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STYLE, ROLES AND SKILLS IN FACILITATING
To move through a workshop together, a group needs to be coordinated and guided. The group, itself, can share leadership by taking turns leading discussion and different exercises. One person can be the group guide, or a team of guides can plan and facilitate this together.
Each of us has his or her own style of working, as distinctive to us as the way we walk or laugh. Trust it. Our naturalness and genuineness in the work is our gift to workshop participants. If you are a singer, your workshop will probably draw heavily on the power of sound and music. Or if you are a dancer, your participants will be encouraged to use their bodies to explore and express their ideas and emotions. Some guides, like myself, work within a fairly structured framework moving from one exercise to another. Others prefer a less directive approach, giving participants more leeway in setting their own agenda and following their needs as they arise.
We must remember that as facilitator we are not offering ourselves as experts or healers. We provide experiences and structures in which people can do their work. We are there to guide this work, not give answers or solve problems or cure.
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Exercise: Sharing Circle (20 minutes for 15 people)
Begin by having the group sit in a circle. Sitting in a circle achieves many healthy goals before anything is even discussed. It personifies a deep democracy in the sense that everyone in the workshop is facing each other at the same level. No one is more important than anyone else. Everyone can see everyone else. When people are seen and feel as equals in any group, they have the ability to fully participate. This is very important to establish trust in the group.
The circle also grounds us in our traditional ways because this is how our ancestors communicated.
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THE WEB OF LIFE
The one thing that allows us to enjoy true relationship and deep peace is the feeling of interconnectedness with life and all other beings. It is the living web out of which our individual, separate existences have risen, and in which we are interwoven. Our lives extend beyond our skins, in radical interdependence with the rest of the world.
Western Science Catches Up with Indigenous Wisdom
Until recently, classical Western science had proceeded on the assumption that the world could be understood and controlled by dissecting it. Breaking the world down into ever smaller pieces, classical Western science divided mind from matter, organs from bodies, plants from ecosystems, and analyzed each separate part. This mechanistic approach left some questions unanswered – such as how do these separate parts interact to sustain life and evolve?
As a result of such questions scientists in the twentieth century, starting with biologists, shifted their perspective. They began to look at wholes instead of parts, at processes instead of substances. They discovered what Indigenous Peoples have known for millennia – that these wholes (be they cells, bodies, ecosystems, and even the planet itself) are not just heaps of parts, but dynamic, intricately organized and balanced systems, interrelated and interdependent in every movement, every function, every exchange of energy. They saw that each element is part of a vaster pattern, a pattern that connects and evolves by discernible principles. The discernment of these principles is what is known as general systems theory.
Instead of beholding random separate entities, the scientists are beginning to see the universe with “Indigenous eyes”. They are becoming aware of interconnecting flows – flows of energy, matter, information – and see life forms as patterns or currents in these flows. By these flowing currents, open systems sustain themselves and evolve in complexity and responsiveness to their environment. Interacting, they weave relationships that shape in turn the environment itself. Every system – be it a tree, a cell, a human being – is like a transformer, changing the very stuff that flows through it. What flows through physical bodies is called matter and energy, what flows through minds is called information; but the distinctions between matter, energy and information have become blurred.
What has become clear, however, are the principles by which systems evolve – and central to these principles is openness to the environment, openness to feedback. This is how intelligence and power are created. For it is by interaction that life forms are sustained. As earlier stated, the old mechanistic view of reality has erected dichotomies, separating substance from process, self from other, thought from feeling. But given the interweaving interactions of open systems, these dichotomies no longer hold.
What had appeared to be separate self-existent entities are now seen to be so interdependent that their boundaries can only be drawn arbitrarily. What had appeared to be “other” can be equally construed as an extension of the same organism, like a fellow-cell in a larger body. What we had been taught to dismiss as “just” feelings are responses to input from our environment that are no less valid than rational constructs. Feelings and concepts condition each other, both are ways of knowing our world. In this way we participate and co-create in the living web, giving and receiving the feedback necessary for its nourishment.
To convey this dynamic process, systems theorists use a variety of images: an open system is like a pattern made by flowing water, or it is like a flame that keeps its shape by transforming the stuff that flows through it. The image or symbol many First Nations use to express this interconnectedness is the Medicine Wheel.
Filed under: Aboriginal issues, First Nations, First Nations issues, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous rights, Indigenous wisdom, Uncategorized | Tags: DIAND, First Nations policy in Canada, INAC, Indian Affairs
There are basically two types of people who work for the department of Indian Affairs in Ottawa: xenophobic scum and naive puppets who eventually become xenophobic scum.
Indian Affairs employees would have made great Nazis—so exacting, so hateful, so policy-driven.
They are people with graduate degrees who lack any imagination or purpose, except to work diligently towards the most lucrative pension they can get.
These are the people who form and administer Native policy in Canada. On the street, they would be the ones who load the dice and pretend to shuffle the deck to continuously dupe unsuspecting generations.
They are the colonizers.
For all the political activity in the Native community, very little is known about the department of Indian Affairs, yet they are the ones who continue to hold the purse strings of power.
Indian Affairs does not give any real power to those who work in the regional offices because, according to their internal logic, the face-to-face contact the regional employees have with actual First Nations people would compromise their loyalty to the Crown.
Indian Affairs sends its best negotiators to deal with the Blackfoot and Blood Nations in southern Alberta because they are the most educated First Nations and they send their most junior associates to deal with the Nishnawbe-Aski Nation and other First Nations they deem to have “capacity issues” (their internal code for lack of formal education at the leadership level).
Before First Nations go and sign treaties, they should first know that the Indian Affairs treaty negotiation budget dwarfs the treaty implementation budget (i.e. they spend far more to negotiate with First Nations than they do to honor the treaties they sign).
The government of Canada has never fully honored any treaty it has signed with any First Nation.
For all the shortsightedness and myopia in Ottawa, the department of Indian Affairs is ironically the only department that thinks seven generations into the future. This blue-printed future is one in which there is no longer a department of Indian Affairs because they plan on wiping us out –on paper.
What good can we as First Nations people take from the existence of Indian Affairs?
As people from many diverse and sometimes rival First Nations, Indian Affairs provides a common enemy for us to fight against. After all, colonization is a big stick that beats us all indiscriminately regardless of whether we’re Tsimshian, Cree or Mohawk.
Besides that, I can’t think of much else Indian Affairs is good for.
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Bannock: we love it because it tastes good.
Baked or fried, with raisins or without, it’s the one food that bonds us together here on Turtle Island.
We love it because it anchors us to our childhood. I can think back to many meals of fried moose-meat (sauteed with onions and mushrooms), mashed potatoes, baked beans, hot tea and bannock. Especially on cold days, those were always the best meals. Meals like that symbolize my Mom’s love.
When we eat bannock, we can’t help but feel a connection with our Indigenous heritage. Bannock is what got many of our grandparents and great-grandparents through cold winters and trying times. Bannock served them well.
For those of you not in the know, bannock is a popular bread made by Native Peoples throughout Canada and the United States. It consists of flour, lard, baking powder and water. There are some variations on the ingredients, but that’s generally what goes into it.
You’ll find bannock being served at most pow-wows. It’s also known as fry-bread or Indian bread. Native women are very competitive when it comes to making the best bannock. Reputation quickly spreads. Just as everyone knows a community’s toughest guy, they also know the woman who makes the best bannock.
Now the bad news about bannock: it’s probably the worst food in terms of nutrition.
For a People who struggle with heart disease and diabetes, bannock unleashes a slow and lethal combination of clogging our arteries and shooting up our blood sugar levels.
Some people think they’re being healthy by making it with whole wheat flour, but it doesn’t really make it healthy. It’s like cooking up crystal meth without the drano and adding vitamin C instead.
This is an example of the many lies we tell ourselves and others about what we eat and our levels of exercise being more than healthy even when it’s the furthest thing from the truth. Talk with any obese person and most of them will try to convince you that they’re eating a healthy diet, even as they’re holding deep-fried food up to their mouths.
As Native People, we really don’t need any additional help in getting diabetes. And we can’t continue the perpetual lies about our diet at the expense of our health.
Let’s get real!
Looking at our history, bannock is not even Native in origin. It originated in Scotland over a thousand years ago. It only became popular when our ancestors grew to depend on government rations for survival.
In many ways, bannock symbolizes our colonization. We enjoy eating bannock in the same way we enjoy watching TV: we know it’s bad for us but we do it anyways.
Eating bannock encouraged us to break from generations of hunting and gathering to eek out alien, sedentary and largely dependent lives.
Government dependence didn’t happen overnight.
It’s okay to acknowledge bannock’s place in our history, but now is the time to embrace a new diet and a stronger concept of who we are–independent of the Crown.
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This is a post about preventing Aboriginal youth suicide.
Suicide is never an easy subject to discuss.
My sister’s own suicide still haunts me ten years later.
It would affect me even more today if it was not for the Sun Dance.
Two years ago, I gave my body and flew with the eagles for her spirit’s return to the circle.
Even now, I can’t help but ask the question everybody asks: why?
Suicide is about stopping the pain. It’s not about wanting to die.
When I think about her tragic life, there must have been lots of pain. She found herself living the worst life any woman can experience. She turned to prostitution to feed her addictions. For her, suicide was about stopping the pain.
The answer to preventing Aboriginal youth suicide can be found by looking to our Elders, says Aboriginal suicide prevention expert Darien Thira. Darien developed the “Through the Pain” Aboriginal suicide prevention curriculum, which he facilitates to First Nations communities. I find his ideas to be both profound and accessible.
Even though Aboriginal youth suicide rates are very high, the suicide rate for our Elders is extremely low.
There are four reasons to explain the low Elder suicide rate:
Emotionally, our Elders are cared for. There is a connection that the general population of seniors don’t experience. Connection is the sense that you are valued by those who are important to you
Physically, our Elders are respected. This leads to empowerment. Empowerment is the belief that you are in control of your life and that you are valuable for who you are and what you can do.
High levels of connection and empowerment lead to high self-esteem. People have high self-esteem when they feel lovable and capable.
Mentally, our Elders are given meaningful family and community roles. This, in turn, creates positive identity.
Spiritually, our Elders have maintained our sacred traditions. Spirituality and culture have the power to create vision and transformation.
With positive identity and vision, our Elders have a well-lived life.
Our youth need these four elements.
They need to feel loved. Attention and encouragement go a long way in building youth self-esteem.
They need to feel empowered. “They need more responsibility, not more entertainment,” says Darien Thira. Boredom stems from a lack of responsibility, but we think the answer lies in giving them more video games, I-pods, cell phones, TV’s, and cameras.
Our youth need a meaningful role in the community. So often, lip service is paid to the needs of our youth without fully involving them in important decisions. Before colonization, this was different and we need to get back to those traditional ways of involving the whole community.
And finally, our youth need our spirituality and culture for a greater vision and deep transformation. You can signs of this yearning in our youth, but many of them can only express this need in a superficial way. If they had a deep connection to their own clan, there would be no need to belong to an artificial clan based on brand-named clothing, rap music and sports emblems.
Many of us adults would be wise to heed this advice as well.
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we learn to proselytize.
The meaning of proselytize is to convert someone from one faith to another.
Indigenous people the world over lack this skill.
Personally speaking, I struggle when it comes to marketing and selling my business. At 32, I realize I can’t get by on my looks or even my ideas anymore. Being an entrepreneur is forcing me to grow. Right now, it’s forcing me to gain a new skill, that is to hustle.
We’ve been at the receiving end of proselytism for centuries, but never its agents.
We have so much knowledge and wisdom to give the people of Mother Earth.
Instead, what happens is green revolutionaries take our knowledge and spread it themselves.
The environmental movement and green revolution would not exist without the input of Indigenous wisdom.
However, in swallowing our knowledge, these scientists and politicians miss a fundamental component to this wisdom: prayer. Not only do we have to recycle more, buy less, ride a bike, we also have to pray for Mother Earth. Without a deep sense of spirituality and love for the Earth, the shift in consciousness will be incomplete and ineffective.
Although people many North American environmentalists credit Native Americans, First Nations and Indigenous Peoples for what makes their perspectives holistic and balanced, it’s still them and not Indigenous Peoples taking the stage, glorifying their ego’s and getting rich for what is really ours.
A stolen idea is not so different from stolen land.
What is it that prevents us as Indigenous People from trying to convert the world into our way of thinking?
Many of us are excellent orators, so it’s not that.
When Christopher Columbus and host of others landed on Turtle Island, why did we not convince them to turn away from Christianity instead of the other way around?
Initial contact with the inhabitants of Turtle Island definitely had a huge impact on Europe, but it’s not because it was our ancestors’ intention to make it so.
Like the environmentalists and new age people after them, early Europeans took the seeds of our vegetables and adapted them for a surge in food production. Can you imagine Italian cuisine without the tomatoes and peppers? Or the Irish without potatoes?
The enlightened few are beginning to realize that Indigenous wisdom holds the key to our survival on Planet Earth. Why can’t we see that ourselves?
Just as non-Natives are turning to our ancient wisdom and holistic way of being, Native People are turning away from the lessons of our Elders.
In Canada, only 3% of us practice our ceremonies. As a society of many Nations, the large majority of us are backwards in the sense of clinging to the tired ways of our colonizers. When are we going to realize that there’s nothing new they can teach us? When are we going to realize that there’s real strength to the teachings of our ancestors?
When are we going to have enough courage to stand up and spread our own ‘good word’?
Perhaps our gentle way of being stands in the way of the aggressiveness and persistence required to win converts.
I don’t know the answer.
I’m trying to envision the Native community filled with zealots and aggressive salespeople going door to door like the uniformed Mormon teenagers that blanket the planet.
Although it’s a strange thing to conceptualize, I feel it’s time we, as Indigenous Peoples, get into people’s faces, debate the issues, sell our ideas, close the deals, and begin winning converts.
After all, it’s the fate of Mother Earth at stake.
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Can any of us think 1000 years into the future?
From the complete lack of imagination in the arts and politics, it seems like the vast majority of us can’t even contemplate 100 or even 50 years into the future.
I remember getting depressed in grade 3 when I watched a news story on Canada AM that made the claim that the sun would burn out in a million years. As a nine-year-old, I thought ‘what’s the point if it’s all going to end?’
That line of reasoning seems ridiculous now. However, that is the same attitude that permeates much of our global consumerism and many of our dangerous and seemingly innocuous habits.
Most of us are too smart to completely dismiss the doom and gloom stories about what we are doing to Mother Earth. I think there is validity to the dire predictions of global warming pundits. Like most of us, I don’t think Al Gore, David Suzuki and the hundreds, if not thousands, of other respectable environmental thinkers are out to lunch.
It’s stating the obvious to mention the polar ice caps are melting, the sea levels are rising, the oceans are filling with pollution, and very little is being done to avert the oncoming train-wreck.
That being said, the Earth is smarter than we are.
None of us can predict what will happen in the future (no matter how smart we think we are).
The best we can do is raise consciousness, work at improving the small things, and give lots of love back to the Earth. That’s what being a warrior is all about. It’s about fighting and struggling without knowing the eventual outcome, and doing so with honor.
Applying this warrior concept to our daily lives takes away the fear many of us have for a future that none of us can correctly predict.
When we bring spirituality to deepen the green movement, then miracles will happen.
Those willing to go deeper inside will encounter the ultimate frontier to our connection with all of creation.
That frontier is the story of our unique individuality we fiercely hold onto. In short, it’s the myth of the self.
Is it not the self that says “I’m better than you”? Is it not the self that dominates and seeks to control?
Going deeper inside means going beyond the self.
Going deeper inside means completely surrendering to love.
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From what I observe in First Nations art these days, there is a a definite hierarchy to the relative importance of animals.
The vast majority of coastal art depicts eagles, ravens, bears, wolves, and killer whales.
To a lesser extent, there are depictions of hummingbirds, butterflies, beavers, salmon and frogs. And very rarely do you find mosquitoes, dragonflies, octopi, dogfish, sasquatches, and sea monsters.
I never see otters, squirrels, sea lions, sea gulls, crows, deer, halibut, cod, cougars, or any other of a variety of birds and insects.
Skunks, rats, raccoons, cockroaches never even enter the imagination of any First Nations artist. If there was a caste system to coastal art, then these creatures would be analogues to the untouchables, or those that lie removed from even the bottom rung of the hierarchical structure.
Why is that?
Doesn’t our way of seeing the world lend itself to the representation of even these seemingly lowly creatures?
According to our beliefs, there really should not be any so-called lowly creatures.
The reality of the art market comes into play. If there was money to be made from the carving of skunks or raccoons, then artists would be quick to create. However, people pay for ravens and eagles and that’s what get’s made.
This begs the question: whose values are being honored in the creation of this art?
The answer is not so clear cut.
Traditional stories get passed down from master to apprentice. Another very important point to make is that Native artists have the ability to earn a living from their art. If they have to adapt, then more power to them.
This fascination with the superstars of the animal kingdom is not solely a northwest coastal practice.
Go to any ceremony on the Plains and you’ll find many eagle whistles, eagle fans, and eagle staffs. To a lesser degree, you also find spiritual instruments made from hawk feathers.
We make such a big deal about eagles and hawks.
What about the hundreds of other birds? Are they not really that significant?
The most significant animals to us in 2009 never get a shred of artistic or ceremonial respect. I’m talking about the cow, the pig, the chicken and the turkey. Think about what animals we consume on a daily basis.
The reverence Native people feel for eagles, hawks, bears, wolves, turtles, and ravens needs to be extended to all creatures if our egalitarian principles to are shine through and extend to the future generations.
The web of life is much more intricate than what we currently see in the fancy galleries, or ceremonies for that matter.
Even skunks and sea lice have lessons to teach.
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Why do so many First Nations people have brand loyalty to vehicles made by General Motors?
Go to any rez and you’ll find cars, vans, and trucks made by Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Buick (not so many Cadillacs and Saturns).
Is it because these vehicles are relatively inexpensive? Perhaps.
Is it because we have any affinity to Chief Pontiac? Probably not.
My Dad personifies this loyalty.
For close to fifty years he has bought GM cars without fail. His first car was an early 1960s model Pontiac Firebird. Next, was a Chevy (make and model, I don’t know). Then, came the ‘76 Chevy Impala (the car was so big it most likely got 10 miles to a gallon). This was followed by an ‘82 Chevrolet station wagon with the fake wood grain paneling (which took me to many hockey tournaments). Then, the ‘89 Chevy Caprice Classic (it’s the car I learned to drive). And now, the 2004 Chevy Impala.
Before he bought his last two vehicles, he made overtures to Nissan and Toyota, but balked at the moment of decision.
Curious, I asked him why.
He never gave me a good answer. Sure, he would talk about supporting North American workers. Then, he would spout some Archie Bunker crap about preventing foreigner automakers from getting rich.
I believe these reasons are beside the point. GM has got a mystical hold over him. You can see it every time he passes by a Chevy dealership. You can hear it in his voice when he talks about the latest Impala or Lumina. He’s like a teen-aged boy enraptured with the latest Nike basketball sneaker.
Nothing convinces him otherwise.
I try to give him Consumer Reports that support the superior fuel efficiency and reliability of Toyota and Honda. For a time, he acknowledges my point and even briefly envisions himself buying a Camry. However, it never sticks.
He’s an addict for life. Hopeless, really.
I think this same mentality explains why he’s stayed loyal to the Toronto Maple Leafs for over half a decade. They haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1967, but he stays faithful and ever optimistic about their chances. For his sake at least, I hope they win a Cup before he meets his Maker.
Even now, he’s been talking about buying a Toyota Sienna for months, but just the other day he relayed to me what he heard people saying about the new Impala. Just exactly which people, he doesn’t say. Sounds suspicious.
And he’s not the only one out there.
From the cars I see at Native gatherings, Indian Country is GM territory. Go to any pow-wow or potlatch any you’ll see what I mean.
Evidence of this also surfaced last year in the Native newspapers once residential school former students were compensated for their common experience. Numerous GM dealerships placed ads in these papers to lure our Elders into buying a new Chevy.
From this perspective, General Motors should be supporting and actively encouraging our high birth rates.
It’s their only hope.
After all, GM can’t expect handouts forever.
postscript: I have owned two Toyota’s, but remain a hopeless Maple Leafs fan.
