In Thunder Bay on the Fort William reserve there is a distinct volcanic remanant called Mount McKay in English but Animikii-wajiw in Anishnaabemowin. Animikii-wajiw means “thunder mountain” so named because a thunderbird once landed there, ampong other things.
My mood has changed markedly after the work we did today working with Ojibway leaders and Elders from around the north shore of Lake Superior and parts further north and west of here on traditional governance and the assertion of Aboriginal rights and title. This is timely stuff given the historic proposed legislation that will be coming before the BC Legislature soon. There is good news on the Aboriginal title front and it can all lead to good things for First Nations – not without challenge and much effort mind you – but things are looking optimistic on the legal front in a way that is truly unprecedented.
At any rate, our work here is about exploring the meaning and practical implications of all of this stuff, introducing people to a powerful political and legal strategy that has been developed by the National Centre for First Nations Governance, and thinking about what it takes to do this hard work. Today there were three great little teachings that came my way as a result of discussing traditional leadership.
Teaching one came from Nancy Jones one of the Elders who gave us small blankets with a medicine wheel design based on a vision that she had about unity, leadership and healing. One of the great teachings in this medicine wheel was about the north, the direction from which winter weather and wind comes. We laboured here through a blizzard today, waiting for an hour until whoever was coming was going to show up, and working small processes with diminished numbers. But the Elder gave the teaching that essentially the weather teaches us that “whatever happens is the only thing that could have” and that the chaordic path is an inherent part of leadership: you can never really be in control.
The second teaching was from Ralph Johnson. I asked him about the Ojibway word “ogiimaw” which is often translated as “chief” or “boss.” I asked Ralph what he thought the word must have meant before contact, when the concept of “chief” was basically unknown. He said that word relates to the word ogiimatik which is the poplar tree, the tree that is considered the kindest of trees. Poplars are gentle, flexible, quiet and kind and are also good medicine. He said this idea of kindness is what is under the word “ogiimaw” and that influencing people through kindness is the kind of leadership that the word implies. This is very different from the kinds of leadership implied by the word “chief” which is a title now won by competition in a band election, a process that seems to engineer kindness right out of the equation. This is a great legacy of colonization – the lowering of kindness from a high leadership art to a naive sentimentality.
Ralph also gave me one more little teaching that rocked me. He told me that the word I had always understood as “all my relations” – dineamaaganik – actually means “belonging to everything.” Seems like a small change in translation, until another Elder, Marie Allen chimed in and said that the problem with leadership these days was the way ideas like “all my relations” activated the ego. The difference between “all my relations” and “belonging to everything” is the difference between the ego and the egoless I think. This is what Ralph was trying to tell me. That the centre of the universe is not me, and things are not all related to me, rather I belong to everything. Marie and I took a moment to express amazement at the way the earth used us to channel life in a particular shape for a short period of time. We come from her, we return to her, and in the interim we do our work upon her.
So tomorrow, with this platform of reverance firmly established, we return to work with young and emerging leaders in Open Space.
Not so lonely here after all is it?
Back in June, I hosted the Open Space part of a conference on reconciliation policy and practice co-sponsored by Queens University, the First Nations Technical Institute and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The harvest from that gathering is now online as an article about the event in Canadian Government Executive Magazine
It makes for some interesting reading.
Prince George, BC
Four years ago less a month I was running a huge Open Space event here in Prince George, in fact in the building that right outside my hotel room window. Called “Seeds of Change” the event was a kick off for the urban Aboriginal Strategy, a community driven and led process intended to begin and seed projects that would make a difference in the lives of the urban Aboriginal community in this northern city of 80,000 people.
One of the participants at that event was Ben Berland, who was at the time working with the Prince George school district as an Aboriginal coordinator. Ben had a vision of doing something really different within the education system here in PG. He built upon a long standing recommendation to start a different kind of school. He attracted a number of interested folks at the Open Space and moved his project idea forward.
A couple of years later, a task force was struck to study options for systemic change in the school system and one of their recommendations was to establish a primary Aboriginal Choice School within the school district.
The choice school idea is based on some very successful models in Edmonton and Winnipeg. Getting it rolling has been a lot of work for many people here in Prince George, but tonight was the first of four consultation cafes we are running with four inner city school communities to find out what it would take to make a choice school successful in this city.
Ben, who is now working with the local Carrier-Sekani Tribal Council showed up tonight to hold some space with us and help run some small group conversations. When he saw me the first thing he did was to remind me that this whole idea – four years in germination – had started at the Seeds of Change event.
This whole choice school initiative is a huge undertaking and it feels like in many ways the community here is just beginning its work, starting to engage in earnest with the complexities of finally implementing the idea that gained momentum across the street four years ago.
Things take time. It’s interesting that we know that and we forget it at the same time. We crave immediate results for our ideas. When we forget that things take time, we forget everything that has gone on to take us to the point where we are finally able to start something and we forget the people that laid the groundwork for things. So tonight I am sitting here grateful for Ben’s reminder about where things come from, and what it takes for big shifts to happen. It takes hard work, and a firm conviction and most of all, it takes time.
The Province of British Columbia runs an amazing Aboriginal Youth Internship progra. The program takes young ABoriginal people (under 30) and places them in a 12 month program featuring nine months of working within the provincial government and three months of working with Aboriginal organizations and governments. The chief architect and steward of this program is Sasha Hobbs, who is sitting next to me in a fog bound Vancouver harbour. She is working with another friend of mine, the amazing Priscilla Sabbas, and together they are working with 25 amazing young people in their second year of operation. Intake is done in the spring, so if you are interested in applying, or know someone who is, check the website in March or April and get your application in.
The cool thing about this program is that it is most definitely not a token position. These are real positions with government ministries and Aboriginal organizations, and by all accounts the sponsors in the BC government want interns to be able to build their capacity and knowledge in working within the BC Government’s new relationship with Aboriginal communities. Furthermore, the interns that go through the program meet three times a year with each other and stay in touch afterwards, moving towards a cohort model for their community of practice, working and learning together across ministries and organizations.
So here’s a plug for a great little government program that is working, under good grounded community leadership and making a practical and positie difference for the capacity of our communities.
I first saw Van Jones speak at the Pegasus conference last year, and I know of his work through some of the people I have been working with in the Food and Society network. Here is an article summing up his thoughts on a New Green Deal, which brings social and economic justice together. Having done some work this past week setting up a national network of urban Aboriginal economic development practiitoners and thinkers, I think what Van is pointing to here has immediate relevence for Canada as well:
To change our laws and culture, the green movement must attract and include the majority of all people, not just the majority of affluent people. The time has come to move beyond eco-elitism to eco-populism. Eco-populism would always foreground those green solutions that can improve ordinary people’s standard of living–and decrease their cost of living.
But bringing people of different races and classes and backgrounds together under a single banner is tougher than it sounds. I have been trying to bridge this divide for nearly a decade. And I learned a few things along the way.
What I found is that leaders from impoverished areas like Oakland, California, tended to focus on three areas: social justice, political solutions and social change. They cared primarily about “the people.” They focused their efforts on fixing schools, improving healthcare, defending civil rights and reducing the prison population. Their “social change” work involved lobbying, campaigning and protesting. They were wary of businesses; instead, they turned to the political system and government to help solve the problems of the community.
The leaders I met from affluent places like Marin County (just north of San Francisco), San Francisco and Silicon Valley had what seemed to be the opposite approach. Their three focus areas were ecology, business solutions and “inner change.” They were champions of “the planet”–rainforests and important species like whales and polar bears. Many were dedicated to inner-change work, including meditation and yoga. And they put a great deal of stress on making wise, earth-honoring consumer choices. In fact, many were either green entrepreneurs or investors in eco-friendly businesses.
Every effort I made to get the two groups together initially was a disaster–sometimes ending in tears, anger and slammed doors. Trying to make sense of the differences, I wrote out three binaries on a napkin:
1. Ecology vs. Social Justice
2. Business Solutions (Entrepreneurship) vs. Political Solutions (Activism)
3. Spiritual/Inner Change vs. Social/Outer Change
People on both sides of the equation tended to think that their preferences precluded any serious consideration of the options presented on the opposite side.
Increasingly, I saw the value and importance of both approaches. I thought, What would we have if we replaced those “versus” symbols with “plus” signs? What if we built a movement at the intersection of the ecology and social justice movements, of entrepreneurship and activism, of inner change and social change? What if we didn’t just have hybrid cars–what if we had a hybrid movement?
I wouldn`t be surprised to see Van Jones in the new administration in the US when Obama wins next week.