My friend John Engle has posted a story about using Open Space at a small liberal arts college near Chicago. What is remarkable about the story is that it opens up a new way to use Open Space Technology for decision making.
You can read the story in .pdf format at John’s site
My dad has a blog where he shares News from Clarksburg, a small village in Ontario’s Beaver Valley. He doesn’t post often, but when he does he posts these little stories that capture so much more than they purport to:
These two trees are on the route into Clarksburg village that Maggie (the golden retriever) and I walk in the mornings to fetch the Globe and Mail. About four years ago I noticed a young Mountain Ash growing in the crotch of a branch of the Maple about five metres above the ground. I suppose a squirrel or bird must have carried a berry up into the tree and the seeds took root. Each spring as the Maple burst into leaf, so did the transplanted Mountain Ash. It produced its own orange berries each summer just as it parent did down the street. I made a point of searching for any other young Mountain Ashes in the same area but the only one I could see was the one growing in the Maple tree.
The ritual was repeated this spring and Mountain Ash was now about 2 metres tall growing in a normal fashion five metres above the ground. Unfortunately, the old Maple was having a hard time. Each storm brought down more of its dead branches and even big pieces of bark. Two weeks ago I was sad to see that the Maple and its Mountain Ash were gone. It must have happened while I was away for a few days because I did not see the work crews. All that is left is a round patch of dirt where the stump was removed. Soon the grass seed will cover over the spot and the two trees will only be a memory.
Is there a moral to this story? Perhaps not. Just another example of the wonderful way that Mother Nature works and the importance of us noticing.
Beautiful.
This is a picture of Venus passing in front of the sun last week. It is a rather unusual event, as Venus transits the face of the sun twice every 120 years or so. Those two transits are seperated by 8 years.
This photo shows the sun shining through the atmosphere on Venus, and in its composition it struck me as a beautiful design for a flag for our solar system. It captures bodies made of both gas and rock, shows an intimate relationship – an embrace in fact – between the sun and its planets, and it also shows an atmosphere, the thin and delicate home for life in our system.
More Venus transit links:
In the midst of this federal election, I’ve weighed my choices fairly carefully, and I’m voting Green. Locally we have an excellent candidate running in Andrea Goldsmith who is currently a councilor at the Town of Gibsons, on the Sunshine Coast, just the other side of the inlet I live in.
For me, Aboriginal issues are a key part of the campaign, even if they seem to be off most people’s radar screens. But in this riding we have two First Nations who are well advanced in the BC Treaty Process. Both Sliammon and Sechelt have concluded or signed Agreements-in-Principle with the federal and provincial governments. In canvassing the parties on Aboriginal issues, this is what I found:
The Greens have a vague policy statement, but when I wrote to them with a few ideas on how to create sustainable First Nations communities through a combination of fiscal arrangements and green resource economics, I got a personalized email back from their policy chair and an invitation to continue to engage with the party after the election. I have never belonged to a political party, but I’d be happy to work with Greens in developing ideas that can be taken to Parliament and/or stolen by other parties.
The Liberals have the most extensive Aboriginal infrastructure in the country. They have a Commission within the party which features several friends of mine on the Executive. Their Aboriginal platform is small but vague. I have found in the past that when the rubber hits the road, the Liberals have stood back on Aboriginal issues. This includes:
- failing to comprehensively implement the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples recommendations (a watered down response was called Gathering Strength, and it has largely fallen by the wayside)
- an inability to embrace creative solutions to finalize treaties, especially in the fiscal relations area, leading to deadlocks at many treaty tables
- a refusal to follow up from the legal implications of the Delgamuukw decision on Aboriginal titles and an inability to discuss meaningful reconciliation initiatives.
- a disastrous Governance Act which almost became law over the objections of nearly everybody in the Aboriginal community. It was such a debacle that even the First Nations-led governance initiatives had a hard time getting started in response.
There have been a few Liberal successes, notably the Nisga’a Treaty here in British Columbia, the Urban Aboriginal Strategy and the Liberals did keep the Treaty process going while the provincial government was dithering, but in general, the Liberals seems shy to pull the trigger on real innovation.
The New Democrats offer platitudes in their platform (.pdf), but the most intriguing idea is guaranteeing Aboriginal seats in Parliament, much as the Maori seats are structured in New Zealand. I personally think that a better idea would be a push for proportional representation that would allow for an Aboriginal party to gain a meaningful voice in Parliament, much like New Zealand (see this interview with co-leader Pita Sharples). I’m also amused that the NDP will train 10,000 Aboriginal people in health, education and social services. In general a vague platform and other than the Parliamentary reform idea, one that is not long on creativity.
The Conservatives may be the strangest bunch of all. There is no reference to Aboriginal issues in their platform that I could find. So I called my current MP, John Reynolds, who is a senior member of the Party and asked him his opinion. He said that the platform does contain two ideas, one involving converting reserve land to private land so it can be used as security for equity. No mention of how to protect community assets though. Also his party supports the rights of Aboriginal with respect to matrimonial assets.
When I asked him about the treaty process, he said all he wants to do is see it get moving. When I asked him how he asked me for some ideas, and I shared the same ideas on fiscal and tax reform with him as I did with the Greens but he didn’t seem interested. I asked about his relationships with local First Nations and he said that Maynard Harry, the chief at Sliammon is an NDP member and slags him all the time, complaining that Reynolds never meeting with the community when in fact he said he meets with people in the community who have been opposed to the chief.
Reynolds also told me that a Conservative government would have strong leadership on Aboriginal issues from John Duncan “who’s wife is a Native.” Duncan is well known for his opposition to the Nisga’a treaty, calling the “Nisga’a Disagreement.” He is not widely regarded as an ally of First Nations interests in his riding or nationally.
So why am I voting Green? If you look at the Green platform in it’s totality and apply it to First Nations communities it provides for a very comprehensive set of ideas for creating small sustainable resource communities which is exactly what First Nations need: culturally sustainable communities and viable economies. Increasing integration with industrial economies has only heightened tensions between First Nations and non-Aboriginal communities while depleting resources within traditional territories before agreements can be signed. For small isolated communities, Green ideas point the way to sustainable futures culturally, socially and economicially.
Storytelling Practices
As an addendum to the series on storytelling, here are some specific facilitation practices I use in working with stories with groups.
- In order to learn about the organization I am working with I ask for stories from people one on one using appreciative questions designed to draw forth the best of the organization or community. Often I ask people to tell me stories that reflect the spirit of the organization or describe moments of flow, compassion, and collective or individual excellence. You can find some of the questions I use here and here. This helps set the stage for process that “grow more of what works.”
- To work with organizations experiencing grief, I often hold a storytelling circle. Depending on the organization this usually takes the form of a talking circle whereby we use an object like a stone or an eagle feather as a talking piece. This is either circulated or placed in the middle of the circle, and people are invited to retrieve it and speak, telling a story about themselves or the organization, or whatever is relevant to the situation at hand. Often, working in Aboriginal organizations and communities, I work with local Elders who can hold space for grief in a deeper way while I hold space for the process.
- In scenario planning and future-oriented strategic planning, I ask people to create the stories of their futures. For scenario planning, this process can be very intensive and occur over a long period of time as we consider possible scenarios facing the group. In other formats, especially where we are working with appreciative processes this can be as simple as asking people to put themselves 10 years in the future and telling the story of how they got there.
- When facilitating Open Space Technology meetings and depending on the context I invite people to record stories in their notes from the sessions. I often refer to these stories at the opening and closing points of the gathering, in order to point to some of the key things that are holding the group’s attention as a way of focusing the event.
- When working with diverse stakeholder groups, I invite the non-technical participants to share stories and ask the technical participants to reflect these stories back in terms they can understand. This real-time translation process helps people to come to a meeting from equal positions of power (you have the technical expertise, I have the story) and it encourages people to see the world through different eyes. It also ensures that technical people capture the spirit of the information in a way that makes sense for the non-technical participants. Storytelling in this context moves people into a human space where they are jointly making meaning of the world rather than one group using its own language and jargon to dominate the other.
- Of course by keeping a weblog, I engage in personal storytelling almost every day.
Feel free to add your own storytelling practices in the comments, or at the storytelling page on my Open Space Wiki.
And for more storytelling resources for group process work check out the resources at StoryAtWork.com