I ran into my old friend Simon Brascoupe today at a meeting I was facilitating here in Vancouver. Simon is a man of many hats: he has taught at Trent University, University of Manitoba and Carleton in contemporay Aboriginal economic development; he has worked in Chiapas and on international indigenous rights; he is a sometime federal government public servant, currently with the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Health Canada; and he is a well known artist in Canada, working with print and paint and anything else he can get his hands on.
Over Thai food at lunch today he told me about the Iroquois Hair Comb Education and Art Project. Simon’s passion for this topic seems out of all proportion to the subject, until you realize that what he and his artistic partner are doing is nothing less than revitalizing an important and lost art which is integral to Iroquian culture. Not only that, but through the course of this work, they are discovering that hair combs are very important personal, spiritual and community objects in indigenous societies all over the world.
Hair plays an important role in Iroquian history. The Peacemaker, a man who brought the Great Law of Peace to the Confederacy, combed the snakes and tangles from the hair of Tododaho, an evil and deadly Onondaga wizard who stood in the way of the peace. With his hair ritually combed, Tododaho consented to the Great Law and the peace took root amonst the five nations of the Iroquois confederacy. Simon told me a version of this story where the hair then transforms into the roots of the pine tree that became known as the tree of peace. Given this story, you can see how combs would take on great importance.
More on this here and here (with video).
This is great. Central casting could not have picked more perfectly.
I’ll stop crying now. Ow. My ribs hurt.
Last night, on the eve of George Bush’s visit to Canada, 1.2 million canadians voted in a contest to select the greatest Canadian of all time. The winner was Tommy Douglas, the father of medicare and one of the furthest left politicians ever elected in Canada. He was certainly the most dyed-in-the-wool socialist who ever led a party (the Commonwealth Cooperative Federation). He formed the first socialist government in North America in 1944 when he became premier of Saskatchewan.
He quoted as saying “My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea.”
I am thinking to myself today that this shows the difference between our country and the one to the south of us. To put it mildly.
Winnipeg, Manitoba
I’m here in Winnipeg this week running a series of Open Space workshops at a national Aboriginal Head Start and early childhood education conference. There are something like 1000 people here from all over the country, all of them involved in caring and teaching the youngest children in Aboriginal communities in Canada. We’ve been running short Open Space events to allow people to dialogue with each other in a peer-to-peer learning environment. We’re so hip we even have a wiki!
Among the many stories and best practices I’m hearing about here, one has stood out for me. I’ve been reading through a report called Early Childhood Care and Development Programs as Hooks and Hubs: Promising Practices in First Nations Communities. It was produced by the Early Childhood Development Intercultural Partnerships at the University of Victoria and authored by Dr. Jessica Ball.
The report is a research project that follows the early childhood development practitioners from three BC First Nations through their training at UVic and back to their communities where they transformed their programs from a problem- and needs-based model of fragmented services to a “hook and hub” model. The hook and hub model places childhood development at the centre of an integrated and interactive set of services. Chilhood development services are offered as a “hook” upon which other agencies, programs and professional can attach themselves. Soon a constellation of services emerges, with childhood development at the “hub.”
There are a number of benefits to this model. The two that stand out for me the most are the solid support hubs offer for cultural continuity and the way hooks, as practices of invitation, support community capacity and emergent leadership.
Last week I blogged about the Chandler/Lalonde study which shows that cultural continuity in First Nations communities, supported by institutionalizing community empowerment, acts as a powerful hedge against suicide. The hook and hub model is in line with this idea. It also offers a natural way for indigenous culture, language and community values to be passed on, because hooks and hubs are traditional ways of organizing. Thus:
The majority of First Nations child-care practitioners and parents who participated in the study firmly believe that it is not what one DOES in the child-care curriculum (the activities or materials for example), but rather who one IS that helps to teach young children about their First Nations identity. The children are “apprentices,” absorbing a First Nation identity simply by being in a First Nations milleau, with First Nations role models and First Nations values
Or, in the words of one parent:
We are all First Nations and most of the kids are First Nations and they know that. We look like them. We are from the same community, or from communities nearby to here. We do share what we know about our culture, but I guess because everything we do is our culture, we really don’t think about it much…It’s not because we read books that our kids know who we are. They know because we are all related here, in some way, and we are all native.
So the hook and hub model offers an integrated container for the practice and transmission of culture and language, and therefore self-identity. It offers more than that to the community too. It offers a path for emergent leadership. The author defines a hook as:
The central, most essential “hook” that attracts families to new services in the community and that secures their attachment to programs that support wellness of all family members is offering parents the quality child care, and sometimes the special services, that they need for themselves and want for their children.”
This hook is an invitation, a practical example of living in truth. Offer what is needed and people will come and engage with you. And once you are running and people have hooked on, move into creating a hub:
Community leaders and program staff explained to us how they see the family as the central organizing focus for the delivery of services, and the well-being of young children as dependant upon and also contributing to family well-being…In these communities today, the child-care facility is now the primary site for bringin people of all ages together and holding cultural events, as well as providing services and programs directed at addressing the well-being of the “whole child” and the “whole family.”
The childcare program becomes a hub and familes and service providers interact with it in a way that strengthens community capaciity and leadership. And most importantly it does this in a way which is manageable, practical and scalable.
This study has a significant lesson for other communities and folks who see child development as a root from which a healthy community can grow. The author concludes:
A community-centred model that uses early childhood care and development programs first as a “hook” to attract community members by delievering the quality child care the both need and want, and then as the centre of a “hub” where community members can find other family development and health services may be more effective in meeting the diverse needs of children and families in First Nations ncommunities than the dominant problem- and need-Specific model. IN fact, the “hub” model may work for other communities as well, particulary those in rurual and isolated areas and in low-income, urban neighbourhoods, where the accessibility and coordination of services is a persistent barrier to program use and effective family participation.
My friend Rob Patterson on PEI and perhaps Ashley Cooper and others will no doubt find this interesting. If you want a copy of the study, you can contact ECDIP for one of your very own.