
It’s a snow day here on Nexwlelexwm/Bowen Island. After a couple of weeks of clear warms weather, winter seems to have finally gotten around to giving us a little blast of snow and cold. we’re looking at a week or so of colder than normal temperatures on the back of these squally snow events we’ve been having for the past twelve hours.
After shovelling and salting the driveway, wrapping my water pump in a blanket and checking the heat tape on the pipes, I settled in to watch soccer and catch up on local news. It’s been 24 hours of utter chaos at the continental level, so I turned to The Undercurrent, our local newspaper to see what’s happening.
I realize that had missed this story: “New names chosen for Bowen beaches“:
A pair of Bowen beaches will be receiving new names in the coming months.
The two destinations set to change names are Crayola Beach in the Bluewater neighbourhood and Pebble Beach at Cape Roger Curtis. They’ll be known as Xéla7an and Smí7mant Áyalhkw respectively going forward, drawing their new names from the Squamish language. The initiative is a result of a Bowen Island Parks Plan recommendation for collaboration with Squamish Nation, and a means to clear up some practical issues with the current names…
Aaron Williams, a language specialist with Squamish Nation, provided the guidance for the new names. Joined by his mother and cousin, the three came to Bowen last fall and met with manager of environment and parks planning Carla Skuce to explore the beaches in question.
This is fantastic. It follows on the heels of a ceremony held in 2020 to officially add “Nexwlelxwm” to the island’s welcome gateway, and I’m thrilled that Aaron and Vanessa came over to do this work. The two names came to Aaron and Vanessa on their visits to the beaches.
The first beach they visited is at Cape Roger Curtis and is known as “Pebble Beach” which confuses it with “Pebbly Beach” located on the opposite side of the island.
“One of the main things we noticed at this beach is that there were lots of little pebbles, it was like somebody went in there and dumped tons and tons of tiny little pebbles, and you could tell they were all rounded from the ocean… that was a very huge indicator for this name,” said Williams as he presented the new names to council last month.
“It was very striking to see that… this indicated this beach was very untouched and unscathed from development, which was very beautiful to see,” added Williams. As a result he felt Smí7mant Áyalhkw – translated to ‘place of pebbles’ – appropriately reflected the setting of the beach, a “reference to the wonderful state and condition that the beach is in.”
My best shot at providing a useful pronunciation of this name is “SMEH-munt EYE-alk.” In Squamish the “7” is a glottal stop and the “lh” sound is pronounced like the “tl” in the word “Atlanta” except a bit softer. The k in “Áyalhkw” is actually underlined, by that character doesn’t show up in my typeface. It’s sounded deep in the throat and the the w indicates that you make the sound with rounded lips. But “SMEH-munt EYE-alk” is a good starting point!
Further north on Bowen’s west side the group visited Crayola Beach, occasionally known as Bluewater Beach. Aaron’s mother Vanessa noticed red markings left by water tides on rock banks and bluffs. This brought forward memories of petroglyphs, a form of communication where messages are created through a technique of marking rocks.
“It was something that really stood out to her, and reminded her of our old way of educating the future through the petroglyphs,” explained Aaron. This led to the name Xéla7an, which means ‘marked/coloured on the cheek/side’.
That name – actually spelt with an underlined X – could be pronounced HEL-ah-un. The “HEL” should be pronounced with a guttural sound like you’re saying “Chutzpah” in Yiddish.
It’s amazing to have these two new names for features on our island. Great work and much appreciation to our Council, Carla, and to Aaron and Vanessa.
Share:

The set up for the weekly staff meeting at the Alaska Humanities Forum offices in Anchorage.
We spent the day yesterday with our colleagues at the Alaska Humanities Forum (AKHF) preparing for the Art of Hosting that begins this morning. AKHF is an organization that has long embraced the Art of Hosting as a way of operating both their internal organizational functions and their relationship and gatherings with their partners and programs. All over the world there are organizations like this, not always obvious or seen by the global Art of Hosting community, because they labour away on their own work. But until the pandemic every staff member of this organization was sent south for an Art of Hosting once they were hired on. It has been six years since that happened so we are here to partly fulfill that need and to work with several of their partners.
What’s great about this is Kameron Perez-Verdia is on our team. As President and CEO of the organization, he is embodies the practices of participatory leadership which he first learned at a Shambala Institute Authentic Leadership in Action workshop back in 2008 with Toke, Monica and myself. Kameron was raised in the whaling village of Utqiagvik, which is the most northerly point in Alaska. We talked a lot yesterday about the kinds of community gatherings that take place there when the whale hunting crews bring in humpbacks for the community. We talked about the importance of presences and check ins in meetings and how that grounded start to important work is a critical aspect of every part of day to day life, from whaling to a staff meeting in Anchorage.
Kameron and I were talking about the balance between chaos and order yesterday as we were exploring how we could teach the four-fold practice together and he shared with me a term that Yupik elders had taught him about dynamic balance: Yuluni pitallkeqtuglluni, which translates roughly as “just enough to live a good life.” It refers to the amount of connection that we need in a gathering or community, or the amount of structure in a meeting or a process to bring about a feeling of family (tuglluni means family) but allows for agency. We talked about “balance” which in the Yupik world is not a stable equilibrium between two competing forces, but a dynamic, constantly sensed state that is reposnsive to the context.
Perhaps this will be come a theme of our work in the next three days, but it’s a helpful way to contextualize the practices of the Art of Hosting: presence, participation, hosting and co-creating. Each of these are context dependant, which is why they are practices. Bringing just enough to live a good life is the art that implicit in the name of the practice “Art of Hosting.” While many folks seek a stable, always applicable tool or way of doing things, the art of hosting or participatory leadership is about the application of a world of practice to an ever changing context. In being sensitive to what is needed, and how to do it depending on conditions, we constantly create the right balancing moment between too much and not enough, just enough to live a good life.
We start in 2 hours.
Share:

C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) appearing in the night sky October 17 over Lake Opinion in Ontario. Shot with my iPhone 13
A collection of interesting links I found and posted at my Mastodon account this month. Happy Hallowe’en!
- A really nice overview of Edgar Schien’s book “Humble Inquiry” and his approach to working with clients. Please read this if you are a consultant.
- This is what happens when you privatize a public service. This is no surprise. We absolutely get what we deserve. Don’t want to pay taxes? No problem. Stick your finger in the wind and see what’s what.
- I truly believe that Citizens Assemblies are the way to go now. Public hearings are not helpful, not transparent, and not generative enough. Here in BC, we undertook a significant initiative back in 2004 when we looked at changing our provincial electoral system. It produced a remarkably creative and well-supported result. There is currently one beginning work to examine the amalgamation of Saanich and Victoria.
- The missing people of North Carolina. My heart is constantly breaking for my freinds and colleagues who are mired in disaster that continues. It is nowhere near over, and the trauma and permanent damage to communities, hearts and brains will not abate any time soon
- Dave Winer is one of the guiding lights in the field of #blogging. I discovered him not long after I started my own Parking Lot blog back in 2002 and followed along with some of the folks that helped inspire him to create RSS and podcasting. RSS should be protected as a treasure of the heritage of humanity. It keeps things open. Scripting News is turning 30.
- The Alberta government’s recent legislative actions are deeply troubling. It’s heartbreaking to see a policy based on exclusion rather than inclusion.
- Traditional Waters, Modern Threats: The Gitga’at’s Fight for Humpbacks. First Nations asserting jurisdiction over their lands and waters generally result in good things for life within their territories.
- A nice collection of Complex Systems Frameworks rendered by my friend Sam Bradd for Simon Fraser University .
- LIstening to Rob Piltch and Lorne Lofsky have an intimate conversation on guitar through Cole Porter’s Everything I Love. These two are absolute masters in very different styles and lions on the Canadian jazz scene.
Share:

Because I lead a lot meetings, I often get asked to do territorial acknowledgements before the work begins. And because I’ve been a supporter of Squamish language education and fluency through the Sníchim Foundation I’ve been trying to learn how to do that in the Squamish language. The text above is a very basic acknowledgement of territory, that was shared with me by Khelsílem a while ago and I’ve been using it for gatherings held here on Nexwlélexwm (Bowen Island)*
* my current blog fonts settings can’t cope with some of the characters in Squamish orthography. I recognize that’s a problem. Any suggestions for addressing that are welcome!
Share:

HFN guide Qiic Qiica, wearing his Three Stars vest, leads us across the beach at Kiixin, the ancient capital of the Huu-ay-aht Nation, and a site that has been occupied for more than 5000 years.
Two hours to kill in the Departure Bay ferry terminal because I forgot to reserve a ferry. Missed the 4pm sailing by three cars. But it was worth it to stop in and have lunch with my dear friend and colleague Kelly Foxcroft-Poirier in Port Alberni. I’m grateful for my friends. And for the time to reflect on my week.
I drove through Port Alberni on the way back from Bamfield, or more accurately, the Huu-ay-aht territories, where I was invited to lead a little debrief session at the end of a two-day Dark Skies Festival. The festival was inspired by and connected to the Jasper Dark Sky Festival. It was hosted and organized by the Huu-ay-aht First Nation and Foundry Events from Calgary. I was invited by my new friend Niki Wilson who is one of the organizers of the Jasper Festival and a science communicator with a growing interest in how dialogue can help us get past polarization. We both have an interest in that, so I would say we are co-learners because these days, polarization ain’t what it used to be.
There were 30 or so of us at this event, a pilot project designed to explore the feasibility and challenges of doing dark sky events at Huu-ay-aht. Present was a mix of folks, including amateur and professional astronomers, Indigenous cultural workers, leaders and territorial guardians, folks working in Indigenous and local community economic development and Indigenous tourism. The mix and diversity meant that we could absorb presentations and conversations on topics as diverse as exoplanets, Huu-ay-aht history, marine stewardship, economic development, astrophotography, Indigenous sovereignty, and economic development. Hosting becomes very basic when a diverse group of people is collected with a shared curiosity for both offering their expertise and learning from each other. Create containers in which people are connecting and, as councillor n?aasiismis?aksup, Stella Peters remarked to me on our first afternoon, the principle of Hišuk ma c?awak comes into play, and we begin exploring connections and relationships. Everything is connected.
Huu-ay-aht history begins with the descent of the original ancestors from the sky and so the skies are important, just as the land the sea and the mountains are, to the core identity and principles of Huu-ay-aht life. I quickly got enamoured with the idea of ensuring that the sky had a matriarch to govern and guardian that part of creation. With Elon Musk polluting the very skies over our heads with an infrastructure of connectivity and delirium, the sky needs a protector.
Over the days and evenings we spent together we were absorbed by story, guided through ancient Huu-ay-aht history and culture by Qiic Qiica, through the deep passion of Emma Louden for her research on exoplanets, to the astrophotography of Jeanine Holowatuik and her despair at the sky pollution of satellites and ground light. We toured the territory by foot and by boat, and spent the night around the fire talking and drinking tea and hoping for the fog to life so we could catch a glimpse of the starry sky, the partial lunar eclipse or the auroras.
Alas, the starry night evaded us as we were blessed with two foggy days, but for me the Dark Sky experience was only enhanced by being socked in. I am lucky enough to live in a relatively dark place, but darkness is a luxury for many who live in towns and cities. I have seen folks equally awed by the thick, inky darkness of the forest under cloud and fog as they are under a sky full of stars on a clear, dark night. Darkness is another of our diminishing commons in this world, and in this respect, the fog and cloud are a blessing, restoring a healthy circadian rhythm and deepening the rest we need. There is perhaps nothing better for understanding how arbitrary the boundaries between living things, landscapes and the universe are than a dark, foggy night where every edge is slightly ambiguous, and you are unsure if the sounds and sensations you feel are coming from inside or out.
I have long felt that on the west coast of Vancouver Island, in all the Nuu-Cha-Nulth communities in which I have been fortunate enough to travel and work. The west coast is one of those places where experiments like the Three Stars Dark Sky Festival seem more possible. First Nations have important and intact jurisdictions in these territories and are actively engaged in massive cultural resurgence. This means that relationships are constantly being reimagined between colonial governments, settler communities, foundations like the Clayoqout Biosphere Trust and Indigenous governments and communities and people who are governing, directing and stewarding their lands and resources with more and more of the recovered authority that was wrested from them over the past 200 years.
The first place I ever visited in BC was Hot Springs Cove in Hesquiaht territory back in 1989. We flew, drove and boated from Toronto to Hot Springs without stopping in Vancouver or anywhere else along the way. I think from that moment, my view of possibility for what could happen in this part of the world has always been informed by the week I spent, staying with my friend Sennan Charleson’s family, fishing herring, listening every night to Simon and Julia Lucas tell stories of all kinds. Coming out here wakes up those experiences in me, and I always return from the Nuu-Cha-Nulth worlds, which are a little different and a lot better for being there.
I hope this Dark Sky Festival thrives. There were so many ideas generated and so much goodwill created between folks this week. So much good can come from that.