Openly musing today on wondering what it might look like for participatory budgeting to be deployed for an Aboriginal governance authority responsible for child and family services. The work we are doing on Vancouver Island is about building the capacity of the community to be the owners of the child and family services in their communities. We are about to do an Art of Hosting training here with 40 or so community members to build the leadership capacity of the local communities, but I was thinking today, after having dinner last night with my friend Donna Morton, who knows much …
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My friend Jeff Aitken has been a strangely influential person in my life. He has been an interesting guide across intercultural spaces, helping me to frame and see my own journey as a person of mixed ancestry facilitating cross-cultural groups and helping to find the creative spark in the space that are created when we all claim our centres and show up whole. Jeff and I met in 2001 and have had a few conversations over the years, but I’ve always felt very close to him. Now at his blog rio grand-i-o, he is posting his doctoral thesis …
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Ottawa, Ont. I’m here in Ottawa at the National Aboriginal Forestry Association meeting threading some World Cafe work into their annual conference. This is a real time harvest of the work we are doing. This conference is bringing together about 130 people to dust off recommendations that were made by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples ten years ago. We are looking specifically at about a dozen recommendations relating to forestry. Certainly much has changed in the past ten years, but there are some essential things that would allow First Nations to take over much more control of their resources …
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\ Victoria, BC Sitting at a window seat at Moka House in the funkyhip Cook Street village district of Victoria. In a tourist town, little neighbourhoods like this are the ones that keep locals sane. I’m here partly because it appears that I am turning into more and more of a local around here. We did a good day of work today with the VIATT crew, cracking some solid communications questions and planning our Art of Hosting training for later next month. We are getting deep into a process of community linkage that will expand and solidify …
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It’s really impossible to overstate the worry I heard in people’s voices today. In our meeting an Elder named Billy Bird spoke briefly before lunch and reminded the group just what had been lost – the salmon runs, the crab and prawns, the seaweed beds, the clam gardens. The Namgis people and their relatives on Gilford Island, Kingcombe Inlet and Oweekeno are ocean people. Their life is on the ocean and without access to the ocean the fear is that they are no longer a people at all. For thousands of years these people have lived in …