest harms are that those early, early pioneers is, is there was a missing space for those other identities to be considered at the same level.

And I think that is really where the, the harm was done. And I, I don’t want to say I, I get it, I get it in the sense that they were just fighting to have a measure of acceptance for their own self. So I understand that the humanity of that, but in that, that except hyper focus on self negated,

the actual breadth of the whole community being represented. And, and if we amplified and worked collaboratively together and co-created something I think we might be in a different space now. And I think where we’re working a lot of folks who work in systems now we’re starting to go down that path. And, and when I think of, you know, the kind of what a path forward,

what could, or what does a path forward look like? I loved the, I think it was a tide commercial. The go ahead, get messy. Or maybe it was sunlight. I don’t know, but I, it sticks with me and I say it all the time because we’re, so I think we’re taught to, like, we’re taught to be right.

We’re taught to be right or wrong, black or white. And we’re never taught to sit in the messiness sometimes to go into a situation and say the wrong thing, and then have a conversation about how we can do better. So I, a lot of people talked, I don’t know if, you know, you’ve heard the creating a safe space was a big buzz word.

And I was like, there is no safe space. It can’t, it can’t exist because safety shifts and evolves as we shifted evolve as nature and the world shifts and evolves, but we can create countable spaces. And so creating those accountable spaces means, again, starting with the foundation of relationship with the individual or the group, whatever that looks like, then we can have accountability whereby that individual has the safety,

that the components of safety individually, to be able to speak up, should harm occur. And then at that end, then there can be a collaborative. And this is another indigenous teaching I always go to is that indigenous law. It was really built on the restoration of balance within the relationships. A lot of Western law, as we know, is,

is crime and crime and punishment, right. The crime. And then you have to get this fine. And that’s how the system is built. I, for an I, you know, you’ve done me wrong, whereas indigenous law and, and peer’s teachings were about restoring balance restrain the relationship between the people. So having a, a process that works for that group that is accountable.

And then if harm is done, then there is this co-created restoration of balance, illustration of the relationship between the individuals impacted and harmed. And then we move forward. And it sounds very fairytale sometimes I’m like, oh, it sounds so idealistic. But I mean, everything in this experience is made up. Like we all have full human experiences made up,

someone just made up those laws. Someone just made up those things. So if you can just make up those things, I can also make up a reality where we see equity at the forefront inclusion at the forefront, anti racism at the front. So, yeah. Nice. I was, I heard in there kind of like, we need to go from like a me mentality to a we mentality.

Yeah. Not just thinking of the self in the self’s experience, because that is definitely been a lot of the world’s experience. And I think we are going through kind of that shift of everybody’s really self internalized and focused. And I think we are now, but we’re doing it in a very different way than we did before we’re doing it in a much more of like,

well, what does this mean for me? What does this mean about me? Like, what’s that experience in regards to the outside experience and how can we become more of a we inclusion instead of just a me and I don’t really care about everybody else? Well, I mean, and again, I don’t want to go into the path of capitalism, but the idea,

the success of capitalism thrives off the individual making choices for themselves, the idea of the nuclear family of if every family in an apartment building has one screwdriver capitalism throughout us. But what if the building had one room with a screwdriver that people could use as they needed it, capitalism it plummets. And so it’s, it’s, it’s really interesting. And I almost say it’s like,

not even me or we, but like, can we say me, we, and I say that because I’m conscious that just like, when I talk about cultural safety and humility, like they both must co-exist. And when you work collaboratively though, towards the week internally, you get the me and it’s this, this push and pull divide, and you’re always kind of playing in the tension.

No, go ahead. I was going to say, because you’re only ever going to know your full, true experience. You’re never really going to ever live somebody else’s experience because you can’t be inside of their consciousness. And so it’s like everything you do, everything you experience is from your perspective and then the same as for everybody else. And then there’s always this space in between this gray space where things get messy or where things should get messy.

And I wanna say something about, you know, providing that, not the safe space you said, but like that kind of like space where people can get messy and do those things and to say the wrong thing. What if there’s people out there who are saying, well, I want to do that. Or I have done that. And then I’ve like gotten canceled or people have like turned on me.

How does that experience speak to trying to create on one side, you have this openness that you want to create. But then on the other side, you have people who yell so loudly. If somebody gets it wrong and you’re like, it’s kind of working against what we actually want here. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, I, I love my community.

I love the gender and sexually diverse community. But again, coming back to the me, we, there is a tendency and a very bright tendency to feel. Imagine I think of the idea of every day you’ve been mis-gendered or not your authentic self. And finally you’ve accepted that. And then you continue to hear people mis-gender you. And that is, it would build a rage in me.

I feel that rage sometimes, and that I’ve heard. So, but there is a piece there of healing that we must do as queer people individually, because things like cancel culture. Are there quick? My critique of cancel culture is not about the conversation. I’m happy that we have conversations and that we hold people accountable. I am a hundred percent before that,

but what I think happens is folks just grabbed to something that happened, react quickly, cancel the person. And then it’s over that person’s life has completely been destroyed. And we brought to the next right when we, but again, when we talk about that indigenous piece around restoration of balance, even though that individual may have caused harm at a time in their perspective,

they may or may not have known that that was harmful. Or when we look back at their childhood, their upbringing, there’s so much trauma and so many things that they have yet to unpack. So that person is still a human being and needs to be healed. So I guess my big picture is that on both ends of those situations, healing work needs to always happen.

I think for me, I’ve got my somatic therapists. I’ve got my talk therapist. I absolutely love it. Plus I have my coaches that I work with and I’m always having these conversations, but in, in that regard, the reality is because we’re such a traumatized world, a traumatized society it’s going to happen. There is someone might cancel you. Someone might,

you know, get upset and get angry. But I think that if we each individually work on our own healing as part of the process, I think we’re going to be able to work together and create a better world than the future. But again, this is where we’re at. We are going to be hurt. And I think reminding ourselves in that,

when we do do our best, but then also saying, you know what, I am not going to have all of the right answers. And that, that person’s experience shows me more about them than it does about me. And so if I hear someone, if I mis-gendered someone and they got really upset with me instead of apologizing or, and like being,

oh my God, I’m so sorry to do that. I’d rather take a second to be like, is there anything I can do? Like, is there something I can do better? You know? And also being like that person has probably been through so much and it’s not about me, it’s about them. And yeah, maybe there’s nothing I can do.

We can’t do everything too. Like there’s, there’s so many I think spaces for, for it. And it’s all going to happen. As we work towards collective healing, all of these pieces are going to come up. People are going to be triggered. People are going to be more activated. Isn’t a word I’ve tried to use more often than trigger.

It’s triggering. I love what you said because I wrote down before you said it, that we need to work on ourselves, like heal ourselves in order to heal the collective. It’s not about working outside there. It’s about working inside here. And the more you do inside, the more it’ll reflect on the outside and that if more people had that opportunity in order to do that,

cause it recognized that it is a privilege in order to be able to have access to a lot of that. But the more people can do that, the more that that’ll be accessible to everybody else A hundred percent. So I love that and love it. Great. What could a path forward look like to create an equitable world or a more equitable world?

I love Albert Albert Marshall, sorry. An elder. It was magma who coined the term to I, to seeing. And two I’d seen in essence is taking the strengths of Western pathways of knowledge and working them alongside indigenous pathways, knowledge and together the two go hand in hand and create that path forward together. And often when I share that a lot of folks who aren’t indigenous or maybe aren’t white or,

or Western or European say, well, wait a minute. What about me? Well, I’m not considered in that because it’s this or that. But when we look at the core of indigeneity and indigenous life and teachings, we’re talking about making space for all of those races, all of those folks to show up, oh, you know, a Western pathway would say there’s only one truth.

Whereas an indigenous pathway would say, there’s multiple truths. When we look across turtle island, there are so many distinct first nations may teenage patients in UAE. There’s so many folks with different unique stories. And so even though we have some universal teachings, there is still distinction between each nation, whether that’s in language, customs, traditions, art, so many different things.

So, but moving forward from a approach, we actually make space for all those other identities to show up and be at the forefront of the movement. I’d love that. It’s very like, you know, take everything into account. Don’t just look at your plane, you know? Yeah. And so applying that to like the greater community and going back to like,

you know, the cis-gendered white guys, which I very much am cisgendered white guy, I get it. I know it. How can we do our parts to create more of this space and to open this up? I think it’s, it’s going back to me. We, I think, I think a part of it is, is self exploration, unpacking your own biases?

Is there, is there thoughts or stereotypes that you may have towards other folks? You know, we look at, we still see racism interwoven in Grindr, for example, you know, and, and body like no fats, no femmes, no Asians is like a term. Everyone knows that they just made a joke of in that movie fire island. And it just shows how deeply rooted those things are.

So I think the first part is a self exploration of what am I owned by biases? What am I on stereotypes? What are my own problematic ways I show up in the world and how can I change that? And they think then on the other end is what is the action I’m going to take? So maybe if it, it could be as simple as Grindr,

I’ve seen some friends who call the bitches out and it’s like, Hey, what you’re saying is problematic. And I say, well, it’s just a preference. We’ll know, but let’s talk about that. And then it creates really good conversations. So I, for those folks, I encourage them to have courageous conversations and in the spaces where we are not as gender and sexually diverse people or marginalized identities,

you know, if, if you were in a group of friends who are all white, cisgender gay men, and you’re making a racist joke, but you think it’s okay because no Asian folks are there. No it’s saying, Hey, actually that’s not funny. That’s problematic. And that continues to feed into this stereotype. And it’s our job in this space to do better.

So whenever there’s not a person or an identity at the table, making sure that you are finding space to uphold and, and, and act and advocate for those that aren’t there. And on top of that, also bringing them in. So for example, there’s something that’s happening here in BC, where, where performers are hired and it’s a predominantly white and indigenous cast,

that’s it? Whereas we know that they’re a drag artists of all identities. So when you’re a performer or in these spaces asking the club, the producer, Hey, where’s this identity? Why did we hire this? Right. It’s, it’s asking those questions. And we have to, I don’t think, I think we’re conflict is a conflict at first.

Maybe it’s that We’re scared or Afraid of conflict. We’re Afraid of conflict, but like this very world was built on conflict. So it’s always interesting to me of why we’re so fearful of it when violence and conflict are actually what built the foundation of which we live on. But, you know, there’s a way to do conflict in a healthy way. There’s a really amazing book called conflict is not abuse.

And I absolutely love it because it talks about how do we have courageous conversations and sometimes go into conflict, but work together to co-create a solution. And again, back to my key takeaway, restoring the balance in those relationships. So yeah, I think those, those are pretty big, pretty big tasks, but I think those are the ones for me.

Nice. And, and so this is a lot of the work that you’re doing with Foundry and moving things forward and kind of helping that rebalancing happening. Yeah. When it, like we touched on, you know, just a small project of the journey to cash that we do, but you know, there, we, we do a lot of anti racism work.

There’s a lot of conflict resolution work. There’s so many spaces that the work of indigenous wellness fits all centering around the values of and, and creating co-creating this path forward for all. Nice. That’s amazing. Well, this has been a very enlightening and eye opening conversation and I’ve really enjoyed it. And I hope our listeners have enjoyed it if they wanted to know more about either yourself or Foundry,

where could people find that information? Yeah. If you go online on Instagram, there’s Foundry at Foundry, BC also found ubc.ca online to see all of our services and everything integrated youth services are across the province provincially. So if most of the audience may be is in say Ontario, it’s actually just called integrated youth services there. So there’s, there’s there’s spaces and those services across Canada and actually across the world,

we’re learning. So wherever you’re listening, look for integrated youth services, there’s some amazing work happening. And there’s always space for, I think, folks to be a part of that work as well. Amazing. And where can people find out more about you, The app, the only RJB I’ve coined it on everything. So everywhere, everywhere that you could find someone,

if you use the only RJP go find and you’ll get to see some of the dance steps that you did, we didn’t get to talk about, but that’s okay. And we get to see some of the mental health work and the advocacy work we get to, you get to see the whole spectrum of Raymond, Jordan Johnson, brown. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

It’s been fantastic and I can’t wait for people to join in on this conversation. Thank you for having me!

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