While summer rolled to an end, a truly significant ruling on Aboriginal title happened in Canada when the BC Supreme Court recognized the Constitutionally protected Aboriginal title of the Haida Nation to all of its territory. This declaration was built on previous court cases, co-management agreements and the ground breaking recognition protocol signed last year. Since 2003, and really since the Delgamuukw decision in 1997 defined the concept of Aboriginal title as a form of title within Canadian law, the province of BC and the Haida Nation have been preparing for this day. There is no First Nation in BC with a more secure grasp on its traditional and historic territory than the Haida Nation. It was only a matter of time.
When we talk about “reconciliation” in Canada we are, technically and most significantly I think, talking about the reconciliation of two different sets of laws. The Court in Delgamuukw implored the government of Canada to figure out how to reconcile Canadian law with Indigenous law. Reconciliation means this: how is power shared between two legal frameworks that may have different objectives, and different methods of governing. In 1851 when the Crown stopped making treaties in what later became BC, it inadvertently ensured that Aboriginal title remained unextinguished. Aboriginal title refers to the rights in land of First Nations that existed before contact with European law. In Delgamuukw the Court basically said that the Crown can’t just show up somewhere, plant a flag, and declare thousands of years of Indigenous rights to be extinguished. In other words, the idea of terra nulls, that the land was empty before Europeans arrived, is not a legal concept in Canadian law. The land was full. And the obligation on the colonial powers of Britain and Canada, acting in the interests of the Crown, was set out in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. That obligated colonial authorities to negotiate with the owners of these lands before doing anything else in Indigenous territories. After 1851, Canada just stopped doing that here in BC, and the consequence is that every action taken subsequently by the Crown is in doubt as to its legality under Canada’s own law.
Now it’s important to remember that it is First Nations who have been saying, for the past 175 years, that there is a need to negotiate land rights. The intention all along has been to create agreements that would be of mutual benefit to First Nations and settlers to these lands. In legal agreements and negotiations, First Nations have never said that existing private property is in doubt or that settlers should go home. It is First Nations that have led the way in inviting relationships that are sustainable and mutually beneficial.
Because Canada just stopped making agreements in BC, First Nations here retained all of their rights and title intact. Traditional and historic Indigenous land uses have continued, despite Canadian government actions which forced First Nations off their lands, created a cultural genocide, and, in the case of the 1862 smallpox epidemic, leaned into actual physical genocide as canoes full of infected people were towed up the coast from Victoria all the way to the Nisga’a and Haida territory, leaving death and destruction in their wake.
First Nations have been true to their position of land ownership since the very beginning. They are the rightful owners of their territories and they have desired mutually beneficial relationships with the Crown. In 1910 at Spences Bridge, a number of Interior chiefs made a declaration that led with an invitation to create treaties.
For all this time in British Columbia, colonial governments have just ignored these requests, trampled rights and title, ignored existing treaties and applied Canadian law as if there was no legally recognized set of governments and people already on this land. In 1973, the Nisga’a finally gained recognition of their existing rights and title, nearly 60 years after they first demanded it. Although it was a split Supreme Court of Canada that wrote the decision, the case led to a negotiation of rights and title that lasted another 25 years and culminated in the signing of the Nisga’a Final Agreement.
The treaty process in BC has churned along since 1992 and meanwhile, First Nations have also been active in the courts with a series of decisions that confirmed the existence of Aboriginal as a concept (Delgamuukw) and then found that it actually existed on the land (Tsilhqot’in). From the moment that Delgamuukw was settled it was clear that it would only be a matter of time before the Haida pushed the envelope on this.
September 30 is coming up and in Canada that is a day set aside for the commemoration of Truth and Reconciliation. Lots of folks will be wearing orange shirts and learning about residential schools or participating in other public activities. I will be on Haida Gwaii that day, for the first time in my life, working with a co-managment board who jointly steward the wildlife in parts of the Northwest Territories. That is a body that is actively engaged in reconciliation of laws, of knowledge, of ways of relating to land and animals.
In my mind, no court ruling is needed to tell me where I will be. I will be in what has always been Haida territory, visiting an island archipelago that has been governed sea stewarded from time immemorial by the Haida people. Canada is a slow learner with respect to Indigenous rights. From the very beginning First Nations have seen the opportunity to build something together with the settlers that were arriving in their lands and the governments that were exercising authority. Through centuries of being ignored, disposed, killed, re-educated and denied the means to argue for rights and title. First Nations have continued to ask Canada to be its best self, to be in active mutual relationship and see what we can do together. It sometimes takes court cases to hold Canada and Canadians to account by the terms of our own laws. I’m good with that too.
If you do nothing else on September 30, or any other day for that matter, do yourself a favour and follow some of the history of the invitation that First Nations have consistently made to Canada. Understand that, despite the protestations of some of Canada’s political “leaders” who court short-term gain from stoking racism and outrage and misinformation about land and rights issues. Remember that he work of reconciliation is fundamentally about how we will permanently live together here in ongoing mutually beneficial partnership. Canada has always been afforded the chance to do the right thing, the beautiful thing and the moral and just thing. At any time we can seize that chance. Let’s do it now.
It was about 30 years ago that I first saw the World Wide Web on my friend Chris Heald’s computer. We immediately grasped the potential of self-publishing and even had a short lived website called “Stereotype” because it had two writers. We posted editorial musings sort of in the spirit of Suck.com. It was a proto-blog and I learned how to code html which I used for my first websites. Netscape quickly became my browser of choice so I’m chuffed to celebrate its 30th birthday.
Lest we forget. 10 years ago Maclean’s published an article about how the federal government was purging its archives of data on social, economic and environmental trends. I remember this. They were at war against climate science, and anything that could identify the negative consequences of wealth inequality.
Do you matter at work? I take it for granted that people do want to matter, if not at work then in their personal lives. That they want to be able to effect a positive change on the world around them (and if they would rather influent a negative influence, they are suffering with sociopathy). Is mattering and belonging different? Does it matter?
I think it does. From a link in that article comes this quote: “we work not just to pay the bills but because we want to contribute something meaningful to society. The psychological effect of spending our days on tasks we secretly believe don’t need to be performed is profoundly damaging, “a scar across our collective soul”.” I think unnecessary meetings are like that too. Or worse, poorly designed but necessary ones.
RIP to Midnight, the humpback whale that was struck and killed by a BC Ferry in Wright Sound last week. That was part of the area we were visiting earlier this month where we encountered dozens of humpbacks, and 15 fin whales too. There are so many whales on our coast now. And so much boat traffic, including ferries to Prince Rupert and Alaska, cruise ships, LNG tankers and bulk carriers. Many of these ships use these narrow fjords. Wright Sound is the intersection of the Inside Passage and the Douglas Channel at the end of which lies the port of Kitimat. The confluence of waters makes it a rich feeding ground for whales and dolphins.
A day of football yesterday. It started early watching Tottenham play Brighton. Spurs were looking to continue their form but despite having the lions share of possession and the best set of chances, they conceded thwice in the first half, digging themselves into a hole. Exciting battles on the wings saw both Kudus and Odobaert stymied by their full back counterpoints, and Lukas Bergval in the middle was creative but loose. His mistake resulted in the second Brighton goal. Still, Richarlison managed to nick one back before the half. We came out of the dressing room with more of the same. It was fun watching Kudus and Bergval experiment, resulting in many failures, but there was patience there. Xavi Simon joined them as a creative later in the half and we secured a second goal. Not a scintillating performance, but better than the disjointed show against Bournemouth earlier in the season. The draw was enough to keep us in second place overnight behind undefeated Liverpool. We play winless Wolves next.
Yesterday was also the last Vancouver Rise home game of the season and we went along to that one in person. Ottawa Rapids were in town, featuring former TSS Rover and TSS academy player Stella Downing who is having a great rookie professional season. A very similar pattern of play to the Spurs match, with the Rise dominating possession and pressure in the opening 15 minutes, but conceding a goal after a clearance was flicked on and Stella got loose behind the high Rise back line. She doesn’t miss when you give her time and space like that. 1-0. Latifah Abdu, Vancouver’s new striker, had a couple of good chances early, but was taken out of the game in the second half by a smothering and pressing Ottawa defence. Jasmyn Spencer and Lisa Pechersky, two of the best and most consistent Rise players couldn’t get anything going either. After DB Pridham’s goal and a third from Jazmine Wilkinson, who also played in League 1 BC for Harbourside, the Rise missed their chance to secure the fourth and final playoff spot. 3-0 flattered the visitors, by Vancouver’s defence is a shambles, and their attack looks unconnected with players like Abdu and Pechersky taking it all on by themselves. They have conceded 10 unanswered goals in the past two games, after a good four-game winning streak took them into playoff contention. They have work to do.
My friend seanna davidson sent through an invitation today to a one-day event she is holding on Toronto Island in October called Systems Leadership: seeing the forest for the trees. The one-day retreat will be held on October 19 and is associated with the incredible RSD 14 Symposium which is being held virtually and physically in Toronto this year. Go if you can.
Navigating the currents of dynamic systems at speed seems impossible now. The “flood the zone” strategy of disruption turns everything into a crisis, meaning that it is seemingly impossible to find the time to slow down and see where you are at, and who is there with you. I think the strategy of flood the zone is superficial in that those who promote it are not interested in deep seated change. They continually move the chairs around so you can find no where to sit, while meanwhile they use the pretext of chaos to impose high level constraints. But if we take a view out at different scales, we can see that fundamental patterns of power haven’t changed, and the chaos being wrought upon the world isn’t rooted. If we play at the level at which the perpetrators of this strategy are working, it feels too fast. If we get above it and watch, we see repeating patterns of power and influence at play, and the strategies we have learned as humans to deal with these may yet be useful to us who are committed to life-giving contexts. That is a propos of my post from the other day. I think the fundamental capacities of participatory leadership and dialogue are as necessary as ever. We can, and we need to, connect and exchange at speed. I think this is what seanna’s work is about, where she sees that systems leadership is an outcome of working with systems. Or, as she quotes Nora Bateson:
‘leadership does not reside in a person but in an arena that can be occupied by offerings of specific wisdom to the needs of the community. so leadership is produced collectively in the community, not the individual… leadership for this era is not a role, or set of traits; it’s a zone of inter-relational process.’
seanna and her colleague Fiona McKenzie in the post linked above, are trying to see leadership as a forest metaphor, which, like all metaphors, is both limited and useful. Specifically, they see systems leadership this way:
Our metaphor won’t hold for theoretical purists, but bear with us — it has helped us to frame the ‘when, where, who and how’ of a type of systems leadership that is dynamic, fluid, and moves far beyond the role of an individual as a systems leader. Our thinking goes that ‘systems leadership as a forest’ is:
Seasonal—leadership that is taken up at the right time, not all the time, with different approaches, roles and behaviours needed in different contexts
Self-selecting—leadership taken up and held by many, not by just one ‘leader’ (or a single tree?) — across position, authority, roles
Biodiverse—thrives in a context of a diversity of people and worldviews, ways of knowing, being and doing
Layered—taking place at multiple scales, levels, sub-systems, cultures, capacities, ways of knowing
Sometimes invisible—Often happening in-between places and below the radar without formal recognition.
Self-organising—Organised patterns of behaviour arise without ‘control’ over decisions on what gets grown where.
Inter-dependent and adaptive—Where actions influence each other through interactions, are reliant on many to sustain change, and are recalibrated from feedback.
Emergent—always transitioning from one pattern/season/state to another, which can only be seen by looking at the whole forest, not just a single tree. Transitions can include phases of breakdown and renewal.
Generative—Healthy system parts enable improved health and capacity amongst other system parts. Their interconnected nature is an amplifying feature of health and resilience in the system.
Existing—this forest has inherent value not defined by others and does not need permission to exist
I strongly resonate with that. I would even say that this has been a cornerstone of my practice over the past 25 years as well, underpinning the ways I have thought about and worked with communities and organizations as complex living systems. What I notice here is that at every level of “systems” (I think I prefer “contexts”) there is both dynamic change and longer term stability. The stability is brought by the constraint regime (as Alicia Juarerro would say). In a forest, at the level that seanna and Fiona are talking about there is enduring stability of structure and predictable dynamic processes: cadences and rhythms that, while they are dynamic, are nevertheless stable in their pattern. And there is also the work at the micro level in a forest where there is constant movement and change. Pull apart a rotting log and you see very little stability as creatures of all shapes and sizes are at work transforming the system without a larger view of what they are doing, or what they are even a part of.
I’m thinking a lot about this stuff at the moment. Today I was set to meet with a young person whose heart lies in social change, personal healing and systems transformation, and I wanted to give her a sense of possibility in her work. She wasn’t feeling well, so I’ve put this blog post together partly as a gift to her and to let the world know about seanna’s work and some of the ways people are trying to think about this moment in time in the context of history.
This is a blog post, so it’s not 100% coherent, but if you have made it this far, I’d love to hear your thoughts, and I’d like to leave you with a stunning visualization of action at the dynamic level. Last night The Montreal Roses defeated the Halifax Tides 2-0 in the Northern Super League to claim a playoff spot. Montreal’s second goal was a sublime team effort from a counter attack, ultimately scored by Noémi Paquin who steamed her way through the entire Halifax midfield, received the ball at speed from a PICTURE perfect pass from Mégane Sauvé, dribbled around one more defender and calmly passed the ball into the net while still two more Tides defenders and the keeper watched it happen. I can only imagine what Paquin felt in that moment. Time slowing down, every opportunity and affordance open to her, a simple action, a touch to the outside and suddenly the goal looming so large that she couldn’t miss. Even the commentator Signe Butler, said the goal was easy, and it clearly wasn’t. It was magical. For the defenders, the opposite. They couldn’t see the affordances Paquin was seeing. They were flummoxed by how she found the seams in their defence that appeared larger than life to her.
Acting within incredibly dynamic systems sometimes has this flow to it. That is something of the emergent outcome that seanna is talking about – a way of seeing, a way finding the underlying stability of the constraint regime that allows you to move at another scale. I think what we know about flow states is that they reveal a kind of stability, sometimes known as “slowing down time” that allows for action on a different level than what other agents see around you.
It’s a tricky time. We need more Noémi Paquin-style action, and perhaps we always did.
You know you’re getting older when you strain a tendon in your little finger whilst holding a bowl. Ouch. My guitar practice will be about more compact chord voicings for the next few days I think.
Sometimes (all the time?) music needs you to be the channel for it, not the filter or the gatekeeper. Cal explors their growth as a musician in a beautiful post this morning. And my friend Luke Concannon, who is as pure a channel for music as I have ever met, has news about a new album, which I can’t WAIT to hear. I just my copy.
Making meetings a channel for good work requires asking the right questions and designing from deeper intent. Mana Shah shares her go to questions, framed through an appreciative inquiry design cycle. Helpful stuff.
A conversation in verse between Dave Pollard and PS Pirro, has me reflecting on Dave’s lines:
The problem — where it all begins, it seems —
is in the desperate need of our sad species
to find patterns, to make everything ‘fit’
into this flimsy model we mistake for reality.
I’m partial to Brian Cox’s idea that Earth could be the only place in the galaxy where meaning is made. I don’t know why, I don’t know what for, and I don’t think we are really equipped to do it well on our own. But it is something that we do, and it enlivens my animal life.
The Canadian National Men’s team set a new standard for themselves, claiming to 26th best in the world after their performances in friendlies last week. That’s the right direction.