Back in November, I worked with my mate Teresa Posakony on a two day gathering the object of which was to work to apply brain science to policy questions on the prevention of adverse childhood experiences. On the first day I facilitated an Open Space event that brought together reserachers and brain scientists to discuss their findings and on the second day, we had panelists and Teresa ran a half day cafe to look at the implications of the research for policy making. I composed a poem at the end of the day.
As a part of the experience, we were shown a powerful video of the still face experiment, a test to see how infants respond when their care givers break the connection with them. It is very very powerful. Here it is:
Later in the day one of the panelists, Jennifer Rodriguez, referred to this video by saying that collectively, “society is the still face” when it comes to our children and youth.
That was the hook I needed for the poem, which was also informed by the words I saw and heard during the cafe. I read the poem and got a generous standing ovation.
Today I got an email from our clients which was sent by the researcher you see in the video, Dr. Ed. Tronick. Dr. Tronick was responding to our client, who sent him the poem and the recording of me reading it:
I really am quite moved by the poem and your comment about how much impact it has. When I began this work in my lab I had no idea that it might one day be so useful in getting children and families what they so desperately need. I love the poem – I will get it up in my office somewhere, especially what it brings together and the rhythm of it. Please tell Chris how much I appreciate it. It is just amazing. And more important than the SF or the poem is the work you and everyone at the conference are doing.
It is not enough to do work in the world without adding as much beauty as we can. The power resides in the songs, the poems, the images that we use to capture our collective experiences and to throw a light on how important they are to us as human beings.
Enjoy the harvest.
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1. Practice noticing who’s in the room at meetings – how many men, how many women, how many white people, how many people of color, is it majority heterosexual, are there out queers, what are people’s class backgrounds. Don’t assume to know people, but also work at being more aware.
2a. Count how many times you speak and keep track of how long you speak.
2b. Count how many times other people speak and keep track of how long they speak.
3. Be conscious of how often you are actively listening to what other people are saying as opposed to just waiting your turn and/or thinking about what you’ll say next.
4. Practice going to meetings focused on listening and learning; go to some meetings and do not speak at all.
5a. Count how many times you put ideas out to the group.
5b. Count how many times you support other people’s ideas for the group.
6. Practice supporting people by asking them to expand on ideas and get more in-depth, before you decide to support the idea or not.
7a. Think about whose work and contribution to the group gets recognized.
7b. Practice recognizing more people for the work they do and try to do it more often.
8. Practice asking more people what they think about meetings, ideas, actions, strategy and vision. White guys tend to talk amongst themselves and develop strong bonds that manifest in organizing. This creates an internal organizing culture that is alienating for most people. Developing respect and solidarity across race, class, gender and sexuality is complex and difficult, but absolutely critical – and liberating.
9. Be aware of how often you ask people to do something as opposed to asking other people “what needs to be done”.
10. Think about and struggle with the saying, “you will be needed in the movement when you realize that you are not needed in the movement”.
11. Struggle with and work with the model of group leadership that says that the responsibility of leaders is to help develop more leaders, and think about what this means to you.
12. Remember that social change is a process, and that our individual transformation and individual liberation is intimately interconnected with social transformation and social liberation. Life is profoundly complex and there are many contradictions. Remember that the path we travel is guided by love, dignity and respect – even when it is bumpy and difficult to navigate.
13. This list is not limited to white guys, nor is it intended to reduce all white guys into one category. This list is intended to disrupt patterns of domination which hurt our movement and hurt each other. White guys have a lot of work to do, but it is the kind of work that makes life worth living.
14. Day-to-day patterns of domination are the glue that maintain systems of domination. The struggle against capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism and the state, is also the struggle towards collective liberation.
15. No one is free until all of us are free.
From the Colours of Resistance webpage
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One of the most useful books of the past five years in terms of the work I do is Peter Block’s Community: The Structure of Belonging. In it he aggregates the wisdom of those of us who have been practicing participatory process for the last 30 years in North America. The essence of the work is that social fabric, created through conversations that produce relationships, is the foundation for improvement in communities and the fundamental pre-requisite for effective and sustainable problem solving.
This set of videos is a great introduction to Peter’s work. View parts one, two and three.
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I’ve recently been introduced to the work of Al Nygard, a Native consultant working out of South Dakota primarily in Tribal communities. Al’s approach and values are very similar to my own, and it’s cool to see familiar ideas in another person’s hands. Al works with traditionally based models of leadership and calls his community development work “community empowerment.”
My colleague Jerry Nagel sent me a link to a video of Al answering the question of why it is so hard to get things done in Tribal communities. Essentially he identifies seven factors that make community empowerment unique. These seven factors bear out my own experience too. He calls these The Art of the Native View. If you understand this view, the work you do will take. If not, and if your work is built on mental models that don’t take these into consideration, you’re in trouble. In my own success and failures working in communities I can relate to how important it is to build your work on appropriate mental models, appropriate views. Even though Al identifies these seven factors as basically universal, each community has unique circumstances, cultures and histories that also inform the work of community empowerment. This stuff is interesting to me as I am about to embark on a project to work on community engagement and empowerment with my mates in the Berkananetwork, tailoring some of our resources to work in Tribal communities in North America
Starting around 5 minutes into the video, Al gets to the nub of his approach in building empowerment in Native communities. It centres around seven things that all Native communities share which make the work of empowerment unique. I’m summarizing and editorializing a little on his words here.
Trust. This is about building relationships of mutual reliance. It’s about building trust between people, between families and between people and institutions.
Communication systems. The default communication system in Indian country is the moccasin telegraph. Works fast but not always reliable. So we need a variety of ways to communicate – audio, visual, kinesthetic. Reliable commonly shared information is important and doing it in a multi-modal way is important.
Leadership systems. Who are the leaders in the community? Elected leaders, heads of entities and institutions yes, but what about moms, students, Elders, veterans? Leadership is everywhere. The system that develops and directs leadership in all these ways is important. Elections are clear but how are we developing leaders in other areas and how do we get information to leaders so they can act? Leadership in Native communities comes from invitation: you are asked to be a leader. Also, there is an end time. When it’s over, it’s over. In Anglo cultures we seek out leadership and then we hang on to it as long as possible. To me this is one of the reasons why Open Space is such an interesting fit for traditional leadership forums, as these are the same dynamics that underlie that process.
Governance. What are the rules that tell us what we can depend on? Not the same as government. Do your rules help you or hold you back? That is the essence of governance
Lateral oppression. Sometimes called the Indian crab syndrome (in a bucket of crabs, when one tries to escape the others will pull it back down). Lateral oppression is the way that power shows up in shadow in a community. When you are working with empowerment, the shadow work of paying attention to lateral oppression is very important.
Racism and Inequality. A common experience of all Native people living in community is the disparity of experience on the rez vs. off the rez. Over time, experiences of oppression, racism and inequality eat away at self-esteem and colour how we relate to the outside world. Just this evening in a cafe I was running this dynamic showed up as a difference between how a First Nations forest company and non-First Nations forest companies dealt with the stress of uncertainty about the future.
Hurt and Balance. The lingering effects of trauma from issues like residential school abuse, language and culture decline, and the subsequent multi-generational issues create a myriad complex of dynamics that often confuse and confound outsiders.
Al’s framework is a useful lens to view work in Tribal communities. Mental models and world views matter.
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In Seattle yesterday I was listening to a keynote by Dr. Jack Shonkoff who is a breain researcher at Harvard with an interest in early childhood development. He said an interesting thing about American health care which kind of answers the question for me about what the US is good at.
Many Americans who are opposed to public health care use the argument that people from other countries come to the United States for the world’s best treatment, surgery and acute care. No question that if you can afford it, the USA has the best. BUT – and this was a revelation to me, to hear from a leading doctor – no one moves to the USA permanently for their health. In the case of almost every industrialized country, and several developing countries as well , the USA trails in health promotion. So while people do come for treatment, they go back home to countries that support better overall health.
And insurance based system is to blame for this. Pouring money into insurance means that treaments, including surgery and drugs are developed and widely available because there is an incentive for private companies and public institutions to develop excellent treatment, activities and products that you can charge for. Health promotion is not a profit making venture, so if you choose to put public resources in private insurance, you get private, price based solutions. Building a system that prioritizes prevention, healthy communities, health promotion and safety is the way to reduce the need for acute treatments later in life, but no one can make a profit at it, so it requires a public, social response to build that infrastructure.
So that’s kind of interesting, especially as we hear the debate in Canada clamouring for more private involvement at the treatment end of things.