Kevin Harris, at Neighbourhoods has a nice rant about capacity building today:
As far as I can recall, capacity building the community sector has not been the problem anywhere I’ve worked. The problem is relationships. Too many people in positions of power are behaving in disempowering ways towards residents and towards those who experience exclusion, and then using the notion of capacity-building as a smokescreen. If there’s any capacity building to be done, it’s in terms of getting these people to behave in a civilised and grown-up manner towards those they are supposed to be supporting, or just get out of the way. If we get these people out of the way, IMHO, the capacity of the community sector will always reassert itself.
I tend to agree with him. In the world of First Nations community development, “capacity building” became a buzzword in the early nineties, around the time of the Royal Commission. I think it started out innocently enough as a term meaning to build up the ability of communities to self-govern and self-manage. It was always talked about without context however, and I have met few people working in indigenous communities here who understand capacity building in terms of asset-based community development, appreciative inquiry or other similar bodies of thought and practice.
The problem now with the term is that is has become completely degraded. When people talk about “capacity building” now I have to ask them what they mean. In its worst connotations, government uses the term to mean “Aboriginal communities taking more responsibility for their own futures” which is often code for “we want out of this.” Likewise on the community side, I hear the word “capacity” used in place of “funding” so that capacity building becomes about getting more funding to do new things. (Of course there are many examples that are counter to what I am saying, but this is a general trend).
I think we would do well to forget the term “capacity building” as Kevin suggests and just focus on what the real need is. By engaging in collaborative work around these well articulated needs, we create the relationships necessary to sustain the work over time. That creates a learning community, and only through self-organization, self-education and self-empowerment, can a community understand, harness and realize its own capacities.
[tags]capacity building[/tags]
If you are anywhere near Victoria BC on August 24th, head down to Beacon Hill Park for a free salmon barbeque to celebrate the relationship between the T’Souke, Beecher Bay and Songhees First Nations and the neighbouring municipalities. The food is hot off the grill from 11:30 to 2:00 at the Cameron Bandshell.
Having worked this past year with the City of Victoria and the local First Nations there, I can say that this event will be a great time, with good food and interesting people making a real effort at strengthening relationships.
Those of you who don’t live in Canada probably haven’t yet heard of the stand-off between Iroquoian peoples and developers in Ontario. The dispute concerns a piece of land called The Haldimand Tract, the jurisdiction of which is under dispute. The Six Nations people who live nearby, and on whose traditional territory the land lies, moved to stop a housing development there five months ago, with the idea that until ownership over the land is settled, building houses wouldn’t be a good idea.
The dispute has been angry and a little violent, but recently, the provincial government and the traditional government of the Iroquois Confederacy have been in talks to resolve the situation. The province bought the land in question and has moved to compensate some local businesses as well. Conversation is the higher form of peace making, so this is all good.
But then yesterday a judge called David Marshall, inexplicably ordered the negotiations to end, and order the police to move in and arrest the indigenous people at the blockade. This seems completely screwy to me. Courts in Canada usually have to work hard to get governments to the table, not away from it. In fact, the move is so unprecedented that the Ontario government has moved to appeal it. The order has exacerbated the terrible strife between the indigenous and non-indigenous residents of the area.
What would lead a judge to order police to move in before negotiations, which were going well, by all accounts? Could the fact that he owns land within the tract in question have anything to do with it?
I hope the appeal succeeds and the parties are allowed to negotiate again. If not, it’s a sad day for Canadian justice, what little of it there is left for indigenous peoples here.
Keeping a flame lit here for the people of the Six Nations territories in Ontario, and hoping for a peaceful resolution to the standoff there.
It’s a Tsimshian expression that means “of one heart.” It was also the name of a very powerful appreciative summit I facilitated last year on youth suicide in northwestern British Columbia.
Today Jane Morley, the Child and Youth Officer for British Columbia, and the convener of that gathering released her special report on the summit and its results. The report is available as a .pdf from her site.
The gathering was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. On May 4th 2005 I saw nearly 200 Aboriginal youth step into a gathering rife with fear and trepidation and emerge engaged and powerful. They achieved this by simply turning to one another with a set of powerful questions about what might be in their communities and after some conversation, they delivered an inspired set of messages to policy makers and politicians.
In her report, Jane summaraizes the transformation of the day this way:
By the end of the inter-nation forum, it seemed that a shift had taken place – from the overwhelming sense of loss, alienation and fear people had felt in the face of youth suicide, to youth beginning to take the lead in finding a solution. THe energy and power of the youth were palpable, as was the willingness among the others present to hear and accepttheir views, the mutual respect and the support for the emergence of youth voices and youth leadership.
The inter-nation forum, the work that preceeded it and the subsequent results were the fruit of hard work by many people, but first among these were the youth themselves. It was such an honour to work with them. I hope the governments involved heed Jane’s report.