Prince Rupert, BC

My friend Crystal Sutherland, my partner in doing a whole bunch of work with Aboriginal youth, has legally changed her name. She is now using two hereditary names from her Ahousaht ancestors: Pawaskwachitl Haiyupis. We just call her Pawa for short!

These are Nuu-Chah-Nulth names. Pawaskwachitl was a name of one of her grandmothers, and it has a powerful translation “she gives in the feast like bees coming out a hive.” That’s an outstanding description of the kind of leader she is becoming.

When I was in New Zealand last year, I was amazed and awed at how many Maori people use their traditional names. Reclaiming names is a powerful statement of identity and I extend my congratulations to Pawa for the courage to stand up and do it.

Prince Rupert, BC

The sun goes down at 9:00 up here, in the TRUE Pacific Northwest (of Canada, anyway). It’s a beautiful day here on the north coast of British Columbia.

I’m here meeting with the group that is planning the appreciative summit on Aboriginal youth suicide prevention, and we are making great progress. We are two weeks away now, the agenda is largely complete and I am starting in on the workbook for the summit and the design for a policy roundtable the following day which will involve World Cafe process with policy makers and leaders to act on the recommendations from the summit. It’s getting exciting.

This week I was in Nanaimo as part of another initiative I am running, a community engagement process on child welfare. I had the great privlege of working again with Dr. Martin Brokenleg, who went over his circle of courage model again, and this time I took copious notes. We are applying the Circle’s principles – Belonging, Mastery, Independence and Generosity – to redesigning the child welfare system on Vancouver Island. If you want to know more about Dr. Brokenleg’s thinking, which arises from traditional Lakota teachings on raising children and youth, you can download this .rtf document of the notes I made of Martin’s full morning session.

When the Government of British Columbia announced that it would look at election reform after the last election in 2001, I have to admit that I was skeptical. Lots of political parties promise this kind of thing, but once they get elected, they discover that the system as it is suits them fine and the promise is forgotten.

But not this time. To the credit of the government, they launched a comprehensive project to look at electoral options which became one of the most interesting processes in the world. They randomly selected a man and a woman from each riding in the province and put them to work on an electoral body called the Citizen’s Assembly on Electoral Reform. After a year of meetings and deliberation, the Assembly recommended that BC consider changing from the traditional “first past the post” Westminister Parliamentary system to a Single Transferable Vote (.pdf) system like the one used in Ireland and New Zealand. The next step in the process is for people to get educated about this and cast a vote for or against it during our provincial election on May 17th.

And so the process of educating and advocating for and against the proposal kicks in. Of course you might think that weblogs might play a role in all of this, but it turns out that that isn’t the case. Elections BC has ruled that as of March 1, blogs set up for the purposes of advancing one side or the other must register and become part of the official election advertising. Failure to do so could net you a $5000 fine. Now there is nothing on the Elections BC website yet about this, but I’ll keep looking for it.

In the meantime I can tell you that I’m voting for the STV option, both because it will change the ridiculously polarized nature of politics in this province and because I have deep respect for the process and the way the proposal was developed. It would be a shame if Elections BC were to see it differently. After nearly two years of open dialogue and conversation, I would hate to see it all grind to a halt now that an actual decision is in the offing.

Some contemplative music for a cool and rainy spring day here on Canada’s west coast.

This is a “taqsim” which is an improvised solo piece, and it’s a common form for the oud, the Arabic lute. Taqsim are deliberately expressive, often being used to set the mood for a longer suite of music. They can go on for 20 minutes or more, as the musician weaves through an emotional territory and describes a varied and conversational musical landscape.

This sample is typical of the genre, moving between slow and contemplative moments and points of high frenetic energy. It’s from a live recording by the Egyptian-born Australian musician Joseph Tawadros. It’s nearly 12 minutes long, so sit back and enjoy.

I’m reading a number of excellent books at the moment that have nothing to do with facilitation except that they are about seeing the natural in the world. TC McLuhan’s “The Way of the Earth” is fantastic and so is Thoreau’s classic Walden, from which comes this quote:

As a facilitator I try to use processes that are natural, that work with self-organization, chaos and order the way nature works with them. This passage nicely describes the sense of unease and disorientation one feels in the chaos of Open Space for example that leads to a realization of “the infinite extent of our relations.”

In the words of the Japanese art critic Soetsu Yangi, quoted by McLuhan:

I have some big processes to plan and facilitate over the next few weeks and so I’m going outside now to sit under an arbutus tree and sketch the swordfern fiddle heads that are coming up.