Why conversation for reconciliation is important: this story about neighbourhood dialogue in a gentrifying Portland, Oregon neighbourhood contains this sheer nugget of wisdom:
“The one who strikes the blow doesn’t know the force of the blow,” Mowry says. “Only the one who has received the blow knows its force.”
That quote serves to me to point out why reconciliation efforts led by the striker don’t really heal. I think a little about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission here in Canada which is supposed to look at the residential school experience in a way that hears the story. But it is a Commission that has been set up by the federal government as a part of a legal settlement. It is not the aggreived forgiving the oppressors, as it was in South Africa. It is – or has the clear potential to be – simply the government feeling good about itself, as it did with teh Royal Commission in the early 1990s.
The one who received the blow has a story to tell in this country. A powerful story that needs to be heard and collectively owned before we can truly move to justice for First Nations in Canada.
via Speak. Listen. Heal. | Special Coverage – – OregonLive.com.
This week I had the tremendous privilage to facilitate two days of Open Space for Xyolhemeylh, the Aboriginal child and family services agency in the Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver. The agency has been going through a lot of turmoil over the past few years, and has come to a point of reinvention. The theme of the gathering was “Reclaiming our Journey” and it marked a significant transition for the organization as it headed into community control from being managed by the provincial government for the past 2.5 years. The point of the Open Space meetings were to invite the Elder’s staff and Board of the organization to reflect on the values that the organization wanted to name for itself as it moved forward. Over two days 140 people participated in the two back to back open space gatherings. Forty discussion groups were held on values that staff in particular felt were important to take forward. There was lots of laughter (especially from the the group on “laughter!”) and some very important healing took place.
Our gathering was held in the community at Tzeachten, a small First Nation in Sardis near Chillliwack. The event was held in a ceremonial container over the whole two days, with traditional protocols being in place, “floor managers” operating to keep things happening in a good way and Elders actively involved in witnessing what was happening. All of these activities are deeply traditional Coast Salish ways of working, taken directly from the longhouse protocols and they are deeply important to the organization.
Heln and Herb Joe, two Elders I have tremendous respect for, held the space over the two days while I simply ran the process. In the middle of the second day, a full blown ceremony broke out, as the outgoing director was honoured for her work and the incoming director was given his proper welcome. Witnesses were appointed, songs were sung and many many gifts were given as the two individuals were honoured. Many teachings were shared during this two hour ceremony that just appeared in the middle of the day, but the most important one I think has to do with the fact that this agency, responsible for hundreds of children, and employing 150 staff, is considered a family.
“Xyolhemeylh” the word talks about the relationship between a parent and a child, and is a word that describes the quality of this relationship, full of care. The name is also carried by an individual, although it seems not be at present. This creates a very different form of organizational design. In Sto:lo culture, there is no word for adoption as there is no way for a child to be outside of family. Family is all encompassing and surrounds you even in periods where you feel alienated. Xyolhmeyelh has been in many ways outside of the family of Sto:lo communities for the past few years as the organization has weathered political storms and concerns over practice.
But this past week there seemed to be a reaffirmation of the fact that the agency has never left the bigger family. Our Open Space was a family gathering, intended to remind us of the values that are important and the children that need help, care and nurtiring if the future of First Nations is to be secured.
It was a truly wonderful gathering, the best of who we are. More photos, especially of Colleen Stevenson’s lovely evolving mural are here.
At the end of a beautiful day one of two days of Open Space with the Fraser Valley Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society. One lovely teaching from the Elders today: in Halkomelem there is no word for adoption, because there is no concept of a child being outside of family.
Cool.
It is a curious set up, this particular Open Space. We have 70 people in a circle and a dozen Elders sitting at tables outside of the proceedings, but that is as it should be. In Sto:lo culture, the role of the Elders is not to participate but to notice. In this respect they are not considered to be outside of the circle at all, but really deeply engaged with it. At the end of the day, three Elders shared their reflections of the day, and all three talked about how important it was that the staff of the organization met this way.
My friend Dustin Rivers is locked in a perpetually generative inquiry:
…what are the next steps to become liberated?
The best questions are the ones we ask ourselves, and require us to act differently once we come to an answer. “How do I contribute to the things I complain about in my community?” is an example of that. I speak of liberation; the action of becoming free from constrain or oppression or control. Most Settlers will not think of Indigenous peoples in Canada as ‘needing’ oppression. That’s mostly due to the discourse on indigenous issues moving away from the root of the cause, into more a colonial mentality direction. I seek to look deeply into the root of the problem, and to see the 55”²000 ft level of awareness of our context as Indigenous people.
If we do live a truly indigenous life, it is in spite of the temptations, the desires, and the allure of colonial model of existence. The truth of the matter is, indigenous way of life is beautiful. It is not savage, it is not backwards, it is not ‘stuck in the past’. It is something we as Indigenous peoples must identify as a great thing, despite the systemic racism society that says our ancestors are inferior to modern day society.
“My grandmother was the one that inspired me,” said my friend Liz over lunch at the Valley Inn in Bella Coola. “She said that the world was once all together, and then it came apart and one day it will be all together again. So I just try to bring things together.”
Liz is a pretty remarkable woman. She worked for years in family reunification in Vancouver, bringing together First Nations kids with their birth families, reconnecting them to their culture and communities. She is at home now in Bella Coola on council, working for the Ministry as a social worker, but always about bringing people together. The reason I am here, for these two days of community conversations, is simply to be a part of designing and hosting community meetings that do that.
The Nuxalk Nation reserves sit in this stunning valley, at the mouth of the Bella Coola River, where it meets the ocean at North Bentinck Arm, still nearly 150 kilometres inland from the open Pacific coast. At the Bella Coola town site is an old cannery, an icehouse and a wharf. There are a couple of hotels and restaurants, a Coop store, some repair shops and and RCMP station. Across the street from that is one of the Nuxalk communities, an old part of the reserve called “Downtown.” It mostly consists of old Department of Indian Affairs Housing, never designed for the wet climate of the Pacific coast, some trailers that house the band office and a couple of community buildings and a playground. Yards are full of mullein, plantain and blackberry bushes and the occasional carved headstone can be seen in a yard. A small creek winds through the reserve and joins the river on the north side of the community. At this time of year there are people out on the river, drift netting their food fish, gathering coho for canning and smoking. The Nuxalk fisheries personnel are trying to find some sockeye to take eggs from so they can stock some of the streams and lakes around the territory. Like everywhere the fish are dwindling. In the past, oolichans ran through here in the millions, but now only a handful return in the early spring and the once rich Nuxalk grease, one of the healthiest human produced foods in the world, is now gone.
Up the river from here is the newer community of Four Mile, a subdivision of larger lots and larger houses. Kids roam around on their bikes and young families are out walking. The houses look like any rural subdivision but there are telltale signs you are still on Nuxalk lands. Poles dote the neighbourhood, carving studios take up garage space, and the occasional lawn has a fish boat parked on it.
As the Bella Coola valley winds eastward, a few more communities dot the landscape – Hagensborg is the biggest, another 10 kilometres along highway 20. It is an old Norwegian settlement, and here the houses look bigger, more durable, and on large lots featuring manicured lawns and gardens. No one is outside, the kids get dropped off from the school bus and head right inside in contrast to the reserves, where the kids scatter in all directions after school. As highway 20 heads up towards Williams Lake, it climbs the “hill” a steep grade of narrow switch backs with no guard rail, that is said by some to be the most terrifying drive in Canada. If you don’t fly out, or leave for Vancouver Island far to the south by ferry, this is the only way to go.
This is the valley in which I have been working this week. A place of stunning natural beauty and deep social alienation. Liz and the Nuxalk elected chief, Spencer, were both fed up with the kinds of community meetings that have been going on for years, where people come and yell at one another, where anger becomes unbottled rage and questions are asked that have no answers that will ever satisfy. Both realized that how we talk to one another is important, so we agreed to try an experiment, and see what might happen if we ran meetings using participatory methodologies.
The first day was a World Cafe, which I wrote about earlier, and yesterday we tried an Open Space meeting for a general community meeting. As is not uncommon, we started very late, once people had arrived, and a pot of moose stew appeared and everyone was settled, it was 5:00 – 90 minutes past the posted opening. We had about 20 people sitting in a circle wondering what would happen, and I was wondering the same. Most folks were Band employees, present to give information and participate in conversations as best they could. A number had been reluctant to come because they had no idea what would happen, and feared community members being out of control. “How are you going to stop people from getting on their high horses?” one man had asked me. “I’m not,” I replied. “But the way we do this will lessen the chance of that happening.” He wasn’t convinced. It was as if I had just described the concept of magic to him. I clearly knew my stuff, but that didn’t make me any more in touch with reality.
After a prayer and a quiet opening welcome, I stepped into the circle, with really nothing but an invitation to talk differently. We had not been able to do very much planning, and the notices for the meeting had only gone out to the community a couple of days before. Still, the invitation was to move from some visioning that the community had been doing for an Indian Affairs mandated planning process, to something more based in what the people wanted. I walked the circle, explained the process, reminded them that they had the power to set the agenda, and waited for what might happen.
Always in Open Space meetings, there is this moment of being on the edge of the complete unknown. All of the preparation and time spent building the invitation and the theme and the question usually pay off in that moment. If we have done all of that right and produced a strong social field, the ideas flood into the centre. But there are times when the conditions don’t tap the passion of the community, when people just remain confused about why they are there and what they are supposed to do. When they haven’t seen through their cynicism far enough to even listen to the instructions. Those times only happen if there has been little preparation in the community or organization. Open Space is not a magic wand – it does not automatically generate participation. Invitation is the magic wand and Open Space is the place where the magic can happen. Yesterday, I feared that the wand had not been well used. That we would be staring at the floor between our feet for a while.
But sometimes passion trumps preparation. It turns out that in Nuxalk, there are plenty of things to talk about. Life is hard for most people. There is 90% unemployment, the fish are disappearing, huge scale land rights issues loom over the heads of 1600 people, the language and culture is hanging by a thread, youth are drinking and drugging and getting pregnant. It’s no wonder really that people shout at community meetings. It’s the last place to rail against the morass of conditions that keeps these communities poor and out of the loop. The last place where people can feel their power, even if it comes at the expense of others.
So last night, as I sat down, four people rose up and we were off. One Elder who had been a vocal critic of how bad the Council was at communicating with the people convened a session on how she wanted to see it done It felt at some level like there was some forgiveness buried in her question. Let’s move on, she seemed to be saying. Let’s figure out how to do this better.
There were similar sentiments around jobs and youth and culture and language. Ten small groups were formed, and there was lots of visiting over the next hour as we did all the sessions in one time slot. Laughter broke out all around the room. More community members, who had been hanging around the outside of the hall, joined us. Liz picked up a conversation that she had started two years ago when I had been here before working with her. She introduced people to her idea of a community house – an intergenerational space where people could gather and be with one another.
As we gathered in the circle at the end, we talked about what it felt like to be working like this. People had a good feeling towards one another. I asked when was the last time people had left a community meeting feeling good. There was hearty laughter. “Never!” said one Elder, her eyes wide with the absurdity of the question. “Feels good now though,” she said.
We have a choice. We can meet in ways that get nothing done in the name of “information sharing” and “accountability” or we can meet in ways which allow our hearts to set the agenda, and our hands and feet to see it through to action. We didn’t begin massive amounts of work last night, but we cracked open something – a possibility that it could be different. Hopefully we opened a jar out of which choice flowed. As Thomas King once said, you can’t pretend not to have heard the story If you were there last night, you would have seen and felt something different. You can spin it to say some guy came up from the south and ran this kooky meeting and we talked in small groups. But no one who was there can deny that it DID feel good at the end. We felt like something was accomplished.
What do we dare choose now?
Liz reminded me that when we worked together two years ago, a young woman uttered a phrase that is stark in it’s power and implication for communities like Nuxalk: Leadership is seeing the beauty in others. It’s to draw together the world again, as Liz’s grandmother says. To heal by making whole, which is not to say fixing everything, but rather to bring things closer together.
As we left the hall last night, Spencer, the chief, waved at a man coming across the playground. He was a “trooper” one of the small number of chronic alcoholics in the community who have the hardest time of all. “What’s happening Spence?” the trooper cried out. “Community meeting,” replied the young chief getting into his truck. “We were just talking.”
“Oh, mmmhmm,” said the trooper. “That’s good.”