From a fantastic essay in the November issue of Harpers magazine called Quitting the Paint Factory: On the virtues of idleness: Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, req�uisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the …
Frog Feast Bowl by Dale Faustich Recently on the OSLIST we have been discussing “givens” the boundairies within which group work happens. Both Harrison Owen and Paul Everett, an American consultant, talked about the universal givens, like the laws of self-organization and gravity. Paul wrote about the boundary conditions that tip chaos into order: Chaos Theory, et. al. deals with ‘bounded instability’. There is a container, an edge. OS is certainly Chaos Theory in action, imho, where something will emerge but you don’t know what or where, just that form will emerge from the primordial soup. A person I met …
Taiaike Alfred is a Mohawk academic who teaches at the University of Victoria. He is an uncompromising champion of declonization here at home and in the wider world. Recently he took part in a two-part dialogue at the Musqueam First Nation with some guests, community members and Elders. A transcript of the dialogues can be found on his home page. Here is one of the many interesting quotes, from a conversatio between Taiaike and Sakej Ward from the Burnt Church First Nation: Sakej Ward :…As colonized people, our typical reaction is to feel ashamed of ourselves. So we must bring …
Another Open Space blog joins the world. Lucas Gonzales produces CoPensar. I have no idea where he is, but he mentions Tenerife and South America a lot. He is a nice recent contributer to OSLIST as well. I had a blogger-in-person once removed experience today as Ranger Tim, made famous in the Canadian adventures of Dervala came over to Bowen Island for a walk in the forest and a peek at the storm surge crashing on the rocks of Cape Roger Curtis. I love meeting bloggers (and their friends) in person. They have always turned out to be just the …
For our weekly look at practical decolonization in the Aboriginal world, we turn to a nice article in The Tyee, a regional online magazine here in British Columbia fosucing on the vision of Graham Hingangaroa Smith. He is a Maori academic educator who is visiting BC and throwing up some nice challenges to the community here with respect to academic success. And he knows what he’s talking about. Maori education, in Maori schools has saved the Maori language, and created a huge shift in the identity of a whole new generation of Maori. When I was in New Zealand in …