It’s a Tsimshian expression that means “of one heart.” It was also the name of a very powerful appreciative summit I facilitated last year on youth suicide in northwestern British Columbia.
Today Jane Morley, the Child and Youth Officer for British Columbia, and the convener of that gathering released her special report on the summit and its results. The report is available as a .pdf from her site.
The gathering was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. On May 4th 2005 I saw nearly 200 Aboriginal youth step into a gathering rife with fear and trepidation and emerge engaged and powerful. They achieved this by simply turning to one another with a set of powerful questions about what might be in their communities and after some conversation, they delivered an inspired set of messages to policy makers and politicians.
In her report, Jane summaraizes the transformation of the day this way:
By the end of the inter-nation forum, it seemed that a shift had taken place – from the overwhelming sense of loss, alienation and fear people had felt in the face of youth suicide, to youth beginning to take the lead in finding a solution. THe energy and power of the youth were palpable, as was the willingness among the others present to hear and accepttheir views, the mutual respect and the support for the emergence of youth voices and youth leadership.
The inter-nation forum, the work that preceeded it and the subsequent results were the fruit of hard work by many people, but first among these were the youth themselves. It was such an honour to work with them. I hope the governments involved heed Jane’s report.
I piece I wrote here after the BALLE conference in June was republished on the Sustainable Review website.
Nice of them to re-publish my work. Would have been nicer if they had contacted me and asked me to fix the typos. Ah well…the price of glory!
Categories: firstnations, sustainability, local, economy, BALLE
Jeff Aitken left me a comment with a useful framework for inquiry form Apela Colorado. These are principles of indigenous science:
1. The indigenous scientist is an integral part of the research process and there is a defined process for insuring this integrity.
2. All of nature is considered to be intelligent and alive, thus an active research partner.
3. The purpose of indigenous science is to maintain balance.
4. Compared to Western time/space notions, indigenous science collapses time and space with the result that our fields of inquiry and participation extend into the overlap of past and present.
5. Indigenous science is holistic, drawing on all the senses including spiritual and psychic.
6. Indigenous science is concerned with relationships, we try to understand and complete our relationships with all living things.
7. The end point of an indigenous scientific process is a known and recognized place. This point of balance, referred to by my own tribe as the Great peace, is both peaceful and electrifyingly alive. In the joy of exact balance, creativity occurs, which is why we think of our way of knowing as a life science.
8. When we reach the moment/place of balance we do not believe we have transcended — we say that we are normal! Always we remain embodied in the natural world.
9. Humor is a critical ingredient of all truth seeking, even in the most powerful rituals. This is true because humor balances gravity. (1994)
2. All of nature is considered to be intelligent and alive, thus an active research partner.
3. The purpose of indigenous science is to maintain balance.
4. Compared to Western time/space notions, indigenous science collapses time and space with the result that our fields of inquiry and participation extend into the overlap of past and present.
5. Indigenous science is holistic, drawing on all the senses including spiritual and psychic.
6. Indigenous science is concerned with relationships, we try to understand and complete our relationships with all living things.
7. The end point of an indigenous scientific process is a known and recognized place. This point of balance, referred to by my own tribe as the Great peace, is both peaceful and electrifyingly alive. In the joy of exact balance, creativity occurs, which is why we think of our way of knowing as a life science.
8. When we reach the moment/place of balance we do not believe we have transcended — we say that we are normal! Always we remain embodied in the natural world.
9. Humor is a critical ingredient of all truth seeking, even in the most powerful rituals. This is true because humor balances gravity. (1994)
I’d like to suggest this as a framework for thinking about inquiry within a bodhisanga that takes its cue from the relationships between humans and the cosmos and the divine.
I was saddened to learn today that Bernie Whiteford – Wap-Pisk-Ki-Kakiw Isqueo (White Raven Woman) – passed away on April 28. Her obituary at RedwayBC mentions a short illness.
Bernie was a strong advocate for the rights of Aboriginal women in BC and was the executive director of the Helping Spirit Lodge Society.. Helping Spirit Lodge is an organization on the front lines of stopping violence and creating healthy families and communities. It is an important part of the Vancouver Aboriginal community and Bernie was a key voice in that community. I knew her from various community events I facilitated and work I did on child welfare over the years. She’ll be missed greatly.
Today Dave Pollard reprints a recent speech by Bill Moyers in which he implores the world to use its heart to see what is unfolding around us. Moyers ends the speech thusly:
On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: ‘How do you see the world?” And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: “I see it feelingly.'”I see it feelingly.The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a journalist, I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free – not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. What we need to match the science of human health is what the ancient Israelites called ‘hocma’ – the science of the heart…the capacity to see, to feel, and then to act as if the future depended on you.
This capacity to see from the heart lies at the core of what it means to sense the emerging future. And seeing from the heart means sensing the patterns of our emergent future in the grains of sand that are our present, right now, right here.
Johnnie Moore put it nicely yesterday when he asked “is your future in your present?”
In talking with Sonny Diabo last week, I learned that recovering this capacity to see may well be the one emerging Aboriginal leadership capacity that distinguishes 21st century leaders from those who have gone before. The utter domination of scientific materialism (along with the empirical measurement craze of the last couple of centuries) has relegated this ancient skill to the bargain basement bin of divination and idealism. The result has been a civilization where we shut off our human responses to the world and trust our senses only if they are confirmed by some mediated third party
Seeing the future in the present consists of two parts I think. It first means “seeing feelingly” or apprehending the truth of the world as it appears in front of us. All of the forces and the obstacles and the obfuscations that stand between our eyes and what is really happening. Seeing with the heart is the only way through this mess, to truly sense what is upon us.
Second, the capacity for seeing involves what Sonny describes as “getting my foot in the door.” In other words, there is a subtle ability to discern opportunity in all of the mess of the world. Sonny’s work these days consists of being and Elder to several processes across Canada that are purporting to make a difference for First Nations people. Among his two pet projects are Aboriginal Head Start, and long term care. He decided to throw his commitment into these projects because being born and dying are our deepest connections with the spirit world and the experiences of the first and last years of life are the most important for defining what it means to be Aboriginal. He sees this clearly, and sees the processes he is working on like doors that are opened a crack. He sees those cracks as potential, which he can help realize by supporting them as an Elder. And for him, once he has sensed this “”rightness” he sticks his foot in the door and does not let it go. For to simply witness these opportunities coming and going is not his game. He is there to extract the most he can for Aboriginal people. There is no decision to be made – he simply stays in the knowledge and belief that holding space and keeping it open allows the potential he sees to become manifest for everyone.
At the Art of Hosting workshop last week, my dear friend Toke Paludan Moller had a realization that he shared with us. It is that at every moment we are together as humans, collaborating, creating and enjoying ourselves, we are embodying something of the future we want to see. In our very act of being with one another, we are saying “this is how it should be.” Toke asked the question “what if the way we are together is the future?”
Questions like that force the eyes and heart open to seeing the world feelingly, in a way that allows us to see where we are and to seize the future contained in the Now, to seed it and grow it.