I live in Squamish traditional territory, Skwxwú7mesh Temíxw, and I have spent the last 19 years of my residency here as an uninvited guest trying to learn a little about the land and sea, and the traditional teachings that have found a home here for tens of thousands of years. This month I have joined dozens of others in taking a course from my friend Ta7táliya and her family and friends called Mi tel’nexw which in Squamish means “figure it out.” It’s a leadership course that is rooted in Squamish ways of knowing and being (you can join anytime at …
I love that little phrase. It comes from southern Ontario where I live and has been turned into an ongoing joke on one of my favourite shows about rural Ontario culture and friendship, called Letterkenny. The ritual answer to this question is “Notso bad ‘n’you?” or “Good ‘n’you?” These days though, whew. We need another response. I haven’t blogged since June. I feel like I’ve been working harder and more intensively than I have at any time during my consulting career. I have clients in different parts of the world so some days I’m up at 4am, or on calls …
It is “Juneuary” on the west coast of British Columbia, a time of year when low-pressure systems of cold air break off the jet stream and drift down the coast providing unstable weather, rain, and cloudy days. It’s like a return to winter. It reminds me that walking in the mountains in the winter, or indeed during these wet and unpredictable weeks, can result in getting lost in fog. When that happens, your response to the situation becomes very important if you are to make choices that don’t endanger lives. My colleague Ciaran Camman was presenting on a webinar with …
It’s my birthday on Saturday. Join me in donating to: Ta7talíya Michelle Nahanee’s work on Decolonizing Practices Teara Fraser’s work to fly essential services and goods to indigenous communities during the pandemic On Saturday it is my 52nd birthday. It seems to be a feature of getting older that birthdays and other gift-giving holidays become less about the stuff and more about the relationships. For this birthday, I’d like to invite any of my readers, friends, and colleagues to join me in donating funds to two local indigenous women who are doing powerful work for others. We can gift to …
So we had a very interesting election yesterday in Canada and a couple of progressive American friends of mine were hoping from afar that we would reject the kind of right wing racist populism that has infected much of the western world at the moment. This is the response I sent them. For those of you not in Canada, perhaps it will help you understand what happened in our country, written from an unabashedly progressive standpoint. It’s just my take, but here it is for posterity. We pretty strongly rejected the People’s Party of Canada, the one actual right wing …