Back in Bella Coola
BC, Facilitation, First Nations, Open Space, Travel, World Cafe
Ensconced at the head of an inlet in what has to be the most beautiful valley in BC. My commute yesterday to get here was a one hour flight from Vancouver over huge icefields, 9000 foot peaks, high mountain lakes and deep forested cirques. The landscape here is forbiddingly raw, and when the morning sun catches the blue glint of glacial ice in the cracks and crevacies on the icefall you are flying PAST (not over!) your heart just sings.
In this tight little valley – now rain soaked and cloud choked – a few thousand people live cheek by jowel. At one end, where the long inlet terminates, is the Nuxalk Nation where I am doing a little work, trying to bring some hasitily organized participatory process to a couple of pressing needs in th ecommunity. Today is basically about trying to host a community conversation that sees the good and the possible in a desperate and fractious context. In most First Nations communities, hurt runs deep and the kinds of dynamics that are at play here are deep currents that carry away optimisim, creativity and possibility. And yet, everyone I talk to here wants something different, a different conversation, a different wnay of looking at things. So today and tomorrow, using Cafe and Open Space, we are going to try that.
We haven’t had much time to prepare, and there is much working against making this an ideal situation, so I truly don’t know what will happen. I am just entering today as open as I can be to what’s possible, trying to embody what others are longing for.
That sounds gorgeous and thrilling and terrifying, the whole thing.
Hi Chris, Bella Coola is such a beautiful place! I’ve flown in a couple of times from Williams Lake but I have driven in (quite an adventure, I’m told).
My friend, Brenda MacIntyre, is doing a Global Healing Meditation this evening at 9:09 pm Eastern Time. http://healingsinger.com/news.html
I’ll be thinking of you today as you do your healing work in Bella Coola. 🙂
Beautiful how the circle of learning weaves native and non-native peoples. Course it wasn’t so long ago that Irish or Scottish folk were “native” too!
True Andrew…and I have news for you my friend. Irish and Scottish people are still native. I don’t know if you have been in Ireland or Scotland, but when you are there you are amongst indigenous peoples living on their own lands. Somehow for me it’s really important to me to remember that. Last time I was in Europe I had a strong sense of it, connecting indigenous to indigenous in Belgium with Flemish people.