Casaubon’s Book: Food Preservation and Democracy A nice long blog post on what shifts might come if we ate locally, and grew our own food. (tags: food democracy) IFC Environment – Good Practice Documents A handbook on stakeholder engagment, primarily private sector (tags: consultation engagement) Anecdote: Sensemaking Archives A great set of musings on storytelling and sensemaking that relates closely to the work we are doing on the art of harvesting. (tags: stories artofharvesting) Book Excerpt: The Assault on Reason | TIME Al Gore answers Robert Byrd’s question: “Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished …
Some short notes about various things: Friends of mine in Estonia have started the White Tulip movement to bring peace to a deep seated ethnic conflict that is flaring up there at the moment. In the Ukraine, the 15th annual OpenSpaceonOpenSpace has just concluded and the photos are online. I was reflecting on how much easier it is to harvest from these gatherings now than it was when they began, or even six years ago when we hosted OSonOS in Vancouver. I haven’t plugged Redwire Magazine for a while. Redwire is published by indigenous youth in Vancouver, and it captures …
I’m back from Bella Coola, and reflecting on the remarkable three days of learning and Open Space we did there. Saturday, we held a small community Open Space gathering around the issue of what the community needs to do to prepare for assuming full responsibility over child and family services. This is a provocative question in the Nuxalk Nation. The Nation is a strong and independent community and putting children and families in the centre of any conversation brings heart, passion and commitment. We had a small group of people present for our Open Space. 20 people began the day …
Yesterday, in preparing for two days of teaching and training I spent the morning over breakfast reading some of th stories of Clayton Mack, the grandfather of my friend and client Liz Hall. I was reading about the way in which Nuxalk people gathered food from the land, whether it was the fish, game or plants and berries. He talked about the way the amlh – the spring salmon – were harvested using fishtraps. At one time there were 22 traps on the river. These traps would form barriers that the salmon would need to jump. When they jumped they …
Bella Coola, BC I’m up in Bella Coola this week working with the Nuxalk Nation. I am running some facilitation training and then on Saturday, an Open Space meeting here in the community on the subject of reclaiming Nuxalk child and family services. This place is out in the middle of virtually nowhere. It’s 450 kms west of Williams Lake, but only an hour and a quarter by plane. However, the Bella Coola valley is surrounded by the tallest mountains in the Coastal Range and man are they huge. We flew PAST them this morning, over …