Menu

What does it mean to preserve heritage in a settler world?

July 18, 2022 By Being, Bowen, Company, Culture, Featured, First Nations One Comment

From Ramon…

… i search for a form of reconciliation ecology … inventing, establishing and maintaining a new habitat designed for a diversity of living, working and playing … a place which possesses anima meaning breath, spirit and soul  … at first, in the leaving, i imagined a radical break … on arrival have learned to accept a certain amount of conservation of the past needs preservation … perhaps even restoration … the challenge is to generate a creative coexistence between the old and new territories … to comprehend the mysteries of place a cultivation of morals & purpose are required … i consciously accept the self-organizing complexity of this odyssey … 

… i once dreamed of a place for a vibrant exchange of active creation and researching ingenuity … my formative experiences in Wroclaw & Vienna helped  grow roots in my beloved prairie … the dream was transformed in a beautiful way yet in time a restless disquiet emerged … even discontent & disconnect … rootlessly committed to this place accompanied with my dearest companion i wander the communities … 

He is writing here on a reflection about moving to Korea. And his reflections prompted some reflections from me too, about what is essential to preserve, what we see, what choices we make.

Here in Canada there is an interesting phenomena of preserving “heritage” buildings for some level of posterity. It’s interesting to think about what “heritage” means, and whose heritage we are talking about. In the urban environment it usually refers to examples of historical architecture but, as is the case here in Vancouver, that is largely settler architecture from a certain time period, usually between 100 and 150 years ago. There is an underlying assumption that we should protect these buildings, which means really restricting their uses. There is an underlying assumption about what “heritage” means and whose heritage we are talking about.

Where I live, on a small island, there is a heritage group that works to protect structures and the character of the place dating back to the period of the early 1900-1960s. This is a period folks call “the Union SteamShip Company era” in which the Union SteamShip Company not only serviced the island, but owned a resort and delivered hundreds of tourists and cottagers on the summer to what was known as “The Happy Isle.” There are a few structures and an orchard preserved from that time including our magnificent library building and a number of cottages that were used by families and later by a vibrant community of hippies and squatters in the 1960 and 70’s before they were all finally evicted in the 1980s. Following the end of the USSC era, the island fell very quiet and was just a bit too far away for a regular commuter community. A few hundred people were left, working hard to preserve the school and the post office. Many of them were formerly residents of the now abandoned cottages and they were the ones that seeded what has become the most recent era of Bowen Island history that began with a concerted effort to save the island from rapacious growth and then bring in essential services and finally incorporate as a municipality, which happened in 1999.

How does heritage act as a mirror? What image does it return to me when I gaze into it? What parts of it are relevant to my life today?

There are no permanent Squamish villages here today, but there are some unmarked and unprotected architectural sites on the island. A few descendants of some of the original settler families still live here, but for most of us our “heritage” is really an experience of gazing into a past we were never a part of. It’s not a mirror of my personal history but it is a reminder of the layers of history upon which I am living and from which I derive my life. I have only been here 21 years. What I have done is lived atop the infrastructure and history that has preceded me in this place and that includes the outright theft of the land from the original owners who were sustained completely by this land and sea for more than 10,000 years, and the establishment and building of infrastructure by settlers to eek out a living which feels now like it may actually become too much for us to afford, being a small population of 4200 living in a serviced community that is about the same area as Vancouver, with pipes and systems that were haywired together 50 years ago.

So as a settler, it’s important to me that we acknowledge the historical Squamish presence and continued contested ownership of this island. They have never sold it, ceded it, given it away, lost it in a war or otherwise allowed another people to claim it. In that sense, the history of squatting here is pretty interesting!

In places I have travelled to and lived in like the UK and Estonia, heritage of the everyday is about the continued use of a place. In the UK as a kid I lived in a 400 year old cottage (pictured above) that had been added to and renovated at least four times, including the complete incorporation of the hayloft on the adjacent barn in the 1970s as a master bedroom. The structure just grew along the lot adding indoor bathrooms, a few extra bedrooms, a modern kitchen and a garden. In other places, like Estonia, where the medieval city in Tallinn is intact at 800 years old, every building is used and changed. Coffee shops punch holes through walls to expand their space, the apothecary still exists, but with modern technology in place, and the medieval feast hall is an overpriced tourist restaurant that operates within the bones of the old structure with up to date kitchen equipment.

Conservation is a question of morals and ethics. Here in Squamish territory, I think the restoration of Howe Sound’s natural environment is a powerful statement that shows that we have a choice in what we declare “heritage” and worth of conservation. There is a contested view that says that Howe Sound was an industrial area and should remain so, by building an LNG plant or a gravel quarry at the mouth of a critical salmon stream, for example. And there are those of us who feel like not everything should be preserved. The mine at Britannia Beach almost completely destroyed the ecosystems of this place and it took decades of citizen action with occasional government support (and complete neglect by the companies that were just allowed to pollute take the profits and leave) to restore healthy marine ecosystems here.

Conservation and preservation is first and foremost, as Raymon says, “is to generate a creative coexistence between the old and new territories … to comprehend the mysteries of place a cultivation of morals & purpose are required …” We have to answer questions about whether preserving is about stability of structure or continuation of use and by whom ein what way. These questions never leave us, and the choices we make reflect how we see who we are and who we will become, based on the history we choose to preserve or transform.

What’s in the Parking Lot #3

July 12, 2022 By Complexity, Culture, Democracy, Design, Emergence, Evaluation, Facilitation, Featured, Improv, Invitation, Leadership, Learning

Lots of good stuff coming through the pipe lately. Here are some links for your attention:

AI is running our lives and we need to find ways to deal with it.

Being a better facilitator

Geek out on some sports and complexity theory

And I leave you with a lovely quote shared by Euan:

[People] go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.
– St. Augustine

That’s probably enough for you to get stuck in for a few weeks.

The fear that is a projection of colonization

July 6, 2022 By Culture, Democracy, First Nations

This is a good twitter thread from Kay Whitlock:

https://twitter.com/KayJWhitlock/status/1544403338942242817

There is an interesting set of narratives that underpins the populist project in North America. Wedge politics has always been about stoking fear in an unreal other (there is a campaign ad for a Black Republican running for Congress that shows him holding an AR-15 rifle and threatening to empty the clip at 5 “Democrats in white hoods” as Ku Klux Klan members run through his back yard. I’m obviously not linking to it, but there you go.)

The reason for this is that a wedge issue like abortion or gay rights or immigration is easy to paint with the brush of “someone is coming to get you” and it gets people out to the polls to pull a lever or vote against a policy proposal and also elect the ones who support the populist position. This is an old game, perfected in the early 2000s by Karl Rove in the US and aided by Big Data and polling analytics and now Facebook and twitter algorithms that can delivered hand crafted artisnal and bespoke fear, right to your eyes.

But any time there is a “boogy man” we know that the cipher itself is a screen for projection and what is interesting is that North American populists project a very interesting set of fears onto their boogeymen.

Consider:

  • “Immigrants are invading”
  • “Our way of life is under attack”
  • “Your children are not safe”
  • “The government will seize your property”
  • “The elites are sexual predators”
  • “They want to outlaw our religion.”
  • “Your freedom of movement is being taken away”
  • There is even talk on the extreme right of “white genocide”

Let’s be clear. These are projections and deliberately provocative statements. We see these sentiments in the populist right in both Canada and the United States and these fears are constantly stoked, providing a toxic breeding ground for draconian policy that, contrary to the calls for freedom, are beginning to issue draconian laws. I think they land with people, because they recognize that these statements mirror the realities of what colonial practice has been here. These statements are a deep and complicated truth about white supremacy culture that are used to deflect responsibility for colonization and direct them at “the other.”

Now North American culture has a very hard time coming nto terms with the broken treaties, genocide and theft of land that has enabled the countries of this hemisphere to be established and have allowed settler cultures in many places to amass tremendous wealth and prosperity. But every one of the wedge issue tropes above has been, or still is, colonial government policy in this place. In fact, just last week the Supreme Court of the United States issued a shocking decision on Tribal sovereignty.

We have to come to terms with colonization. Until we do, it will continue to infect our cultural veins with guilt fear and shame that will continue to drive a toxic mix of fascism and white supremacy in policy and in the civic sphere.

The individual and collective realties of long haul COVID

July 5, 2022 By Being, Featured

Ultrastructural morphology shown by coronavirus. Original image sourced from US Government department: Public Health Image Library, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Under US law this image is copyright free, please credit the government department whenever you can”.

Here is a powerful and honest piece of writing about living with long haul Covid. I’m curious how many of my friends and readers have also had these experiences. So far, touch wood, I haven’t had the illness yet. But even typing “yet“ worries me a little. I do however think that there is something collective in the symptoms that Maria Farrell describes in this essay. It is as if the virus doesn’t only infect us individually but also our collective consciousness and will too:

“There’s no steady state. Covid is coming for all of us and each time it’s a roll of the dice. I’ve had it twice now. The first time knocked me out for about six months, and the second time did sharply alien and unpleasant things to my brain. I’m so scared that collectively all our brains are getting fucked, and we won’t be able to sustain concentration in the immersive and demanding story-webs I believe are necessary to keep imagining our large and interlinked society into existence. I worry people like me will succumb to premature dementias as a result of the brain damage we’ve incurred, and there’s nothing we can do about it. And there are so many of us. And all of it just as our institutions are self-destructing and we need amplified and deep-form subjectivity to solve planetary-level hard problems.”

–Maria Farrell.

In this sense I don’t think it matters if we’ve contracted Covid once or twice or not at all. The virus has changed the way we live and has created a timeline we can never retreat from.

The work to be done to redeem Canada

July 1, 2022 By Featured, First Nations 3 Comments

I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally.


Óscar Romero, The Violence of Love: The Pastoral Wisdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero, compiled and translated by James R. Brockman (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), 200.

Canada is not irredeemable as an idea. As a country founded on nation-to-nation treaty relationships in which existing Indigenous governance exists alongside common law, it is indeed possible to create a place in the world in that transforms a colonial legacy into a relational future. Canada founded on a vision that was exclusionary at the outset, and yet, the bones are there for it to be a place that is structurally inclusive and equitable.

I don’t apologize for my idealism about what we are led to by the north star of a far off post-colonial world. It guides my view and decisions about justice and about responsibilities that we have as settlers in Canada. Canada is poised to be a leader in so many ways but it must address the deep structural roots of its violence in greed and exploitation, a root that is the basis of every colonial country in this hemisphere. We need to reconcile first with the reality that the country was founded on broken agreements, stolen lands and genocide. Beginning there illuminates the places where structural violence still finds it’s source.

These territories on which the idea of “Canada” has been founded are beautiful, rich, life giving places which colonization sees as resources to be exploited, stolen, depleted and sold with no regard for the legacy of those actions on the natural environments or the people for whom these places are deepest home. Our work, if we are to redeem Canada, s to heed to Romero’s call and dig deep into our mess to find a source of peace for the common good that flows from justice, equity and restoration of reciprocal relationships between the land and peoples that have paid the price for the benefits many are celebrating today.