Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.
Engineers, scholars, women.
Western red cedar – xápayay – near Sch’ilhus, Stanley Park, Vancouver. Photo by virgomerry
Part three of the Mi tel’nexw Leadership series continued last week with teachings from Ta7talíya on Squamish ways of knowing based on the cedar tree.
Cedar trees, like salmon, are iconic on the west coast of Canada. Just those two images together would immediately make you think of this place, Skwxwú7mesh Temíxw. These two living things link the land and the sea, and they are inextricably linked in nature too, as the nitrogen that salmon bring to the forest make possible the massive growth of xápayay, the red cedar, which in turn provides shade and clean water in the salmon streams so that the cycle can continue. The two care for each other and exhibit the same relations as those of a traditional family
For Ta7talíya, her story of knowing began there, with her birth into a Squamish family that was surrounded by love, family, and food, gifts of the birthright that confirmed and formed her identity as stélmexw, an indigenous person. Later when she went to school and then interacted with the colonial systems of education and foster care, she took on identities that were not hers, but instead the racialized identities of indigeneity that are propagated and imposed by white supremacy. These two experiences formed the deep basis of Ta7talíya’s teaching last week: that we have goodness inside us which we can find when we connect, and that we take on stuff which is unhelpful and dispiriting. Working with both requires ceremony.
In Squamish culture, there is a need to brush off what is unhelpful or what is harmful. The practice involves using cedar boughs to brush negativity from oneself. Cedar boughs are also hung over doorways traditionally to brush off any negativity that enters a home. Skwetsimeltxw returned during this session to talk about this practice, calling it “hand sanitizer for the soul!”
Ta7talíya’s work in the world is confronting white supremacy and teaching decolonizing practices for the liberation of all people. This involves confronting the reality of white supremacy, giving people tools and then leaving them to “mi tel’nexw” – figure it out.
She says that appreciating – and not appropriating – Squamish teachings and ways of knowing that are openly shared is one way to do this. Here are a few insights I took from her teachings.
The fundamental struggle is between a relational worldview and a separating worldview. Using the cedar to teach this is brilliant. Cedar is the Squamish tree of life and provides material for people to use in every part of it’s being. Needles and boughs for medicine and healing and spiritual care; wood for building homes, canoes, bowls and tools; bark and roots for rope and clothing. To have a relationship with cedar is to be in relationship with the source of things that provide for our needs. Ta7talíya contrasts this with capitalism for example, where only the thin thread of currency connects us to those who harvested, refined and made the things most of us use in our daily lives. We are put out of relationship for the sake of convenience, and when humans are separated from one another, brutality becomes possible.
This is the land of transformation. When Ta7talíya was telling her own life stories at one point she said “I have a story of transformation…” and a shiver went through my spine. Squamish oral history tells of the important era of Xaays, the Transformer Brothers, who travelled through the land fixing things in their shape and imbuing the land with teachings. Almost every significant physical feature of this landscape has a transformation story. From my home, I can see places where the deer were created, where herons first appeared, where the sun was captured and placed into a regular rhythm, where the first human experienced compassion and became mortal, and where epic battles were fought between thunderbirds and two-headed sea serpents that left their marks on rock faces and mountainsides. Once, while walking with Squamish Nation Councillors Syetáxtn and Khelsílem we were laughing as they half-jokingly said that someone needed to make a “Lord of the Rings” style history of this land, because the place is literally full of these kinds of stories, everywhere you turn.
Transformation is the goal of spiritual life. Living here, one needs to brush off what stops one from seeing what is truly here, the land made up of stories or covered in layer upon layer of love and prayer practiced by countless generations who have walked and paddled these places. Brushing off what gets in the way of this knowing opens one to the possibility of transformation, to feel deeply the move towards a transformation that formed this land, and continues to form it and the histories that lay upon it. Hearing Ta7talíya place her own story of transformation into the context of all that has gone on in Squamish history was a powerful reminder of this fact.
You have to figure it out. No one will give you the answers. Squamish ways of knowing begin with the nexwníwin – traditional teachings – and a question that you hold. All is gifted to you to use, like the way the cedar gifts itself, but it is up to you to mi tel’nexw – figure it out. As Ta7talíya said “Squamish leadership is facilitation” meaning that it gives space for all voices to be heard and for things to be tried. It allows for failure in relationship while stopping people from failing AT relationship. In the traditional setting, you are held by the family, by village, by teachings, by ancestors and by the land, and you always have those to return to.
I am truly blessed to live here and truly blessed to have people like Ta7talíya in my life as friends and teachers and colleagues and mentors. It is not enough to merely brush off and put down the lenses of white supremacy to be able to live well here. One must also steadily figure out how to live in relationship with what is actually here, hidden in plain view, obscured only by an unwillingness to see. That is true of the land, it is true of history and it is true with people. The practice of brushing off helps us to put down what separates so we can pick up what connects and figure it out.
I live in Squamish traditional territory, Skwxwú7mesh Temíxw, and I have spent the last 19 years of my residency here as an uninvited guest trying to learn a little about the land and sea, and the traditional teachings that have found a home here for tens of thousands of years.
This month I have joined dozens of others in taking a course from my friend Ta7táliya and her family and friends called Mi tel’nexw which in Squamish means “figure it out.” It’s a leadership course that is rooted in Squamish ways of knowing and being (you can join anytime at that link.)
Our first class was last week, listening to the teachings of Skwetsimeltxw, who spoke about Squamish history and teaching from the perspective of sp’ákw’us, the eagle. As part of the course, we are invited to articulate takeaways and giveaways, naming the gifts received and how we will offer gifts as a result. This cycle of reciprocity is essential.
So here are a couple of takeaways and giveaways that are sitting with me.
Everything starts with the land. As obvious as this one seems, it’s important to remember. I take away from this insight the idea that when doesn’t know what to do, stop and see where you are, what is the land or sea saying about this. It is the ultimate source of everything. The other day I was up at Rivendell Retreat Centre, where I am a Board member, and we were talking about the gardens and outdoor space there. People come to Rivendell from all over the world to experience contemplative practice through silence, hospitality, simplicity and prayer. The practice of simplicity invites us into a powerful, open and basic relationship with the natural world, and my friend and I were discussing how we could make the gardens of Rivendell embody the hosting that the land does so that visitors to our centre could practice outside of our beautiful rooms and sanctuary, attuned to the blessing of the natural world. This territory begs to be loved through every expression of the land and the sea and so my giveaway is to put that lens back on the land at Rivendell and to work with folks to help us help spiritual seekers find the simplicity in that teaching.
Ceremony strengthens you so you can stay positive. My takeaway here is how important practice is. Ceremony that ties me to the land and to the community, brings me into a relationship with the natural world, the supernatural world and community in a way that makes me accountable for the way I spend my time in this life. Skwetsimeltxw shared a teaching of revered Squamish Elder Louis Miranda: “Don’t be afraid of death – we are only here camping for a short time. Don’t waste a day while you are here.” Ceremony gives us names, helps us over the transition of life’s markers, through grieving and loss, through celebration and abundance. Daily practices helps us to live well so that we can take care of what we have. My giveaway is to a practice that shares the beauty and goodness of my life and to this end I have deleted my social media apps from my phone to manage my energy and attention.
Take care of the things in your temporary possession. Squamish culture, like most west coast traditional cultures, is heavily based on property and ownership. The myth that indigenous people don’t have concepts of land ownership is patently false everywhere. Here on the west coast where potlatching is the governance system, all of the property of the nation – including land and places, stories, names, responsibilities, and resources – are placed in the care of someone. The laws and the rules are very strict because care for these fundamental things is essential to the survival of a people. (and yes removing these systems is a form of genocide, set on destroying a people through banning potlatching and ceremony, and stealing these possessions). Skwetsimeltxw said that when a person is given a name, it is not theirs to own but theirs to carry for a while and “polish during your life.” The takeaway for me is a teaching about stewardship and how we are to care for the things that come into our possession. For me this means that names I have like “Art of Hosting steward” confer responsibility to ensure that when I no longer carry that title, it has been made better for those who pick it up. My giveaway is to examine the various names and identities I carry – Board member, Bowen Islander (Nexwlélexwm uxwimíuxw), settler, Canadian, father, husband, facilitator, – and to live them in a way that people encountering these identities in others – especially in those I teach, train and raise – will recognize them as honourable. It is my work to transform an identity like “Canadian” conferred by my birth into this colonial land, or to try to live up to the high standards of a word like “father” that has been given to me by my dad and children.
“Prayers and love, once they are put down, stay where they are put.” This is a direct quote from Skwetsimeltxw and it refers to how Squamish people, living in this territory for tens of thousands of years, have prayed and loved every inch of it from time immemorial. The love and prayers of every ancestor lie upon the rocks and mountains and waterways here and my takeaway is that this land is soaked in blessings. Everywhere you walk or sit is a place that has been stewarded since the beginning of time with care and affection and deep spiritual connection. My giveaway is gratitude and an attuned sense of this sacredness. When Skwetsimeltxw uttered this sentence, I felt a complete and overwhelming sense of gratitude for the fact that I live in a place that is literally covered in love and prayer. Open to the sacred appreciatiation of the stewards and owners of this territory, inspired to attune myself ever deeper to what is really here.
I love that little phrase. It comes from southern Ontario where I live and has been turned into an ongoing joke on one of my favourite shows about rural Ontario culture and friendship, called Letterkenny. The ritual answer to this question is “Notso bad ‘n’you?” or “Good ‘n’you?”
These days though, whew. We need another response.
I haven’t blogged since June. I feel like I’ve been working harder and more intensively than I have at any time during my consulting career. I have clients in different parts of the world so some days I’m up at 4am, or on calls late into the evening. I’m getting jetlagged without leaving my home.
I’m noticed a deep tiredness in my brain not just from the screen time, but from the intensity of maintaining concentration when my conversation partners are small squares in an undifferentiated mass. I think when I’m working with groups I tend to focus on one person at a time, and there is never a time when I am making eye contact with 25 people at once. Mentally, I’m forgetting things. My short term memory is full of holes. As one client said yesterday, I work a whole day online, turn off my computer and can’t remember a single thing I have done. The abrupt nature of the transition between states is jarring. We are not made for this, and I’m not sure we are adjusting, but rather just wearing ourselves down.
Everything takes longer, there is more anxiety about the future, everything feels more high stakes, maybe because no one really knows what to do, what’s going to happen, or how to make it through this moment into whatever is coming next.
Many folks I work with are feeling this same fatigue and anxiety, somehow familiar and also strange. And this isn’t REALLY suffering at all.
I am working. My job has simply moved online. I continue to be paid for my work. I live in a place that has been minimally touched by COVID-19, where it is easy to be outside and to practice physical distancing. I am not sick, I am not out of money, my children are grown adults and look after themselves. I am not suffering.
Increasingly though I am working with folks who are in deep grief. Their lives are continuing and their anxiety is only increasing. They are worried about schooling their kids, they have lost jobs or been forced to take new ones, exposing them to a higher risk of getting sick. Our government benefits programs are expiring and the hope I had at the beginning of the pandemic, for a compassionate public policy leading to a universal basic income seems to have been high jacked by whatever usual suspects make policies that punish the poor and the marginalized and let the rich ride.
People I know have died from COVID. Others have developed chronic health conditions ranging from hair loss to heart problems. Friends are in the streets in different countries protesting injustices, trying to be heard, trying to grasp ahold of enough power to remake their societies in a just and equitable way. The political rhetoric fuelled by rage, wedge political marketing, creeping fascism and bots has made the democratic commons a toxic, angry, anxious laden space of backlash and retribution.
We are losing our minds.
So how’re ya now? What are you doing to hang on? Are you able to think about what comes next? Are you placing your hope on something? What do you need? What can you offer?
It is “Juneuary” on the west coast of British Columbia, a time of year when low-pressure systems of cold air break off the jet stream and drift down the coast providing unstable weather, rain, and cloudy days. It’s like a return to winter.
It reminds me that walking in the mountains in the winter, or indeed during these wet and unpredictable weeks, can result in getting lost in fog. When that happens, your response to the situation becomes very important if you are to make choices that don’t endanger lives.
My colleague Ciaran Camman was presenting on a webinar with a client today and used a lovely metaphor to describe developmental evaluation relating to being lost in a fog. I’m always looking at ways of describing this approach to evaluation with people because it is so different from the kinds of evaluation we are used to, where someone external to a process judges you on how well you did what you said you were going to do. Having said that, I like to introduce people to “developmental evaluation” by telling them it is actually just a fancy way of talking about what people do to make everyday decisions in changing and unfamiliar contexts. In some ways, you could call it “natural evaluation.”
Ciaran used the example of navigating in a fog. When the cloud descends on you, you best slow down for a minute and think about your next step. You have a sense of your destination – a nice warm house and a cup of tea – but suddenly what you thought you knew about the world has disappeared.
You can manage for a short time based on the last picture you had of your surroundings, but after a few meters of walking, you will be in a very different place, and you need to carefully probe your way forward. As you find the path again, you can move with a bit more confidence, as as the trail fades, you will adjust and slow down to sense more carefully.
Developmental evaluation is indistinguishable from adaptive action. The two sets of processes form an interdependent pair: you simply can’t do one without the other. How you choose to developmentally evaluate – including what you consider to be important, your axiology – is critical to how you will gather information and what decision you will take to adjust your action. Walking in fog towards a warm cup of tea is fairly straightforward. Creating new forms of community safety in a world dominated by racism and social and economic injustice is rather more difficult.
How do you explain this to folks?
When you are lost