Over the past two days I have been facilitating a conference of First Nations health directors from around British Columbia. Every year or so, these folks gather to share ideas, learn about emerging trends and participate in policy development with government. When they go back home, these guys run health care systems in small First Nations communities, battling against many issues that affect First Nations health resulting in higher than average rates of diabetes, suicide, abuse, accidents, HIV/AIDS, communcable diseases and many other preventable causes of death and illness. At times I think the pressure of applying band-aids to the complex and systemic problems facing some communities can be immense and the challenges must seem insurmountable at times.

But today, I saw something that looks like magic. In the conference we had a presentation on a paper written in 1998 by two psychologists at the University of British Columbia, Dr, Michael Chandler and Christopher Lalonde. The paper is called “Cultural Continuity as a Hedge Against Suicide in Canada’s First Nations” and I think it’s one of the most important papers I have ever read.

The authors look at the role that cultural continutity plays in supporting invidual self-identity, especially among youth in BC Frist Nations. It works from a well-known correlation between supportive communities, healthy individuals and low suicide rates, but the reall contribution of the paper is that it outlines a course of action communities can take to dramatically lower rates.

To do this, the authors decided that they would try to identify factors that actually represented “cultural continuity” in communities and they settled on six:

• Land claims: First Nations were active in establishing claims for Aboriginal rights and title.


• Self government: a community has had some success in establishing their rights to controlling their economic and political independance.


• Education: First Nations run their own schools


• Police and Fire services: First Nations controlled services with community owned equipment


• Health services: Some direct control over health services


• Cultural facilities: including anything from a longhouse to a community centre and the whole variety of public spaces for community activities.

The authors looked at First Nations that had these six factors in place and found something absolutely amazing. Each of these factors provided a significant reduction in the rate of youth suicides. How much? Look at this table:

Now this is impressive. With some self-government in place for example, a community will reduce its youth suicide rate by 85 percent! But the authors discovered something even more amazing. In communities where these six factors are absent, the youth suicide rate is 137.5 per 100,000. That is 800 times the Canadian national average. In communities where all six of these factors are present, the rate drops to 0 per 100,000. You read it right. Zero. Not one suicide in the five year study period. By creating this kind of institutional support in communities, First Nations will literally save their children’s lives.

The authors conclude, rather modestly I think, that “communities that have taken active steps to preserve and rehabilitate their own cultures are shown to be those in which youth suicide rates are dramatically lower.” If these six factors are present, you are much more likely to find yourself in a community where practices of care, sharing, volunteerism, shared leadership, and supportive relationships are present. I’m willing to bet that this fundamental but relatively simple institution building has a multitude of other positive impacts as well. In communities where suicide is a complex epidemic (800 times the national average! That’s a borderline crime against humanity!) having a clear path towards long term community health is a remarkable gift. It means that people can begin to tackle suicide and other mortality measures collectively, with a place for everyone’s responsibility in the long term outcome. We don’t need professionals or experts, all we need is sincere effort, solid citizen engagement and steady progress towards building institutions. The clear implication is that engagement in community and cultural life spills over into relationships and creates the supportive container that gives youth the confidence and sense of belonging and connection they need.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but holding space saves lives. This is toxin handling par excellence.

Amazing.

Viktor Yuschenko

Here are the voices of protest from Kiev:

Space is opening in the Ukraine. It’s been four days now and the election has been called for the Victor Yanukovych, but the people know that the result is dubious. It seems inevitable that Viktor Yushchenko will eventually win. My hopes are that democracy wins the day peacefully. This photo is a good sign:

More at the BBC. And here’s a portal for information on the Orange Revolution.

When 200,000 people simply don’t believe it, look what can happen. The Ukraine may yet reverse the trend of many former Soviet republics and join Georgia in turning back creeping authoritarianism.

How can this be happening around the world and the 2000 election get stolen so easily in the USA? Where were the protests in the streets if people believed so strongly that George W. Bush stole the White House? Can you imagine 500,000 people gathered everyday outside the US Supreme Court to state their opposition to the fraud they believed was committed?

Look around. Masses of people who know the truth can change things, but it takes a little work and the courage of convictions to punch through the obfuscation of process and punditry. When the time is ripe, don’t blog it. Get out in the street and live it.

From a fantastic essay in the November issue of Harpers magazine called Quitting the Paint Factory: On the virtues of idleness:

I think that in totalitarian societies there must actually be a lot of sitting around waiting for someone to tell you what to do next. I can imagine Solidarity getting started in the ship building factor in Gdansk one afternoon when the supply chain broke again.

Frog Feast Bowl by Dale Faustich

Recently on the OSLIST we have been discussing “givens” the boundairies within which group work happens.

Both Harrison Owen and Paul Everett, an American consultant, talked about the universal givens, like the laws of self-organization and gravity. Paul wrote about the boundary conditions that tip chaos into order:

I concur with that statement. What strikes me here is Paul’s use of the word “container” and I resonate with that. When I hold space, I do often have a sense that I am holding a container. Some First Nations Elders here on the west coast of North America talk about it using the metaphor of the feast bowl, an ornately carved dish in which food is served at feasts. The expression “the common bowl” is often used to refer to the collection of people and resources available for a task at hand: “What is in the common bowl?”

I have recently been reading about Bohmian dialogue again, especially as it was explicated by Peter Senge et. al. in The Fifth Discipline and especially the new book, Presence. They use the term “container” as well. In Presence, there is a lovely quote from John Cottrell, the president of local 13 of the the United Steelworkers of America who used dialogue in labour relations. He likened dialogue to the craft of steelmaking:

I think when we work with groups as facilitators we do hold these energies. Those of you in very conflicted parts of the world will know better than I the tremendous strength needed to create and sustain a container for these energies that is transformative. My father in law called us toxin handlers: those who held those energies in a way that allow groups of people to function in a healthy way.

Sometimes I think we need explicitly stated givens to do this. In most cases though I think that the universal givens of self-organization are the ones we need to invoke, invite and hold space for. This is huge, huge work. But when we fashion the containers well, the results speak for them selves. Peace, as Harrison has noted, requires space and self-organization to emerge. These are givens, and they are worth holding.