Uncut: An Anti-colonial Perspective on De-escalation (Plus Transcript) (Patreon)

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An anti-colonial discussion on de-escalation and community care with Emma Taylor and Mylan Tootoosis.

Mentioned in the episode: "The Cunning of the Adult Supremacist"

Transcript

[Note: Transcripts are autogenerated and may contain errors.]

SAM

On this special episode of Southpaw, I wanted to have a conversation around de-escalation because I think it's an important topic if it's done the right way.

Done the wrong way and it can erase all the violence marginalized communities face as well as victim blame.

and make it all about personal responsibility and individual choices.

So doing it the right way starts with framing.

Frameworks allow for discovery while avoiding pitfalls, which is a key concept within the Liberation Martial Arts curriculum.

Secondly, we have to have the right guests and the right guests kind of fell into my lap.

Mylan Tootoosis is a past guest, but also someone I talk to all the time about related topics like community care and kinship networks, parenting, martial arts, lateral violence, trauma, and staying wholesome and not taking our frustrations out on others.

So Mylan, can you introduce yourself to our audience?

MYLAN

Mylan Tootoosis Yeah, my name is Mylan Tootoosis.

I'm up here in Saskatchewan, Canada, Treaty 6 territory, father of two.

I have been doing community work in Indigenous communities for quite some time, and it's the work that my late father has done in the past, and also my mother, who still is a social worker, has her own private practice based in the community.

So that's sort of my background.

Also, obviously, senior listeners will likely know that I host the Radical Narratives.

SAM

And through Mylan, I met Emma Taylor, who I'm sure we'll have lots to share in this discussion.

Emma, can you introduce yourself?

EMMA

Yeah, hi.

My name's Emma.

I was born in Treaty 4 territory here in Canada.

I'm currently living in Treaty 6 territory.

That's kind of where I've grown up.

My background is Cree, Métis, and Irish.

Currently, I'm working for a harm reduction nonprofit in Treaty 6 territory as well.

I'm a frontlines worker on the opioid and housing epidemic.

And I'm also involved in a lot of grassroots work in similar realms, but expanding as well to broader issues regarding Indigenous sovereignty and anti-colonialism, anti-capitalism.

SAM

And for people who don't already know, I'm Sam.

I'm a Korean born in one Korea, which was cleaved in half by the empire I currently reside in, the US.

I've been training in martial arts since I was six and now teach the Liberation Martial Arts program.

So I've been thinking and writing about martial arts from a liberatory Marxist decolonial perspective for a while now.

And to go back to the first intent about proper framing, I want to explain why we're covering this topic in earnest now, and it's probably not the last time I'll cover this.

In all of our content, when we talk about violence, whether it's by pen or policy or more directly through fists or guns, we wanted to prioritize violence against marginalized and oppressed communities, which also includes women and children.

Othering and power asymmetries are characteristics of violence.

I think about all the times violence or the potential for violence has come to me.

Most of those times it was because of my race.

And if someone has the objective to hurt you, then that's the reality you have to orient yourself to.

But I remember in one of my conversations with Mylan, he said he was interested in grappling over striking because what if violence is coming from drunk uncle and you just want to restrain him from hurting himself or others?

The subtext of this conversation was de-escalation.

Now,

There have still been times where the potential for violence came to me and it wasn't race motivated or race was just one motivator among others.

And by violence, it's bi-directional.

I too can do violence to others.

I remember a recent altercation where a stranger got right in my face and wanted to fight me.

We never met before and never had any previous interactions.

And there were some signs that this person was having some break from reality.

And I don't know if the cause was a substance or a mental health episode or both, but I was able to deescalate it by trying to distract, connect, listen, no set of movements, no posturing.

But my four year old was there and I was putting him in the car seat and this guy was right in my face so I was making sure I was a barrier between him and my son.

My wife got in the driver's seat and I was able to get in and we took off.

This was at a local park and basically the whole park emptied out.

It's a mostly white park and the only one who was watching us and yelling for him to get away and for us to leave was the only brown mom there.

So even her as a witness and voicing herself, let me know someone was watching, gave me a little bit more confidence and she was already being more than a bystander.

And we kind of drove slowly to also watch her get in her car with her family and leave without incident.

He's a big dude with a shaved head, tattoos, a tank top, and baggy shorts.

So let's say it escalated to violence and then the cops came.

So it's not just about what would have happened to me, but what would the cops in this fancy white neighborhood have done to him?

Like, would this have been some viral video clip of cop violence?

I definitely didn't want that.

But also in the car, we had to make sure our son was okay and not scared or dwelling on what happened.

But he was fine and since it didn't escalate, he didn't think too much of it because I also didn't want to escalate my son with my behavior during that moment.

Now, I said the potential for violence, but this guy wasn't yet being violent and I saw a path where this didn't have to end in violence.

But I was making sure I was perceiving him, saw where his hands were, what his demeanor was like.

And basically, if I wasn't moving quickly, neither was he.

and since I've been an adult and even as a doorman at a bar, I've been able to de-escalate a lot of incidents and also sometimes de-escalate myself to prevent further danger.

Like the whole punch a Nazi thing.

Yes, it makes for a great meme, but context matters.

In the videos I've seen where a Nazi gets punched, the Nazi didn't know how to fight.

He wasn't expecting the punch.

It was in a crowded situation and the person punching had more numbers.

So in that context, it can make sense because you're in an advantageous situation.

But if you were isolated and alone with no bystanders and the Nazi is bigger than you and they're with their friends and they happen to yell slurs at you while passing you by, do you punch them or do you let them pass and you then get the hell out of there?

In that situation, you're at a major disadvantage and it's probably best to de-escalate yourself and escape.

So even in a racist incident, you can de-escalate, but the person you're de-escalating is probably yourself.

Some guys in a car yelled some sexually offensive stuff at my wife one time while she was walking with a stroller when our son was still a baby.

She chased after them, but then stopped herself and realized that's probably not a good idea.

So de-escalation wasn't for them, it was for her, even though it's them who are the aggressors and doing the wrong.

But in the end, it would have been her and my son getting hurt.

So do you want to be right or do you want to live?

So to properly frame things, we need to properly define things.

And de-escalation sounds like an academic way of saying, calm down.

And the last thing you want to tell someone who needs to calm down is to calm down.

So I really wanted to call it pausing.

But if I said that, no one will understand the topic.

So I stuck with de-escalation as a topic term.

But as you can see in the examples I gave, I'm using de-escalation as a broad, flexible term.

I define de-escalation as reducing or lowering arousal to pause and make a plan.

And often the person you are de-escalating is yourself or someone you know.

Even at the workplace, there have been times I've been mad, panicked, anxious, scared, and I have to lower my arousal for the sake of my job.

As parents, we call this emotional regulation and we teach it to our kids all the time.

So it's something we already do and it's already useful and that's something that only exists in workplace safety training.

I can teach you all the martial arts techniques you want, but if you're not in a psychological state to apply it, what does it matter?

You have to de-escalate yourself to even use it.

You have to de-escalate yourself like putting on your own air mask before you can de-escalate others.

So let's start here.

What do you two think about this working definition?

EMMA

Yeah, I think it's exactly that.

Yeah, de-escalation is all about managing yourself, managing the environment, more so than managing the other person.

And the idea is that as long as you're maintaining those two things to the best of your ability, that's going to create space for the other person to kind of return to a baseline.

SAM

What do you mean by space?

EMMA

Well, creating space in terms of not necessarily a physical space, but also creating an environment of removing any access to weapons, crowd controlling, maintaining the energy so that you're not escalating, the people around are not escalating, things like that.

Managing the environment, essentially.

MYLAN

Mylan, what about you?

For me, to identify myself, I'm a Native dude.

I'm cisgendered, long hair, broad-shouldered.

I'm a big guy.

And there's a certain privilege in that, I would say, when it comes to physical space, holding space.

Obviously, I'm a visible minority here in Saskatoon, and it does get uncomfortable.

But at the same time, for me, depending on the personal or like the professional approach of what capacity I'm working in, depending on situations, like having to measure and see really what's going on in a situation, I think is first and foremost important, like really assessing it and getting a feel for what's taking place.

Like the examples you gave, especially as a father, they're examples that I can relate to.

In my mind, there is a certain duty to respond, but it's also important to measure what capacity do I have to be useful in that situation.

But I like the assessment and your analysis of having this conversation because it is something that, especially for me, at my stage in fatherhood, it's something I reflect on too constantly.

SAM

Emma, how do you teach de-escalation and what are the steps to de-escalation?

EMMA

Yeah, so there's not necessarily steps to de-escalation.

I more so would refer to it as strategies or tools.

And the reason for that is that it's important to not be rigid in the process of de-escalation because it can come off as very clinical, which reads as very disingenuous and sometimes dehumanizing, particularly with the population that I work with.

but some of the strategies obviously the first and most important one being to regulate yourself so that's kind of maintaining a calm demeanor not being reactionary knowing when to step away if you need to and I also think it's important to kind of constantly assess situations and decide for yourself whether or not you are

Legitimately unsafe or if you are just uncomfortable because that's kind of going to help you regulate your responses as well.

Active listening is a huge one as well.

Applying emotional first aid, which I can kind of get into a bit more.

It just essentially involves a lot of co-regulation, caring gestures, things like that.

I

As controversial as it may be for health nuts, cigarettes are one of the best de-escalating tools you could ever have.

SAM

Because you're also connecting.

EMMA

It's a caring gesture, it's a connection.

And also again, for us as Indigenous people, tobacco is seen as medicine.

So especially if you're working with, again, the community I work with is largely Indigenous.

There's cultural connotations to that as well at times.

Another big one is avoiding power struggles, which can be really tricky.

It's you kind of are constantly having to either drop or change your expectations of the situation and the outcomes, validating people's feelings, even if you don't agree with them.

And then kind of, as I was mentioning earlier, managing the environment is also a huge factor in some de-escalation strategies.

SAM

And by being too clinical, what comes to mind is like I've had a lot of different trainings in my life where when they talk about showing the other person that you're listening, you repeat what they just said.

And I've always found that if you actually do that, the other person feels like you're doing something by the book or almost like mocking them or like you're not really connecting, you're just going off of a script.

EMMA

Yeah, that's definitely an example of it.

Anything I think that would occur outside of a natural conversation you would be having with another person, people pick up on that, right?

And they're aware that they're being therapized or, you know, whatever's going on that they don't want.

and it often inadvertently will escalate like you said because you know they're aware that you're not approaching them and engaging them as another person who genuinely cares you're you're operating from some sort of a of a rule book or guidebook that you have been trained on and yeah it just it can be very disingenuous or doing it as part of a job when it's apparent that that's what you're doing can also escalate then yeah absolutely

SAM

and so I'm sure you've had a lot of experience in this area where I'm sure you've had to first make sure you were calm enough to apply what you know then you had to manage the situation so can you speak to us about that some of your experiences yeah so I there's quite a few experiences I could kind of call on but I think

EMMA

When it comes to especially de-escalating yourself and making sure that you're ready and prepared to engage in a de-escalation.

Again, kind of going back to that, am I unsafe or am I uncomfortable?

And there's actually, I've seen a pretty good infographic that's been circulating online regarding this lately.

and so essentially we read a lot of situations in which we are uncomfortable as unsafe and that immediately causes us to escalate ourselves and kind of enter that fight-or-flight response and the reason for that is usually based in stereotypes or stigma

And of course, if you're in a situation that requires de-escalation, the risk of danger exists, but it's not always imminent, essentially, especially with a mental health crisis.

It can look very big and scary, but it's usually not going to end in what you have envisioned in your mind, right?

So it's always important to kind of check in with yourself.

And ask yourself, am I unsafe right now or am I just uncomfortable with what's happening?

SAM

I guess this is why media portrayals can be so damaging.

EMMA

yeah absolutely I mean if you watch however the many movies that have come out over the years regarding people with mental health struggles and stuff it's always murder and you know the absolutely worst case scenario in every situation or you know that one news story that'll come out about somebody who was experiencing psychosis and attacked a random passerby and was so horrible and awful and

and yeah those things are horrible and awful but they're definitely an outlier in terms of you know the amount of people having a mental health crisis in your city on a daily basis you know that happens once once in a blue moon right so yeah one thing I'd add to in terms of the climate we're at in Canada the social climate is that there's a lot of awareness around residential school you know residential school survivors

MYLAN

And I'm noticing like, settler societies really ties into the reality that residential school survivors were at one point Indigenous children.

So you see the social commentary referred to children, forced removal of children, impacts of trauma on children.

But one of the big awarenesses I'm noticing amongst students who take my class and undergraduates is that the realization that the stereotypes they've been informed about indigenous people, chances are the people that they see, the people that they interact with on the streets are struggling in life.

Chances are they are residential school survivors or they are the children of residential school survivors.

That's why I really like what Emma said in terms of having to be mindful that these are human beings.

They are human beings.

From our perspective, they are people.

Being super mindful that the uncle on the corner, the auntie on the corner,

You know, likely experienced trauma, and how do we support them in meaningful, wholesome ways that are safe?

And again, for some people, they still view Indigenous people on the corner, our people going through struggles as potential threats, police being one, right?

Assuming the worst situations about our people.

But again, from my perspective, it's like it's so important to shift that understanding that our people experience trauma, we experience colonialism.

And it's really interesting to see like a younger generation emerge that make that make the correlation and the causation between you know, homelessness and people struggling in the inner city, making that link to as a direct result of colonialism and a direct result of residential school.

Perspective matters.

Being trauma-informed matters.

Even in the context of this conversation, history matters.

There's really more going on in terms of people's lives, and that does have to inform how we approach crisis and de-escalation.

EMMA

Yeah, absolutely.

From a statistical perspective, 74% of the population that we work with are direct residential school survivors.

So yeah, being trauma informed is

incredibly important for any de-escalation situation, but particularly if you're dealing with, in the Canadian context, Indigenous people, and in a broader context, anyone who is from a community that's experienced severe intergenerational trauma or systemic oppression, things like that.

And yeah, recognizing what's called a pain-based behavior is a part of that trauma-informed perspective to de-escalation.

De-escalation sorry so yeah pain-based behaviors can be physical emotional spiritual there's all different factors to it we can experience pain in many different ways and so that's essentially a behavior an emotion or a response that's that's coming from a place of pain so we

In the practice that I utilize both at work and in grassroots, we kind of rely on an acronym known as HALT.

So you always want to kind of consider whether or not a person is hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.

and that's just kind of something you're doing as a mental check-in with yourself so those are kind of like the key pain-based behaviors that will lead to an escalation usually it's one of those four things that's kind of pushing somebody in that direction and that can also inform your practice too and in regards to caring gestures and and co-regulation

SAM

So, trauma-informed then means not just looking at somebody on their terms, right?

Not just looking at them in isolation, but also thinking about all the things that have influenced them, that have impacted them, that have brought them here.

EMMA

Yeah, absolutely.

It's kind of just approaching the situation with empathy and a broader understanding of

of any and all encompassing factors that have brought this person to this point right in front of you at this moment.

SAM

And so in speaking about crisis and we're talking about ways that de-escalation might be needed in ways that people haven't thought about, like de-escalating yourself.

And I think another situation then is like not harming others, but harming yourself.

So Emma, have you ever had to use what you know to intervene or stop someone from harming themselves?

EMMA

Yeah, definitely.

It's a very similar approach as to what you would use to de-escalate another person or even yourself.

Although in a way, it can be a bit, I guess, easier.

If somebody's actively trying to harm themselves, that's a very clear case of a pain-based behavior, right?

It's almost always an internally-based factor.

and co-regulation and caring gestures work amazingly in those situations usually.

SAM

What do you mean by co-regulation?

EMMA

So co-regulation is just kind of a practice of sitting with somebody in whatever it is that they're going through and relying on your mannerisms, your emotions, your feelings, your responses to kind of guide theirs as well and vice versa, honestly.

So again, a lot of body language, active listening, validating any kind of feelings or thoughts or emotions that a person is going through.

Yeah.

SAM

Mylan, I know you work with young people and the community a lot.

How much of what you do is teaching emotional regulation?

Because that's really what de-escalation is, isn't it?

MYLAN

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, one of the things for me is evolves around in general, like emotional intelligence, like increasing, you know, people being mindful of their emotions and even what they're called.

From the perspective of emotional intelligence, being able to speak to and identify that emotion clearly and even to the point of where it physically shows up in the body.

Where am I feeling this emotion?

Where is it coming up strongest?

Being able to verbalize that and recognizing them from my perspective, from our cosmology and understanding as this energy in motion.

This energy is coming up for a reason, express it, feel it in healthy ways.

I feel like that's really important in the climate we're living in right now as indigenous people because there was a lot of emotional shutdown.

There was a lot of emotional shaming even to the point of where in some of our communities it's only safe to experience happiness or anger.

Those are the two emotions that you're often going to see physically expressed.

and then so like sadness and fear you know sometimes gets hush-tush even like around toxic masculinity and fear like you know there's there's very real like toxic social norms that men men don't express their fear or express their sadness which which is which is a lie because emotions come up so first step for me is always being able to identify the emotion and be able to put words that and recognize that it's gonna come it's gonna go

In terms of regulation, I think it's really important to be mindful that, first and foremost, that emotions are energy.

They come and go.

Validating that, speaking to that, and asking what's really triggering this emotion.

Where is it really coming from?

Why am I angry?

Why am I feeling sadness?

Or even being able to regulate to the point of identifying what's beneath this.

Why am I presenting myself in terms of being angry?

Well, what's really here for me is fear.

So I'm angry that something's happening, but what's really here for me is a fear that something's going to get out of hand, so I'm responding in an angry way.

So this is all like emotional intelligence conversation.

And that's something my family really fosters amongst each other, especially with the young children in our family now.

And I get so happy when my daughters are expressing emotion freely and openly because there was a time in our collective history as Indigenous people where we weren't allowed to be emotional, where children weren't allowed to cry.

And so disrupting that and

And once that happens for me, you know, there is an emotional clarity, being able to think clearly, being able to problem solve effectively, like maintain a stronger sense of situational awareness around, you know, what community am I working in and what's really going on here and how are we responding to things?

So, yeah, I mean, for me, the foundation is first and foremost emotional intelligence.

SAM

So then with feeling things like anger, instead of telling them, don't be angry or don't get angry, it's more about trying to put words to that, trying to understand where you're feeling that, where that's arising from.

Yeah, for sure.

MYLAN

Definitely.

Like, why are we angry right now?

What's coming up for us?

What's causing this anger to be so strong in this moment?

And I like how Emma said HALT, the acronym HALT really comes in handy too for me working with children because that does sort of facilitate them being able to link that emotion to a circumstance or something that's going on in their lives.

And then being able to problem solve that or contextualize that clearly from the point of an emotional clarity.

Because people can't problem solve when your emotions are coming up really strong.

So being able to get to that place of emotional clarity is really important.

And again, just acknowledging that emotion.

It's completely fine for children or people to have emotions.

I still kind of get baffled at the conversation that emotions are

SAM

Emma, how do you put yourself in a state to even de-escalate or help others?

Because I'm sure your adrenaline is sometimes pumping.

Maybe you're in a fight, flight, freeze response.

EMMA

It's definitely something that comes with practice for sure.

But I think kind of the key to it is basically what we've been talking about is you really have to de-center yourself in the situation and center the humanity of the person, the situation, and their experiences that have kind of led them to this point.

And again, the outlying factors, the pain-based behaviors,

um kind of how Mylan was saying what a lot of things will present as anger but if you kind of root into it that's that's not what it is at all at its core um and so you just kind of have to maintain a sense of self-awareness and understanding of that throughout the throughout the process essentially and and constantly check in with yourself and remind yourself of that

SAM

So to remember that it's not about you, don't make it about yourself.

Be oriented on what's happening, the situation and the other person.

EMMA

Yeah, exactly.

It's almost never about you, even if the person is making personal attacks against you verbally.

And again, I'm speaking in the perspective of the community that I work with.

Obviously, if you're approached by a Nazi on the street, that's a different scenario.

Yeah, it's almost always has nothing to do with you, regardless of how personal it may feel.

And so you really need to detach from that and maintain a strong sense of self-awareness.

And like Mylan said, emotional maturity throughout the process as well, which is very difficult to do sometimes.

It's definitely a practiced behavior.

SAM

Then what are some unconscious things one might do to escalate a situation or even escalate themselves that people might not realize they're even doing?

EMMA

Yeah, I think the biggest one is body language and nonverbal communication.

We are always saying a lot more than we think we are.

And so it's important to kind of maintain a calm and open body language and be mindful of your facial expressions, you know,

I think that's a huge one.

Again, that's kind of like a practiced behavior that you develop over time with self-awareness.

Also, like we were talking about before, being overly clinical and having a non-humanistic approach

Stranger Danger

Yeah, exactly.

Even when someone is presenting themselves as dangerous, that's the intention they're conveying.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Attempting to touch or disarm somebody prematurely.

Touch can be a very useful tool in de-escalation, but you really have to have the right rapport with the person and it has to be done in a very correct way.

And there's all sorts of nuance and factors there, of course, too, regarding consent and everything else.

Yeah, attempting to touch somebody even in a gentle way or disarm them prematurely.

And then also, yeah, kind of what I was saying before, expressing fear or discomfort.

It can be very dehumanizing and it can often set somebody off even further if they know that you perceive them as a danger or a threat rather than as a person who has very big emotions that need to be validated.

SAM

because even doing that makes the person feel othered.

EMMA

Yeah, absolutely.

SAM

So for me, as a martial artist growing up in this world, I'm sure there's a lot of people when they're engaging in de-escalation learning about it, there's a lot to unlearn.

because things I've learned and things a lot of people have been told that even in a formal setting, sometimes just from word of mouth or like somebody's giving you some advice about self-defense, the things that are common knowledge are

forms of escalation, not de-escalation, because oftentimes you're taught to attack first or make ultimatums or threats or immediately take a fighting posture when you feel uncomfortable or you're taught to talk with your hands so your hands are up high so you can immediately turn into a fighting stance.

And I think from this conversation, we realized those are all things that are actually escalating the situation, not de-escalating the situation.

EMMA

Yeah, absolutely.

I think a lot of people who don't have experience with de-escalation kind of come to it assuming that the goal is to restrain or posture or be bigger and scarier and that's how you successfully de-escalate a situation, which is absolutely not the case.

SAM

Like try to scare them off.

EMMA

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, try to scare them off, try to somehow wrestle them into submission, whether that be like literally in a physical sense or, you know, with words and actions.

SAM

Subordinate them.

EMMA

Yeah, de-escalation is it's not a moment for you to be a hero.

Absolutely not the case.

And I think the concept of that comes from cop culture, unfortunately.

SAM

I agree.

EMMA

Yeah, it's a lot of

A lot of vigilantism, a lot of people watching too many superhero movies.

Everyone wants their time to shine, I guess, right?

It's definitely not the space for that, almost ever, I would argue.

There's definitely going to be scenarios in which you do need to physically restrain or disarm somebody, but that's also not something anyone should be doing without the proper training to do so.

That can be incredibly dangerous in itself to both you and the other person.

Yeah, I mean, in perspective of my work, we unfortunately make a small fraction of what a police officer's salary is, but we effectively disarm guns, knives, pipes, all sorts of things very frequently without any kind of violent incident.

So yeah, this notion that you need to immediately depend on violence, it's just not reality.

SAM

So you're going to the last resort right away.

EMMA

Yeah, absolutely.

And if you are skilled in de-escalation, it almost will never come to that.

It's very, very rare.

I can say in my experience doing this work and having to participate in multiple de-escalations almost every day, both myself and my coworkers or my co-organizers, it almost never comes to needing a physical intervention of any kind.

MYLAN

Yeah, I'd add to that too and say that in my experience, anything that is approached from the position of authoritarian doesn't fly so well, especially working with Indigenous children and youth because authoritarians are the colonizer and historically they've been the colonizer.

It doesn't fly well at all.

I'm really critical of educators or people who work with children who naturally appropriate an authoritarian approach.

The other one too that is really prevalent that I really try and not disrupt is adult supremacy.

Assuming that adults are superior than children, that they know more than children,

Unfortunately, the sad reality for a lot of Indigenous children is that a lot of our parenting styles are rooted in adult supremacy, which is rooted in an authoritarian approach, which is rooted in colonialism and colonization.

That echoes all throughout society.

Working with people one-on-one and individually and even doing crisis responses, again, you have to maintain that element of kinship, that element of care.

Anything authoritarian likely will not fly.

Emma was on point when she said it does come from cop culture.

It does come from colonizer culture in general.

SAM

Emma, what if you're a bystander in a situation?

What should and shouldn't you do?

EMMA

Yeah, so this is kind of nuanced.

It's very nuanced, I will say.

But I would say the first and foremost is do not call the cops immediately.

That's probably the worst thing you could do, particularly if you're dealing with

I'm not an advocate of calling the cops at all.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Secondly, I think the best thing to do is to not spectate.

And so by that, I mean, you don't want to kind of be, you know, ogling the situation as though you're watching a... Like a prize fight or something?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Don't turn it into a spectacle, essentially.

I think it's important to kind of take a step back and survey the situation.

If you are worried that the person who is participating in a de-escalation might be at risk, keep an eye out.

Keep within a safe distance, but don't spectate, essentially.

That's always going to make things worse as well.

SAM

It's kind of like that schoolyard fight feeling, right?

Sometimes I've had that situation in school where I'm arguing with somebody, it's escalating, but I don't know

EMMA

um yeah if you are kind of witnessing a situation where somebody is engaging in a de-escalation and they seem like they have it under control just don't get involved honestly um one of the key components of effectively de-escalating is maintaining maintaining a connection with the person um and if you're kind of inserting yourself into that there's a chance you might break that connection um

So yeah, again, as I was saying, you know, stand by, keep an eye out in a way that is not, you know, being overly intrusive, but...

Yeah, and if they do seem to be struggling or escalating themselves, I would say it's good to attempt to engage in a non-intrusive way.

So a good way to do that, again, would be with a caring gesture.

You could

Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you for joining us today.

Again, kind of going back to that notion of community care that Mylan was discussing.

Yeah, it's important to kind of follow up afterwards.

SAM

So obviously this isn't talking about police or hate crimes or lynchings.

But going back to that mom I was talking about at the outset, could she have been then unknowingly escalating the situation by intervening or making herself known?

EMMA

It could have been.

It's hard to say.

I think it also was helpful, though, as you mentioned, that she kind of made herself known.

Again, it's very nuanced, and you just kind of have to play it by ear, and you're probably going to make mistakes along the way.

No situation is going to be the same as the next one.

Do you know what I mean?

It's all going to be very nuanced, and you just kind of have to navigate it as it comes.

But, yeah.

SAM

Let's say you're not an expert at de-escalation and you're in a situation, let's say, with a colonizer.

Are there any red flags that this is going to get violent?

MYLAN

I'll jump in because for me, again, it's a matter of picking your battles.

Like, you know, one of the common

You'll always see Indigenous people expose them and be like, oh, you can't shop here because they're always going to follow you.

And it's very real.

And it happens to me.

I guarantee you there's a 95% chance if I get off the call and go to that drugstore chain, I will be followed.

That's how confident I am that that event will happen.

But with that being said, it's a matter of picking your battles.

For me, I like when people expose the societal aspect of it, but I was just on a call with a friend today actually, and he was saying that when it comes to non-Indigenous people, colonizers and settlers, is they have a system behind them.

and at any chance where like something is at the risk of being reported or collectively like addressed from the other side, I think it's safe to say like, you know, withdraw, be mindful because like for me, you know, I always tell people like, you know, if the police show up, there's gonna be a bias there.

I would never go down or be exposed or go into legal battles for certain things that are just an everyday occurrence.

But at the same time, having to be mindful that there might be situations where you can expose straight up blatant racism, where you can expose systemic issues very clearly and visibly.

And we experienced that as a family with my brother who was targeted

He chose to step back in that situation because my niece was in the truck.

He completely chose to disengage and not interact with it.

We came together as a family and had a conversation on whether or not he wants to release this footage.

He chose to release the footage and it led to a lot of interesting local social commentary.

There are still conversations happening about that incident.

Me and my brother-in-law who roll constantly, we started our jiu-jitsu journey together, we constantly have the conversation of how would we have responded in that situation.

It's really hard to say.

Emma's correct in saying that it really depends on the situation that you're in and what's going on in that moment and you have to be mindful.

I agree with my brother's assessment of that situation.

My niece was in the car.

He wanted to disengage and maintain the distance, and he did fairly well.

The video is out there.

There's some trigger warning involved in that video.

um but yeah at the same time you know the everyday occurrences for me i'm super mindful because it just takes one phone call um to the police that you know could mess up your life or you know you can piss off the wrong karen and i love how we call out karen's but at the same time that's still an act of violence that that we're potentially exposing ourselves to um and that we have to be really mindful to pick our battles in general

SAM

Yeah, I think a lot of people got so hyped up about like punching every Nazi they see.

But to your point, right, you got to pick your battles.

EMMA

Yeah, I yeah, I agree with everything Mylan is saying.

And I think, yeah, being able to punch every Nazi you see is is comes from a place of privilege for sure.

And like for myself personally, I have a white parent and I'm fairly white passing.

So

I don't experience those types of situations quite as often as Mylan would or anyone else who's more racialized.

They do happen, but definitely not in the same frequency.

But yeah, I think the key is you have to know your own limits.

You have to be self-aware.

For myself personally, in the work setting and in organizing as well, I know that I can't de-escalate situations where men are being physically violent towards women.

It's far too triggering for me.

And so I can't de-escalate myself in those situations.

And so a tactic that I rely on is communicating that well in advance with my coworkers and my co-organizers.

and you know if you're out with your friends or whatever that you might not have that same kind of um

which is kind of the ultimate goal so and then kind of like circling back to to some key indicators that you are in danger and should probably leave the situation it's if you can't make that connection with the person that I was talking about earlier which obviously if it's like a racially motivated attack or or

Any other kind of bigotry, essentially, you're not going to be able to make a connection with that person because they don't see you as a person.

SAM

They're invested in being disconnected from you.

EMMA

Absolutely.

So yeah, if you can't make that connection, it's probably best to just dip out.

Another indicator would be obviously if they're already kind of on the physical attack.

and then kind of again steering it to the more broader sense away from like a you know racially motivated attack or whatever but if well not necessarily but if somebody's in psychosis I think

It can be difficult to determine what psychosis is if you're not trained, but it's pretty easy to detect when somebody is kind of experiencing a break from reality, as you mentioned earlier with your personal experience.

But I would say if you're encountering somebody in a state of psychosis, they can be de-escalated, but it's very difficult to do without extensive training.

If somebody's not experiencing reality, then it's going to be difficult to make a connection with them and attempting to force them back to reality, it often will make things worse.

So I would say if you observe that somebody is probably in an advanced state of psychosis, I probably wouldn't engage as a non-experienced person in a situation like that.

SAM

I think we should also talk about the overlooked parts of fight or flight, which is freezing or fawning.

Freezing is obviously when you're immobilized.

Fawning means seeking approval, which might be being overly compliant.

We have to understand those are also survival responses.

But we want to check in with ourselves to see if we're making a judgment call or if it's just an automatic response kicking in that may not be serving us.

So as both of you mentioned, something as simple as checking in with yourself, recognizing how you feel, and even in that moment of recognizing, you have bought time.

Just thinking about de-escalation makes you stop and think, which buys time.

and buying time can be for the immediate or for dealing with the immediate while still planning for the long term.

I bought time.

Should I go for a walk now?

Should I leave the situation?

Or maybe it's about putting out the immediate fire so you can plan for a long term solution.

These are just examples to help conceptualize that doing something in the immediate doesn't mean it should only be handled in the immediate.

But check in with yourself.

Make checking in with yourself a habit.

Make checking in with others a habit.

But ultimately, no one should judge you for whatever you did or didn't do because it was you in that situation and not anyone else.

As far as self-defense, more than martial art techniques, the best weapons are your eyes, your ears, your mind and your feet.

Your eyes are so important to perceive your surroundings and your aggressor and to orient yourself.

Same with your ears.

What you hear can let you know if you're isolated.

And as far as techniques, generally, what's more important is your level of resistance than the actual technique.

Resisting is more important than being John Wick.

But resist to do what?

A past guest said if the goal of self-defense is escaping, what's more important than parkour, the art of running around obstacles?

And I think the point she was trying to make was

People don't spend nearly as much time thinking about the process of escaping as they do martial arts techniques, which is true.

People also don't spend enough time wayfinding and orienting to their surroundings and knowing where everything is.

I work on wayfinding with all the people I train.

But combining this with Marxism, your conditions inform your decisions and your wayfinding.

So how you escape depends on your conditions, which include your surroundings, but also your own personal state.

But at the same time, your personal conditions also affect the situations and surroundings you are in.

How I escape in a wheelchair will be different from someone who can run.

But at the same time, if I am in a wheelchair, how I orient to the world and my surroundings will be different, and I will be constantly thinking about my surroundings and how it's not designed for me, which means I can't access or inhabit the same spaces as able-bodied people.

which means I will most likely be escaping a situation I was able to enter.

So it's all context dependent and how people orient to their environment or what sensors they use to orient or even what environments they inhabit will be context dependent.

Even having a stroller made me realize I couldn't inhabit the same space as I could before having a child.

It's easy to say de-escalation is pointless and that if someone wants to hurt you, they will, when for some people, that's the only tool they can use or it's something they always have to try first.

It's not just about whether you're able-bodied or not.

Maybe you're always around your community, or you're always working.

Then, again, you might be compelled to always try and de-escalate first, rather than gouging the eyes out of a community member or coworker.

That doesn't mean de-escalation is the only thing you do, but it might always be part of the solution, if there's a solution at all.

But part of wayfinding, even for dangerous situations, is exploring your solution space.

It doesn't mean you have total control of the situation.

Again, it's all context dependent and there's no right or wrong.

Your way is not my way and vice versa.

The victim should never be blamed and they aren't at fault.

The victimizer is always at fault.

But if you say de-escalation is not important or useful, my question is, for whom?

Who is this person who lives in a situation where they never need to de-escalate?

Even in a situation where someone is intent on isolating you to do you harm, slowing things down or in a broad sense, somehow creating a moment of pause can give you an opportunity to escape.

Maybe fawning can even be temporarily appropriate here, or the fight response.

I don't know.

But everything you do will take time.

So to do something, you need time.

And so who doesn't ever need to pause or buy time?

Who doesn't ever need a little bit of cooperation?

Are there any other times people might need to de-escalate that they might not be aware of?

EMMA

Yeah, I think parenting is one of the biggest ones.

I personally use a lot of my de-escalating strategies with my son.

He's neurodivergent and is prone to very big feelings and very big reactions.

and it's important to make space for that.

And yeah, I think again, kind of circling back to what Mylan was discussing earlier about adult supremacy and those things and expecting our children to be fully emotionally regulated beings when we ourselves are often not that.

Yeah, de-escalation strategies in parenting, I think it's really vital, really important both for de-escalating a child that is experiencing some kind of overstimulation episode or, you know, some kind of big emotional response, but also for ourselves.

I think it's super vital to kind of have those skills and fall back on them as frequently as you can.

SAM

I totally agree.

I know there's been times where my wife has had to tell me, maybe you should step away.

Let me handle this with regards to our son.

And I've said the same thing to my wife.

Maybe you need to walk away from this.

So there's definitely been times that we've had to de-escalate ourselves or sometimes the spouse isn't around and I had to just kind of like, okay, let me just get away from him for a second.

Let him just play or do his thing.

And then let me come back to this when I'm ready to handle this or maybe like save the battle.

I'm not going to talk to him about this now.

We'll talk about it later.

Or even in our own relationship between my wife and I, sometimes we've had to be like, okay, I need to go for a walk.

We have to create some space and then come back to this later because we're both getting too like worked up, right?

MYLAN

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, coming at it from the rural aspect, you know, in the communities I was working in,

Really, it is only community in some cases that will have to respond to, you know, family members or community members going through, you know, some kind of crisis, you know, mental health crisis, self harm crisis, or, you know, something that requires, you know, ideally, somebody to be present with the person that's going through it.

and having been in situations where we're called or the place I was working at, we were called to respond to community crisis.

It shows up as definitely a skill that you have to be mindful of and begin to foster and hone in terms of what happens if I get the call that somebody's

facing a very real challenge in their life.

What am I going to do in that space?

For me, when it comes to community care, and I know Emma stated it too, is that we ought to avoid police response.

And I tell that to families, I tell that in the communities I work in, is that the best person that could potentially respond to someone in crisis would be either a friend or a family member if they're willing.

But it does boil down to literally being present with people, seeing where they're at, recognizing them as a living, breathing human being, and not responding from a place of authoritarianism, not judging them, and literally talking in terms of them literally being a friend or a community member or a family member.

If it is a rural aspect, if you're the only person that this person has access to in those situations, you know, you are technically going to have to help them in a longer run.

And, you know, I still maintain relationships with communities I work with and youth and community members I work with.

And we still plan.

We still problem solve.

And again, that's not and that's a very non-clinical approach.

That's not necessarily like a professional approach because there's always like a handoff or there's always like, you know, a referral.

But when it comes to community care, teamwork really does make the dream work.

And I mean, families need to come together and ideally communicate in terms of the crisis they're facing or the crisis that people are facing or their nieces and nephews are facing and openly communicate the needs of the family member, the needs of the person, and come up with game plans to ideally mitigate colonizer response, like police response.

and you know I do see families doing that now like I do see you know the conversations on social media around like wellness checks and things like that but at the same time there's still lots of work to do like that's why I'm glad you're having this conversation on de-escalation and even you know me speaking to community care

because there's a whole avenue that we have to explore and normalize in terms of responding to crisis because it can be scary.

It can be very scary.

But at the same time, in my mind, for the times I did respond to crisis, I'm glad I did.

I'm glad I was there.

I'm glad that I was there for those young people that were facing that crisis.

Talking with them today, they tend to lean to say that they were surprised it was me, surprised I showed up.

But again, literally my goal in those situations was to beat the police there.

It really does boil down to being mindful, having the community care aspect, knowing your community, knowing your friendships, your friend community, knowing your family community, and just being mindful that, hey, it may be me that has to make this call.

I may as well work on these skill sets while I can.

At least I will have some tools in the tool belt for when something does happen.

SAM

And it seems like, as Emma mentioned, right, one of the best ways to de-escalate and something we all use and don't think about is checking in.

You check in with yourself to de-escalate yourself.

And in that same way, I think when you check in with your community, check in with others, that is also a form of de-escalation.

You know, maybe somebody's going through something and then you just check in.

You don't even know they're going through something.

And even something like that can really help them.

I think another common way that this appears in our families, even in our friend groups, is through intervention.

We sometimes even jokingly call it that, but what is that?

We're saying there's something happening, there's something escalating, there's something spiraling, and we need to talk about it as a group of friends, as a family.

Maybe it's that tough conversation before the family seeks help.

Some kind of family therapy or couples therapy or maybe somebody in the friend group is engaging in some kind of harmful behavior and it's spiraling or it's getting worse.

It could be about substance abuse.

It could be about, you know, you're not quite sure what's happening with somebody, but you're seeing them act in ways that they don't normally act and it's getting more erratic, right?

And so we've done this before, but we never actually consciously thought too much about it.

so we don't even do it as maybe as often as we need to this act of checking in of intervening right and so if we think about it as a process as a form of care then we could approach these things more thoughtfully be aware that we use it a lot more often than we think we do and if we realize we use it a lot more often than we think we do then we ought to

be more considerate about it more thoughtful about it get better at it did either of you want to add to that

EMMA

Yeah, I just kind of wanted to add a bit onto what Mylan was talking about with regards to like, in rural settings, you know, you don't really have a lot of services or resources you can rely on, which is very true.

But in most, in most city centres, there are crisis teams that exist that operate independently of police.

and it's important to familiarize yourself with those.

So if you ever are in a situation, that's who your first line of contact will be before police.

For example, where I am, it's dial 2-1-1 and they send out a team of trained crisis response workers.

They're not cops, they're not paramedics, they're not any of those institutionalized bodies of oppression for many people.

SAM

And for a lot of people, just seeing them could be triggering, right?

EMMA

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

They're just frontlines workers, plain clothes.

They show up.

They often have harm reduction supplies or food or resources or a plethora of resources that they can offer to people.

So that should always be your first line of contact.

So, yeah, if you do live in a city centre, I think it's important to familiarize yourself with what that phone number or contact line might be.

and then in addition in in rural settings there are things that exist for example like suicide first aid training exists de-escalation training exists these things can be inaccessible in regards to money and finances of course but

Yeah, I think if you have the means to do so as a community and come together and kind of, you know, designate some people that you could provide access to those trainings and stuff to kind of be that resource person within that community.

Yeah, I think that's an important solution as well if it's within your means.

MYLAN

Yeah and then I'll even like exploring the option depending on like what community you're in like maybe maybe there is a need to create a team maybe you know collectively the community comes together and says hey we need people to respond to this and you know getting you know governance conversations going on on how that's going to happen because I worked in communities where there weren't teams and then you know later they decided they need to make some teams to respond and

Yeah, it comes down, like, with what you were saying too, Sam, is that, you know, families, you know, we tend to know what's going on in our family systems, and sometimes it's emotional no-go zones, and we don't want to discuss it.

But I mean, if not you, then who, right?

Like, if you're recognizing behaviors or patterns, then it's good to ideally have enough family care to be able to address them and support one another.

There's also this concept of mapping out your society, mapping out your kinship system so you know that if something does happen, we have these people to draw on and we know who's related to who.

That's a form of community mapping.

I would even say it's even a form of wayfinding too, looking at your work.

Who are you depending on and where are we existing as community members together?

SAM

and just listening to this, especially thinking about the examples you gave about residential schools or HALT and how a lot of care workers, frontline workers will show up just with food.

and you realize a lot of these crisis comes from a crisis of need or a crisis of lacking.

It's like squid games, right?

Where people just don't have enough.

They haven't been provided enough.

They've been neglected or they've been oppressed and it creates this pressure.

that have been affecting our community and the people we know and the people we come in contact with.

MYLAN

Yeah, so inherently like in this conversation, obviously there's a degree of anti-colonialism and anti-capitalism because like, you know, one of the big issues right now that I feel leads to a lot of commentaries on like economics and jobs, right?

So there's like this whole big push for people to get jobs and job training, job center training, even like life skills pertaining to employment is a big one in Indigenous communities today.

But no one's really having a very critical conversation around capitalism and around the reality that there's very real systemic problems existing in our communities as a result of colonization.

It's almost like we're on a hamster wheel of literally not addressing the bigger picture.

Some people jump on that hamster wheel and want to run fastest and for whatever reason, that's their mission, that's their goal.

But from the structural lens, we really need to be willing to foster a sense of community care that's politically conscious, that's socially and economically conscious.

Because, yeah, you know, a lot of the depression, a lot of in my mind and even in my own life, a lot of the depression and a lot of the struggle is the result of, you know, having to be like a productive member of society or having to have a clear cut career path.

But, you know, for Indigenous people, that's an ongoing colonial conversation we have internally.

is how are we going to survive?

And you even get to the point of where people are shaming our own people, like our own people are shaming our own people for not working hard enough, or the bootstrap conversation, or being unproductive.

SAM

I think Bootstrap has leveled up to grind culture, and that's really, I think, toxic and damaging.

100%.

MYLAN

100%.

And it's even leveling up to people believing in economic and social paradigms of billionaires and things like that, and just regurgitating some of the cheesiness that's coming out of that.

In my mind, oppressed people are the hardest working people in the world today.

Indigenous people are the hardest working people in the world today because so much goes into us trying to stay alive.

So much energy goes into us trying to be able to live another day by being able to stay on track because society was not designed for us and it was not designed by us.

The economic system was not designed for us, it's not designed by us.

We're all dealing with those impacts on our mental health, on our family systems.

That's why on my posts and my conversations, I always say that we're all navigating this chaotic colonial world.

The last thing that we should be doing is judging each other for trying to find our way forward.

So again, for me, it really depends on community care.

The cheesy line of teamwork makes the dream work.

That's my dad reference now because I always say it.

But there's a little bit of truth to that.

We do need to come together as families and peoples again and really shift focus to identifying the problems and addressing those problems.

EMMA

Yeah, just to expand on that a bit too, the same thing that Mylan's discussing in regards to this push for employment, we see the exact same thing in regards to the push for housing as well.

There's this really bad

nothing could be further from the truth you know there's yeah that aspect of community care absolutely needs to exist and it becomes very cyclical because people will you know they'll get housed they'll they'll go to detox or or rehab of some sort and you know they'll be on the straight and narrow as society would call it but then they get lonely and isolated and return back to you know the

Thank you so much for joining us.

SAM

People will digest this and give us more things to think about, and that's how we'll end up covering this topic again.

But before we wrap up, Emma, is there anything you wanted to plug or mention?

EMMA

There's nothing personal that I wanted to plug, but I do just want to encourage people to identify their local harm reduction focused nonprofits and grassroots organizations and initiatives and support them.

The opioid epidemic is reaching a

Insane crisis point.

Thousands of people are dying all across Turtle Island and even locally the Treaty 6 Confederacy has just recently declared a state of emergency.

We're losing about six people per day just in the city that I live in.

So yeah and this is not just an issue that's connected to the prairies or Canada even.

It's

It's global, but yeah, connect to any kind of harm reduction focused nonprofit in your area, support them, learn what harm reduction is, carry naloxone and learn how to use it and... Carry a what?

So Naloxone is an opioid reversal substance.

So you can administer it either intramuscularly or nasally.

There's two different options.

It's very easy to use.

You don't need any medical training.

And if somebody is in active overdose because of opioids, it'll reverse it almost instantly.

Yeah, it saves lives.

So it's important to have.

And yeah, just remembering that our unhoused neighbors are still our neighbors and it's important that we're treating them that way.

SAM

My area used to have a lot of low-income apartments.

Since the pandemic, they've all been like destroyed and they've put up these new luxury condos everywhere so that rich liberals here can do Airbnb.

So I've seen some of my neighbors, as in people who lived in different apartments on my street, now actually on the street.

EMMA

yeah the the pandemic has definitely exasperated it and the opioid epidemic and the housing epidemic go hand in hand and if you look at the statistics drug poisoning response or what is commonly known as an overdose has pretty much tripled since 2020 when the pandemic started so yeah for sure the pandemic has exasperated a lot of that unfortunately so it's

important now more than ever to be supporting any kind of organization supporting those people.

SAM

And Mylan, things you wanted to plug and also where can people find you?

MYLAN

Yeah, I mentioned adult supremacy.

My brother, Colby Tatusas, has a cool little article out and some of the work he does.

So people can Google that.

And also, you know, the incident that did take place with him.

So yeah, you can look into that if you want.

But yeah, you know, listen to Radical Narrative.

We have episodes coming out.

Not really much other than, you know, keep listening to Southpaw.

SAM

Thank you both for coming on the show.

EMMA

Yeah, no problem.

Thanks for having me.

MYLAN

Thanks for having me again.