I’m putting together a presentation (including some slides) on community engagement and leadership for a gathering of First Nations leaders next month.  In the spirit of seeking the wisdom of the blogosphere, I’m wondering if any of you have some thoughts or pearls of wisdom that I could share with this group of people.  Here is the proposal that I’m working on:

We’ve moved on.

In the last century, government talked to citizens, and if they were feeling particularly charitable, they allowed citizens to say something back. This was called “consultation” and it had it’s origins in the ancient European model of the ruler seeking advice from advisors before making a decision.

That model has unravelled. We have moved from consultation to citizen and community engagement as we recognize that more and more, people need to be actively involved in the decisions that affect their communities. And now we are finding that the shift continues.

What if we moved from community engagement to just community? What if in First Nations communities we recovered that capacity for community members to work together to design and co-own the direction of their Nations?

It’s possible and it is happening all over the world, in indigenous communities on every continent as people realize that the responsibility for the direction of their communities rests with them.

People own what they design. Community engagement is now about community members designing, deciding and implementing the shifts that are needed in their communities. The days of someone else doing it for us are over.

This shift presents challenges and opportunities for leadership. Old models of top-down, command and control leadership are changing and new models of collaborative leadership and community building are rising to the fore. Leveraging the power of networks and self-organizing groups – even and especially in small communities – is the way forward.

What is community engagement now? What else could leadership be?

So my wise friends…thoughts?

I’ve been publishing my recent finds and current reading over on the sidebar, which you won’t have seen if you read this blog with a newsreader.   Here is the link to the RSS feed for the links.   There is some interesting stuff there, things which may turn up later as blog posts, or just caught my attention.

Carry on.

With respect to the patronizing incident that took place yesterday during our federal election campaign, whereby a Conservative Ministerial aide said to a man from Barriere Lake:  “If you behave, and you’re sober, and there’s no problems, and if you don’t do a sit-down and whatever, I don’t care. One of them showed up the other day and was drinking,”

The woman who uttered these remarks, Darlene Lannigan, I think will sit down later this week with some local First Nation folks to sort it out, but I thought it was notable that other members of the Minister’s staff apologized on her behalf, rather than her doing it.   And anyway, the apology was couched in a condition:  “We also understand these comments were made in a difficult context. That is regrettable. The good news is that the parties have committed to meet later this week, in a spirit of collaboration.”

So hooray that they are getting together.  It will help them understand how to behave in “difficult contexts,” like when you are talking to someone who’s skin colour is different from yours.

But this isn’t at all unusual.  There is a broad swath of Canadian society, much of it upper crust, that has never met anyone of First Nations ancestry let alone thought about their unconsciously held stereotypes about Aboriginal people.  Regardless of the level of alcoholism in Aboriginal communities (and it varies, don’t you know), their opinions are not formed by statistics, they are formed by prejudice.  And prejudice has no place in the public service, whether you are a political aide or a public servant.

And while alcoholism IS an issue, it is a rare occasion to see anyone show up at a meeting, rally or protest drunk.  In the 20 years I have been working in the Aboriginal community in this country, I have, only once, been to a meeting where alcohol was served, and that was an economic development conference where NKMIP winery from the Osoyoos Indian Band provided one bottle of wine per table of six people. I have been to plenty of gatherings with non-Aboriginal Canadians of all political stripes in which an open bar, or a cash bar even, is the highlight of the night. So what is the truth here?  What are we really supposed to think when someone of Darlene Lannigan’s stature makes rules about behaviour and drinking for an Algonquin man that I bet she has never made for non-Aboriginal people?

My guess is that it’s not really an apology that Darlene Lannigan needs, but a thorough re-education about alcohol and it could probably begin snd end with her own abstinence, and those of her cronies and friends. And then at Church on Sunday, she can remember the teaching about casting the first stone and all that.

It’s complicated times in the Western world (he says with some irony).  If you are wondering what is happening to the economy and why, it’s very difficult to discover unless you are right in it.  And this is why I love the blogosphere.

My friend Rob Paterson has not only lived in the high levels of the world of high finance, but has alos been through a stock market crash before, in 1987.  As such the story he is telling on his blog is deep and informed, and it’s also accessible.  This is because Rob cares about storytelling, and he has spent a number of years now working with public radio and television in the United States helping stations in their effort to create news that is useful.  Nowhere has this been more important than now, when the meltdown in the mortgage and now the financing sectors of the American economy has devastated families and communities.  

In times like this, it’s important to know where you are.  Rob’s writing at the moment is a big piece of theeconomic news I’m getting because it is reasoned, inquisitive and asks the right questions.  That doesn’t mean he is preaching good news, but the alarms he are ringing are useful for me, pointing at what I can do personally to set myself well to ride this storm out.  

Thanks Rob!

(In Canada, there is a sweet irony to me turning to Rob for this…The Globe and Mail‘s business section is called “Report on Business” and is often contracted to ROB.  I like my Rob better.)