�If you build it, they will come� was the project theme of this First Nation of 800 people in two remote Quathiaski Cove communities near Campbell River. The �it� was a 40-foot long cedar canoe unique to the band. The goal was to involve the youth in its design and construction and use the project as a catalyst for promoting culture, good health and self-esteem. The need for such a project – fun and culturally based – was made pressing by increases in youth crime, suicides, high school dropouts, substance abuse, alcohol consumption and smoking brought about by the devastating collapse of the local fishing industry, and also by the rapid passing of community elders and their knowledge of language and culture. The canoe – named �Lekwiltok� after the legendary �unkillable� seaworm of Cape Mudge We Wei Ka legend – is scheduled for an official launch May 1. The community hopes to take the canoe on a journey to a First Nations regatta this summer in Cowichan. �It really has brought the whole community together and become a source of excitement and pride,� says Cape Mudge Community Health Representative Patricia Wilson.

When you look at the pre-Christian version of “soul,” you see that what they meant wasn’t so much a soul that was a different substance infused or injected into the body. It referred to a quality in a person who was able to use surplus energy for the benefit of others, not needing to get it all for himself. I came to the conclusion that “soul” is really our way of thinking about not devoting all of one’s psychic energy to maximize oneself in any form, whether it’s getting comfortable, rich, famous, or wealthy. Some of that energy is also devoted to somebody else’s or something else’s well-being, or advantage, or goal. So that kind of thing is “soul” as far as I’m concerned. That’s the leading edge of evolution, where you don’t need to consume all your energy for your own purposes, but you can devote some of that energy for something that will benefit others, including the planet.

How the Coast Salish squared off

Coast Salish eating contests were as personal as the ones Jacobs entered. The difference is that only one person or one team ate, and it was always the guests. The object was, literally, to eat the host out of house and home. Drop by my house at the right time, and this could take less than 15 minutes – which was of course, the point. The eater�s boast: �My power can consume everything you own.� The host�s implicit reply: �I am so rich, I have so much food, that I can feed your eating power until it can�t eat any more��which is a serious malfunction in an eating power.

�All of a man�s property and his wives and children might be forfeit if he lost in such a situation,� writes Marian Wesley Smith, in her 1940 ethnographic study The Puyallup-Nisqually. Smith notes that it was not just the amount of food eaten that was extraordinary, but the style with which it was eaten: �After consuming the food and while eating, the person showed no extra puffiness nor bunches on his body or under his clothes.�

So when three old men came to challenge one of Smith�s informants at a feast, they talked and joked among themselves as they ate four entire meals apiece. They stopped short when he still had a half a side of beef left, and blamed their defeat on the watermelon he�d served for dessert. Too much water. Three years later, they came back for a return match. After an entire yearling steer, potatoes, rice, beans, bread, and fruit, they conceded defeat. There is no record of what, if anything, they lost.

Then there�s the story of the old man who, in his youth, had boasted of his eating power around some white settlers. When challenged, he sat down and ate two sides of beef�a cow, in other words�and washed it down with a barrel of water. �They were satisfied,� Smith�s informant says.

I would have been more nervous than satisfied watching a man of normal size eat a cow�calmly, chewing well as he went, possibly making jokes and taking side bets, showing no signs of discomfort. The barrel of water I can accept, somehow. But where did the cow go? The Puyallup-Nisqually people who talked to Smith in the 1930s would have said that the man�s power ate the cow. That�s at least as reasonable as the idea that it all fit in his stomach. Of course, physics tells us that the cow and the man are both just collections of atoms, which is to say tiny bits of matter and a whole lot of empty space.

Maybe Coast Salish power eaters knew some way to restructure the food so it became immensely compact. Maybe not. But if a cow disappears into a man, and the man does not blow up, like Mr. Creosote in Monty Python�s The Meaning of Life, then I, for one, would like an explanation. If it isn�t the stomach, what gives?

• Papers by Vivian Hutchinson on philanthropy, community governance and social entrepreneurs.


• Lessons from the Land: A cultural journey through the Northwest Territories via wood s lot


• A Case Study in the Construction of Place: Boundary Management as Theme and Strategy in Canadian Art and Life also via wood s lot


• A Time for Letting Go – on organizational consulting via Jon Husband at Wirearchy


• Good article on the launch of Maori TV and the preservation of Maori language in New Zealand


• The Machine in our Heads by Glenn Parton via Dave Pollard


• riley dog back in the saddle, from Old Crow, Yukon. Furthest north Canadian blogger?


• Textz, because text wants to be free. Via if…


• George Por’s thoughts on the Emergence of Collective Intellegence


• Contrasting leadership styles in the US and the UK
• Flow with Soul: an interview with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Next week we are celibrating this day, 14th of April as Outdoor Learning Day. The day is opened by our Minister of Education and Minister of Environment. For the period from 14th of April till 14th of October all schools, kindergardens and universities try to run as much as possible of the curriculum outdoors. All buds, sprouting seeds, bird fleddglings etc., are opening up to learn the world around. To learn together with them and open up ourselves for it is the best we can do for the time.