James Wilson returning the first salmon to the sea In Chapter two of the “The Gift” Hyde writes about how the benefits which arise from a gift must remain gifts in themselves if the gift’s power is to continue. He looks at the increase of gifts in three ways: natural, spiritual and social. Honouring gifts from the natural world, such as in the First Salmon Ceremony practiced by the coastal First Nations here on the west coast depend our relationship with the natural world, and place us in a position of recipient of natural bounty. To treat this bounty as …
At the Giving Conference in Chicago, Susan Kerr turned me on to “The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property” by Lewis Hyde. Despite the fact that it is now out of print, it seems that lots of people at the conference knew this book (Phil Cubeta: “This is one of my favourite books of all time!”) Jill Perkins (no blog yet — wait until she moves to London) gave me her copy, which had been languishing in a box since her undergraduate days, the relic of an arts course that simply got in the way of her opening …
I am fond of blogging about the teachings I receive from Elders and the wise people in my life. Putting them here in this space gives them a kind of public life and memory that they wouldn’t otherwise have. Over this weekend at the giving conference I was privileged to meet Debbie Gleason. Debbie brought something absolutely essential to the my experience of the conference. She talked about love. Pure love, the love that connects a mother to a daughter in a myriad of unspoken and intuitive ways, that constructs a language of shared understanding. In the midst of all …
Talking with Phil Cubeta and AKMA this morning about enforcing the moral claims that support the resources that support local action. The dark side of community organizing, decentralization and local action is that those who are aggregating resources are hoping that this trend continues, in order to keep energy focused at the local level and money flowing to the centre. Releasing these resources to support meaningful change, including stuff like building infrastructure in First nations communities. In First Nations, there are actually a number of tools that help to express power and enforce claims. Access to litigation, treaty negotiation, self-government …