Last week I pointed to the Sliammon treaty office website. There are more and more fantastic First Nations websites out there, all putting out the story of how communities and nations are trying to meet the challenges of living in a colonial context while expressing their own identity and striving towards a relationship with themselves and their neighbours that results in freedom.
I thought I’d point you to some of these sites on a somewhat regular basis. A First Nations Monday kind of thing.
Even if you aren’t especially interested in the struggles of First Nations in Canada, there are some good reasons why you might be interested in these sites.
These communities represent the very coal face of democracy. In looking at these communities are handling their affairs, people can learn a great deal about what it means to do nation building, community development, citizen engagement and institutional support. First Nations are dealing with these issues all the time, while they also struggle to meet the needs of a population that suffers from tremendous stresses in health, social and economic indicators. The project of decolonization that is happening all around me here in British Columbia can be a lab for people who are working with leadership, citizenship and community in a whole variety of institutions around the world.
The reason for this is quite simple. I have discovered that in doing organizational development and facilitation, nearly everyone is after improving their lives. Making an organization more effective cannot happen without also making that place one where people are free and feel invited to work with passion and responsibility. In First Nations communities, tapping the passion and responsibility of citizens is what is leading the way towards a post-colonial reconiliation with mainstream society. But, in my experience, it is the same forces, both within individuals and within groups that ensure this whether the project is decolonization and liberation or leadership and organizational effectiveness.
So when you are reading through these sites that I’ll bring to your attention, think about the implications of what these groups are doing, not only for themselves, but in terms of your own life, whether you are working to improve organizations or communities or the lives of your own family. There is a broader pattern that connects all of this work. And you are a part of it.
So on to this site, which is the home of the Office of the Wet’suwet’en in Northern British Columbia. You can browse through a lot of their intentions on this site, starting with a statement of interests and then seeing how the Wet’suwet’en want these interests implemented in a treaty with Canada:
1.1 The treaty will be distinctly and uniquely Wet’suwet’en. It will not be based upon any other treaties or models which have been agreed to or negotiated with Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
1.2 The treaty will be an affirmation of Wet’suwet’en title and rights of the Wet’suwet’en relationship to the land and all of the beings and things it contains.
1.3 The treaty will be founded on mutual respect, recognition and reconciliation.
1.4 The treaty will recognize and celebrate the existence of the Wet’suwet’en.
1.5 The treaty will provide certainly regarding the foundations of the relationship between the Wet’suwet’en and the Crown. The Crown wants certainly and we do also. This is one of many goals which we share.
1.6 The treaty will define the relationship and mutual responsibility of the Wet’suwet’en and the Crown. It will focus on how we can live together rather then how we each want each other to live.
1.7 The treaty will be an expression of Inuk Nu’at’en. The treaty will have a full constitutional status of Canadian law. it also will have full status as a treaty under international law. “
Such a positive and assertive and respectful position. It represents a strong grounding in culture and identity and a strong need for reconciliation with present realities and future opportuinities. It is uncompromising while being flexible and adaptive. What do you think?
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Inspired by the blogger driven audio recroding of Lawrence Lessig’s book Free Culture, Alexander Kjerulf initiated a project earlier this year to produce a free audio version of Harrison Owen’s latest book, The Practice of Peace. Thanks to the folks at Human Systems Dynamics Institute, the book is now available for download in all its mp3 glory. Readers from around the world contributed to the project, all of them (I believe) Open Space Technology facilitators.
The Practice of Peace is the latest journey in Harrison’s work with Open Space Technology. Since the book came out in 2003 it has spawned a variety of gatherings, projects and activities around the world. Have a listen.
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More recent searches that have brought visitors to Parking Lot:
- “i need a lot of dating and charting room websites”
- “proactive + living”
- “steven white toronto deleon white gallery”
- “limestone manufacture Hungary”
- “What happens is a step first cousin and a first cousin reproduce?”
- “where can i find pictures of the viking Lief Eriksson?”
- “an unanswered question in the Democracy in America by Alex de Tocqueville”
- “lime t-shirt shop”
- “living with husband that abuses alcohol”
- “suzuki quotes ox searching”
- “african culture and etiqutte”
There is an interesting narrative in here…a couple meet online looking for proactive living and interested in Euro-Canadian art and sculpture. They turn out to be cousins. They suspect that Leif Eriksson’s parents were also cousins. In investigating that they uncover unanswered political questions and consider opening a specialty clothing store. It doesn’t work out. He leaves to pursue zen masters who use bovines as teaching tools and she takes a crash course in the manners of her new adopted homeland.
The lesson: don’t expect all the answers when visting Parking Lot.
And don’t marry if you are cousins
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Whilst Googling himself, Harrison Owen came across an old interview he gave to a German journalist on Open Space, leadership and self-organization back in 1998. It’s a neat summary of Harrison’s thinking at the time, and still refreshingly current to me even now. Here’s a taste:
I found out that one of the most interested things about “Open Space” gatherings is that dialogue is a sort of – formally considered – intense listening, this seems to be the coin of the realm, that is what happens. I suppose a whole mass of other behaviors, if you will, we may spend a lot of time training the people to do, self-managed work teams, real leadership, things like that. These seem to be automatic occurrences in “Open Space” environment, I don’t think it?s any tribute to “Open Space”. I find myself thinking more and more that self-organizing systems natural function as dialogue and human self-organizing system naturally function in a dialogue mode. They manifest leadership as necessary, they experience themselves as one community. In a curious kind of way, stuff whether it is community building, team building, dialogue teaching, empowerment or leadership development and all those sorts of things – they seem to happen in an “Open Space” environment with no prior training, without even mentioning the word.
Lovely. That has certainly been my experience, especially in the last two events I have facilitated, one for a global financial services company and one for a Native Friendship Centre. Two wildly different groups, and the same kinds of result. All of the management theories and sociological analyses one can muster falls away in the face of opening space, where anything is possible, and true, authentic manifestations of these things show up all the time.
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We celebrated Pete’s life yesterday at the First Nations Longhouse at the University of BC. It was a lovely time, just the kind of party that Pete wanted, with stories, music, and food. There were prayers offered in the Secewpmec, Buddhist and Catholic traditions, a slide show of Pete’s life and the whole thing ended in a big drum circle facilitated by Pete’s partner in rhthym, Lyle Povah. It was a kick to see family, colleagues, students, and Scottish country dancers in full kilts pounding away on djembes while Pete’s wife Nola, my partner Caitlin and our son Finn pounded out a rhythm on a big buffalo skin mother drum.
As Merle Ace. one of Pete’s long time academic colleagues said, the greatest honour is to be remembered in the way in which you wanted to be remembered. Pete would have loved that celebration.
UBC has set up a site to collect stories about Pete and there’s information there on a scholarship that has been started in his name.