Our words do create our road, singly and collectively. The manner in which we travel is determined by our attitude, by the attitude carried in our words.
And another line from that little essay: “we are all the same size, spiritually.”
[tags]joy harjo[/tags]
Courtenay, BC
I’m coming to the end of a Moleskine notebook I’ve had since March, and it’s almost filled up. I’m going through it harvesting a few things, and thought I might post a series of notes here. The journal began with a few notes that I made about the preliminary design of an Art of Hosting we ran for VIATT on Quadra Island. This particular Art of Hosting was called to train with 40 or so people who are helping us to build an Aboriginal child and familiy services system on Vancouver Island. It’s big work, undoing 120 of colonization and history and taking advantage of an historic opportunity to build a community-owned system that puts children at the centre of our work. Here’s what the notes say:
- Be the healing organization
- Establish everybody’s authority
- Healing patterns connecting heart to heart
- Host for community to become conscious
- Our work: healing the relationships between people that have arisen from the history of being tied to stakeholders
- This circle seems to recommit us to the work
- Putting our purpose at the centre, build a process to do this.
It’s fitting that I’m reflecting on this harvest tonight. Tonight we ran our third regional assembly here on Vancouver Island, inviting people from this area to share what is exciting them about this work. The purpose of the assemblies is to create champions for the process and to enlist people into a more intensive experience of community-based dialogue and deliberation by creating community circles. These circles will do the work of incorporating the community voice into the decisions and policy making of this new Authority we are creating to take over Aboriginal child and family services from the provincial government. We can’t do this without the community being involved and we’ve been quite taken by the response of Elders, youth and parents to our invitation to join us in creating this new system.
These notes remind me that much of the work I do has a healing component to it, that the work of opening hearts and supporting movement in Aboriginal organizations and communities is about healing – making whole – and sustaining connection and belonging. That makes the work I am doing complex and many-aspected, but when we get it right, like tonight for example when we ran a cafe that tapped open heartedness, it does so much more than move the organization forward in strategic ways. It makes things stronger.
Strengthening is a powerful and needed quality in development work, whether it is in organizations or communities. Strengthening commitment, heart, leadership, quality, results…it is a pattern of “better” that is embedded in the nature of powerful conversations and participatory leadership.
Canada’s foreign minister on how you claim sovereignty:
“You can’t go around the world these days dropping a flag somewhere, this isn’t the 14th or 15th century. “
Interesting. Will a series of conversations about Aboriginal title now ensue? This is exactly how Canada did it as recently as 1851 in British Columbia. The sole claim that the Crown has to the indigenous lands of this province stems from the fact that someone surveyed the land and claimed it for the Crown. That’s all it took. Just thought I’d note that.
The courts have taken a fairly dim view on wheter or not these means that Aboriginal title was extinguished at that time, so perhpas McKay has some hope yet.
In 1996, I joined the federal treaty negotiation office as a public information and consultation advisor. One of the treaty tables I was working with was a small First Nation near Vancouver. My colleague at the Tsawwassen First Nation was a young communications officer called Kim Baird.
Eleven years later, Kim has led her community to approve the first ever treaty negotiated under the BC Treaty Process. It has been a long ride, and Tsawwassen is bucking a lot of currents that suggest that the current treaty process is a hoodwink and a sham. I have my own feelings about this, and some might be surprised that I support this view to some extent. Having worked within the process I have some insight. But I also feel strongly that communities should have the right to choose their terms of engagement with the federal and provincial governments. Some Nations choose treaties, some choose litigation and others choose activism. I am, in general supportive of all, because I feel fundamentally that the right to choose one’s destiny is paramount. Whether a community makes a mistake or not is up to that community to discover.
Because I know Kim and consider her a friend, I have followed the TFN negotiations with interest. TFN have made some interesting choices about how to open up their government structure to include more voices, and especially voices of dissent. I think Tsawwassen have accomplished something significant for themselves, and the hard work really lies ahead for them. I offer them my heartfelt congratulations and support, and if there is any way I can help with some of that heavy lifting, I’d be honoured to do so.
[tags]BC Treaty process, Tswwassen First Nation, treaty, british columbia[/tags]
Today is the national First Nations day of action, and there is certainly lots going on. Much of what makes the news will be the more dramatic events, blockades and protests. But here are some things friends of mine are up to that tells the story of what is happening away from the headlines across Aboriginal Canada:
- On the northern tip of Vancouver Island, the Gwa’Sala-Nakwaxda’xw communities are doing some cool stuff to record their history with the help of their kids.
- Elsewhere on Vancouver Island, if you didn’t yet see the video from VIATT’s celebration on June 8, you can view it here. You can also view a video of VIATT’s reason for being.
- CBC has a new look and they have an Aboriginal news portal which is pretty cool.
- Meanwhile, my friend Kim Baird is hoping her community, the Tsawwassen First Nation will become the first to sign a treaty this summer in the BC treaty process..