Prince George, BC

This week I’m here in Prince George, smack dab in the middle of British Columbia facilitating a two day roundtable conference on economic opportunities for Aboriginal communities. There are people all over BC here, and we’ve been treated to a performance tonight from Juno nominee (and new friend) Marcel Gagnon as well as tastings of the wines of Nk’Mip, North America’s first Aboriginal winery.

As fun and interesting as all this is, today’s proceedings were stolen by several acts of overwhelming generosity. It all began in the evening news part of our program, during which I invited people with anything to share – projects, ideas, partnerships.

One of the groups in attendance here are the executive of Building Our Legacies Together, the youth network I have been working with over the past couple of years. The youth forum in Fort Rupert last month was planned by them. They received a little planning money from the federal government, but then locally they raised funds to hold these forums. They are now embarking on bringing this forum model all over BC. It is a two and a half day event whereby we line up inspirational speakers, rappers, and other musicians to do an evening of fun, and then launch them into a day and a half of Open Space to work out small scale local solutions to the issues they face.

So the coordinator of this most excellent scheme, my friend Crystal Sutherland, rose today to give her pitch. She began by introducing herself in her language and recited her connections to her families and clan at Ahousaht on the west coast of Vancouver Island. She quickly told the BOLT story to these leaders and then cleared her throat and said “Now here’s the hard part: we need money. We raise local money to hold these forums and we need money to put these on around the province.” She invited people to get in touch with her if they could help.

Without dropping a beat a man from Campbell River stood up and pledged $500 from his organization and challenged other Aboriginal development organizations to the same. Within five minutes there was $3000 dollars in the bank and then Chief Shane Gottfriedson of the Kamloops Indian Band rose to say that he would be happy to host a forum, that the youth would have the pick of the facilities in his community (including a new meeting centre and their new school gym) and that the band would take care of all the food while the youth were there. By the end of evening news, ten minutes later, the youth had cash, a host for their next forum in Kamloops and two other offers for the same.

And, as one leader said in rising to pledge his stake, it was all about respect and the way these young people came to ask for funds with a track record of work and with integrity and honesty in their request. Real leadership recognizes real leadership.

If you want to add to the pot, supporting the work of these young leaders, drop me a line (chris at chriscorrigan.com), or leave a comment and I’ll hook you up.

Technorati Tags: aboriginal, firstnations, youth,

My four-year old son: Mom?
My wife, Caitlin: Yes?
Son: You know when you get really old?
Caitlin: Yes.
Son: And when you’re just about to die?
Caitlin: Yeeeesss….
Son: Just in that moment…
Caitlin: Yes?
Son: Can you tell me where your wallet is?

The kid’ll do anything for an advance on his allowance!

Skypable? Is that a word? At any rate, I’ve finally got with the times and signed on to Skype. So feel free to find me and get in touch.

Kelowna, BC

One little conversation with Seb, and suddenly every link in my aggregator is about the blog economy! Here’s one from Crooked Timber, but it doesn’t get to the bit about blogs AS currency

Kelowna, BC

Had a great evening yesterday with Jeremy Hiebert here in Kelowna. Grabbed a couple of pints of Guiness, some supper and then took in a great hockey game between WHL rivals Kelowna and Seattle. Kelowna won in overtime.

And of course, like all recent meetings with other bloggers we talked about all kinds of interesting things, including learning, education, community, story, work and family. Meeting J was just like getting together with every other old friend you hadn’t seen for a while, except that I had never met him before.

One of the conversations we had is resonating with me this morning. Jeremy was describing his small hometown in Manitoba which is a Mennonite community mostly based on farming. There is however quite a little vibrant steel and tool prouction industry in town making several of the town’s families very rich. These businesses started out making tools and implements that were needed in town (like grain augers) and their innovation got them noticed far and wide so that eventually the businesses expanded into the global market place.

What is key though is that although there is a social strata as a result of this local economy, the nature of the industry – rooted as it is in local needs, local innovation and local familes – means that the wealth generated often goes to good in the community, such as building a local firehall.

There is something to this that reminds me of the Harvard studies on First Nations economic development that point out how important it is for private enterprise to have a cultural fit in the community. The Manitoba Mennonite example (and the Osoyoos Indian Band example and the Wakatu Incoorporation example) shows that these businesses can grow quite large with many benefits for the community as long as that cultural core stays intact. Jeremy and I thought Rob Patterson might find this interesting too, given his interest in seeing similar things happening in Prince Edward Island.

Neat as those ideas are, I think actually our biggest joint insight last night was that there is perhaps no friendlier machine in the world than a
Zamboni. As we watched the ice being cleaned between periods we reminisced about when we were kids and the utter fascination that the Zamboni held for us. It drives over old ice and magically, smooth wet ice emerges out the other end. And as every Canadian knows, there is nothing better than being the first one out on a new sheet of ice.

But even more than that, we started imagining how much friendlier the world would be if, for example, the Americans had invaded Iraq with Zambonis instead of Hummvees. Talk about winning over the hearts and minds!

Jeremy and I will be soon opening a business to outfit Zambonis for military duty with Canada’s armed forces on peacekeeping duty in Afghanistan and Bosnia. The world will be happier for it.