Family as organizing principle
This week I had the tremendous privilage to facilitate two days of Open Space for Xyolhemeylh, the Aboriginal child and family services agency in the Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver. The agency has been going through a lot of turmoil over the past few years, and has come to a point of reinvention. The theme of the gathering was “Reclaiming our Journey” and it marked a significant transition for the organization as it headed into community control from being managed by the provincial government for the past 2.5 years. The point of the Open Space meetings were to invite the Elder’s staff and Board of the organization to reflect on the values that the organization wanted to name for itself as it moved forward. Over two days 140 people participated in the two back to back open space gatherings. Forty discussion groups were held on values that staff in particular felt were important to take forward. There was lots of laughter (especially from the the group on “laughter!”) and some very important healing took place.
Our gathering was held in the community at Tzeachten, a small First Nation in Sardis near Chillliwack. The event was held in a ceremonial container over the whole two days, with traditional protocols being in place, “floor managers” operating to keep things happening in a good way and Elders actively involved in witnessing what was happening. All of these activities are deeply traditional Coast Salish ways of working, taken directly from the longhouse protocols and they are deeply important to the organization.
Heln and Herb Joe, two Elders I have tremendous respect for, held the space over the two days while I simply ran the process. In the middle of the second day, a full blown ceremony broke out, as the outgoing director was honoured for her work and the incoming director was given his proper welcome. Witnesses were appointed, songs were sung and many many gifts were given as the two individuals were honoured. Many teachings were shared during this two hour ceremony that just appeared in the middle of the day, but the most important one I think has to do with the fact that this agency, responsible for hundreds of children, and employing 150 staff, is considered a family.
“Xyolhemeylh” the word talks about the relationship between a parent and a child, and is a word that describes the quality of this relationship, full of care. The name is also carried by an individual, although it seems not be at present. This creates a very different form of organizational design. In Sto:lo culture, there is no word for adoption as there is no way for a child to be outside of family. Family is all encompassing and surrounds you even in periods where you feel alienated. Xyolhmeyelh has been in many ways outside of the family of Sto:lo communities for the past few years as the organization has weathered political storms and concerns over practice.
But this past week there seemed to be a reaffirmation of the fact that the agency has never left the bigger family. Our Open Space was a family gathering, intended to remind us of the values that are important and the children that need help, care and nurtiring if the future of First Nations is to be secured.
It was a truly wonderful gathering, the best of who we are. More photos, especially of Colleen Stevenson’s lovely evolving mural are here.
It is interesting about their lack of a word for adoption. In our language the word for adoption is sheÌwayim, and shewayaÌylhem meaning “to raise a child”. The root word in this is sheÌway, which means “to grow”.
Adoption in a traditional sense occurred in a few ways. There was the slavery-adoption that rarely but sometimes happened when, usually, a girl was taken through warfare, then adopted into a family. It differed from her being of actual slave status, to being a member of the family. It was rare, and mostly happened through marriage.
Another adoption occurred when the male-figure in a family had become deceased. The oldest male, or oldest brother of the widow would then take over the role. If the widow had moved to the husbands village (which was custom), she might move back with her children to her birth-village, in which the older brother would move in and take over the responsibility as male-figure in the family.
There was also adoption in which case an orphan kid was taken in by a family. Sometimes even orphaned family’s would be taken in by a larger kinship group. There’s a particular story about how a particular nation became apart of our nation (I think you know which I’m talking about…lol) through this type of adoption.
Ever since the Art of Hosting I attended on Bowen Island, the idea of placing “something” in the circle of the work we do together, had me thinking of what it would be like to have “tradition” or “traditional customs” be the center. Same with having “youth” has the center.
Perhaps with the work we do with Siyamin Stamsh will give us the opportunity to do these things!
I think the language and concepts you are using really prove the point that the Sto:lo Elders were talking about. All of your concepts have people being brought into family. There is no word for removing a child from a family or a community and sending them to live with someone else.
Very interesting to put these ideas in the centre. That was long our work at VIATT.
Dear Mr Corrigan:
I regret my criticism amd only use it to emphasize where you are on the right path. Yours is one of the best Blogsites in my world and your technique opened a seal for us that was closed when Potlatch was outlawed.
I feel I should explain to you that outsiders coming into our house begin the way ‘born agains’ will when they see the Light, by claiming and exclaiming as if the Lord needs you to advertize His creation. The body language (what I envision happening when you write about going among the Tsalmkgekit) of the Elders maintaining distance from your process says something else than what you interpret it to mean.
When you say “there is no term for ‘adoption'” for instance … ” you have misunderstood their message, which is that we do not expropriate children and bring them up in a nuclear family that is itself completely isolated and intends that the children will also, in their maturity, close off and not interact continuously with the extended family, clan and tribe. They mean that Euro ‘adopting’ is akin to going to a boarding school to dispose of our indigenous soul; the unstated message is that when it has to happen that a child or even an older person, must take their shelter and nourishment in a different setting, no effort is made to sever the soul from its natural moorings. How else might a proud and humble Elder convey this truth to you than by remaining separate inside your experience and by contradicting something that is not really pertinent, such as the legal adopting done by the State.
I encourage you to allow more time before you assert these types of slogans because they tend to glorify us and we are not yet glorious enough for that. It inflates some of our more naive leaders and they begin to Eurify into dogmatists who sell being us as we were, not as we are and as we must become.
You know as well as I do that ego wants the easy and the popular, but soul cannot contend unless we suffer and struggle across the oceans, up over the waterfalls, and into the shallow fertile spawning beds. Better to challenge us on your interpretation of such acts as adoption, or other social practice, than to simply adopt the automatic meaning as it accurs to you. The fact is, and this is why I am so moved to criticise here, Potlatch itself is all about being invited to be adopted into a new identity at a higher plane of one`s life`s sojourn. Giving, and taking the gift, of a Title opens an ancient treasure chest laden with articles and ideas that are passed as legacies empowering the heirs with authority that cannot be understood without being that heir.
I fear, and here resist, the Eurization of our nature and having come from that philosophy you do it without knowing, and it produces Karl May Indians who perish with the Buffalo and Salmon for lack of water and grass and of truth.
I love your process and wish you to see I am using it here to underscore our common agenda.
Sincerely I will always be yours
Chief Kitsilano
aka jesujamey
Thank you jesusjamey. I think your comments about the Elders do in some ways reflect what was going on as they were held within and remained a part from the proceedings. Very interesting.
I take the job of Witness seriously. I was one of the Witnesses appointed for this gathering, and the express instructions were to tell about what we had seen and what happened. So this blog entry is both a recollection of my own learning, and “news” from the centre of ceremony.
Dear Mr. Corrigan:
I would encourage all those who are Indian, or would endeavor to emulate and fashion themselves after the archetypical INDIAN, to set benchmarks for that particular human character way above and beyond what is currently popular, by forcing our expectations to exceed even the model set by Jesus Christ, the Miracle worker who Himself affirms that future generations will “do what He did AND EVEN GREATER!”
We might huddle a while and reflect on the social and ecological reality, taking explicit notice that all cultures have outstipped themselves and left no space in which to continue without extravagant renovation of ideas ideals and goals. What we assume are effective and productive teaching methods have been exposed by Noam Chomsky and John Taylor Gatto as insidious indoctrination and deliberate “dis-education” designed to destroy the soul by implanting an automaton strictly interested in its own physical desires, consumption, popularity, and domination of others.
Proceeding from this realization, I sincerely believe it is the mission of earnest and responsible Indians to self critique toward filtering out the indoctrinated dogma that is not even noticed in our inner or in our outer conversation. By concentrating on eliminating the chaff and retaining the wheat, and by imagining ourselves as the future Human, two wonderful progressions follow:
– we operate from a more pure incentive than trying to become as “good” as the Euro pedagogy insisted;
and
– we advance toward a more perfect model of being “good” within the world community and ecology.
I support you in your mission as Witness. Haida have always been taught to assume that they are one of the three “Watchmen” carved and set atop one of our main Totem poles; well, writing and blogging is a way of reporting such signs and omens to the Band and you already know that I respect this web site.
Am jobinaa (Am=good; jobinaa is an “indianization of “job”) so in English, which is really all of the “indigenous languages accumulated into one, we say to you Mr. Chris Corrigan, Anishanaabe Elder,
GOOD JOB!
vV^Vv
Reading about this gathering, chris, i wish i could have been there to help carry water.
thank you for sharing. each story transports the reader to the space.
and i am so grateful to read your words, chief kitsilano. indeed we all live in complex times and how challenging it is to be fluid and yet remain connected to our ancestors.
warmly,
raffi