A photo of the navigation system on my flight back from Hawai’i Flying over the Pacific always conjures up the idea that I’m in a low earth orbit. It is a bizarre notion to climb into the sky and have the earth turn below you and then few hours later to drop one sixth of the world away. On long haul flights there is very much a feeling of relativity. We are together, a couple of hundred of us, in a tube in the sky. There is very little feeling of speed. There are no cues to tell you where …
Since 1947, and annually since 1960, the tribes of the west coast of Canada and southeast Alaska have sent basketball teams to Prince Rupert, BC, for the annual All-Native Basketball Tournament. It is a major cultural gathering of Coastal Nations and a celebration of community, culture, resilience and sport. All morning I’ve been watching the opening ceremonies broadcast on YouTube by CFNR. Have a watch. Guaranteed to make you smile. So much joy. And if you want to watch the games, CFNR is live streaming all the matches.
This coast is wet in the fall and winter. We get pummelled by atmospheric rivers that bring strong warm winds and days of rain from the south west. We get drizzled on by orographic rain. We get soaked by passing fronts. And the land drinks it up, the rivers swell and call the salmon back. If you don’t love rain, this is a very hard place to live from October through to March., when the light is dim and the air moist. Me, I’ve grown to love it. I love to be out in the rain, walking about, listening to …
It’s Giving Tuesday and if you are in Canada and looking for places to donate money, I encourage you to head over to a new website launched and hosted by The Circle on Philanthropy which connects Indigenous communities and funders, foundations and donors. The new website is called The Feast House and it is a place where you can donate directly, abundantly and without restriction to Indigenous-led organizations and projects across the country. It also contains links to articles, podcasts and videos to hep you learn more about giving and philanthropy in an Indigenous context Donating money to Indigenous-led work …
An invitation to learn about transforming power. Power. What’s your reaction to the word? Do you love it? Does it make you shudder? Are you frightened by it or rather do you relish power, look for chances to acquire some and use it? Or maybe you’d rather talk about “influence” or “inspiration” because the word “power” seems toxic? Have you been hurt by power? i have; my own and others. Power that exploits, power that lords it over us, power that extracts from us and drains us. But I’ve also been lifted up and supported by power. Mentored, helped along, …