Why culture matters

May 17, 2011 By Chris Corrigan
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Analyse this...!

Yesterday I had a chance to grab lunch with Dave Pollard in our local coffee shop on Bowen Island. One of the things we talked about was the supremacy of analysis in the world and why that is a problem when it comes to operating in complex domains.

I have been intentionally working a lot lately with Dave Snowdon et. al.’s Cynefin framework to support decision making in various domains. It is immensely helpful in making sense of the messy reality of context and exercises like anecdote circles and butterfly stamping are very powerful, portable and low tech processes.

Cynefin is also useful in that it warns us against a number of fatal category errors people make when trying to design solutions to problems. The most serious of these is remaining complacent in a simple context which has the effect of tipping the system to chaos. Nearly as infuriating and problematic to me is the applicability of analysis to complex domains.

Analysis has a dominant place in organizational and community life. It provides a sense of security that we can figure things out and operate in the space of the known. If we just analyse a situation enough we can identify all if the aspects if the problem and choose a solution. Of course in the complicated domain, where causes and effects can be known even though they are separated in time and space, analysis works beautifully. But in complex domains, characterized by emerged phenomenon, analysis tends to externalize and ignore that which it cannot account for with the result that solutions often remain dangerously blind to surprise and “black swan” events.

The Cyenfin framework advocates working with stories and social constructed meaning to sense and act in complex spaces. Where as analysis relies on objective data and meaning making models to create rules and tools, action in complex spaces uses stories and patterns to create principles and practices which help us to create small actions – probes in the system – that work in a nuanced way with emergence.

In this respect culture matters. The stories that are told and the practices thy are used to make sense of those stories is the method for acting in complex space. This distinction us helpful for me working with indigenous communities where program management may rely on analytical tools (and culture is stamped out in the process) but practices need to be grounded in culturally based responses. Using stories and social meaning making restores culture to its traditional role of helping groups of humans move together in complex domains while using analysis more appropriately.

Filed Under: Art of Harvesting, BC, Design, emergence, Facilitation, First Nations, Leadership, Stories Tagged With:

What it’s like to make change

May 2, 2011 By Chris Corrigan

Just off a call where we were discussing what it takes to shift paradigms in indigenous social development. We noted that we hear a lot from people that they are busy and challenged and they need clear paths forward otherwise they are wasting their time.

I have a response to that.

We don’t know what we are doing.  Everything we have been doing so far has resulted in what we have now.  The work of social change – paradigm shifting social innovation – is not easy, clear or efficient.  If you are up for it you will confront some of the the following, all of the time:

  • Confusion about what we are doing.
  • A temptation to blame others for where we are at.
  • Conflict with people that tell you you are wasting their time.
  • A feeling of being lost, overwhelmed or hopeless.
  • Fear that if you try something and it fails, you will be fired, excluded or removed.
  • Demands for accountability and reprimands if things don’t work out.
  • Worry that you are wasting your time and that things are not going according to plan.
  • A reluctance to pour yourself into something in case it fails.
  • A reticence to look at behaviours that are holding you back.

Social change is not easy.  Asking for it to be made easy is not fair.  Leadership in this field needs to be able to host all of these emotional states, and to help people hold each other through very trying times.  It is about resilience, the kind that is needed both when things fall apart AND when things take too long to come back together.

Everyone needs to be a leader here, everyone needs to recognize these states in themselves and hold others in compassion when they see them arising in others.  Working with the emergent unknown requires pacing, a big heart, and a stout challenge.  To create the experiments that help us forward we need to be gentle with judgment, but fiercely committed to harvesting and learning.  We need to cultivate nuance, discernment, advocacy and inquiry rather than jumping to conclusions and demanding rational analytical responses to every situation.

You up for that?

Filed Under: BC, Collaboration, Community, emergence, First Nations, Leadership Tagged With:

Why is it so hard to get things done in Tribal communities?

November 15, 2010 By Chris Corrigan

I’ve recently been introduced to the work of Al Nygard, a Native consultant working out of South Dakota primarily in Tribal communities.  Al’s approach and values are very similar to my own, and it’s cool to see familiar ideas in another person’s hands.  Al works with traditionally based models of leadership and calls his community development work “community empowerment.”

My colleague Jerry Nagel sent me a link to a video of Al answering the question of why it is so hard to get things done in Tribal communities.  Essentially he identifies seven factors that make community empowerment unique.  These seven factors bear out my own experience too.  He calls these The Art of the Native View.  If you understand this view, the work you do will take.  If not, and if your work is built on mental models that don’t take these into consideration, you’re in trouble.  In my own success and failures working in communities I can relate to how important it is to build your work on appropriate mental models, appropriate views.  Even though Al identifies these seven factors as basically universal, each community has unique circumstances, cultures and histories that also inform the work of community empowerment.   This stuff is interesting to me as I am about to embark on a project to work on community engagement and empowerment with my mates in the Berkananetwork, tailoring some of our resources to work in Tribal communities in North America
Starting around 5 minutes into the video, Al gets to the nub of his approach in building empowerment in Native communities. It centres around seven things that all Native communities share which make the work of empowerment unique.  I’m summarizing and editorializing a little on his words here.

Trust. This is about building relationships of mutual reliance.  It’s about building trust between people, between families and between people and institutions.

Communication systems. The default communication system in Indian country is the moccasin telegraph.  Works fast but not always reliable.  So we need a variety of ways to communicate – audio, visual, kinesthetic.  Reliable commonly shared information is important and doing it in a multi-modal way is important.
Leadership systems. Who are the leaders in the community?  Elected leaders, heads of entities and institutions yes, but what about moms, students, Elders, veterans?  Leadership is everywhere.  The system that develops and directs leadership in all these ways is important.  Elections are clear but how are we developing leaders in other areas and how do we get information to leaders so they can act?  Leadership in Native communities comes from invitation: you are asked to be a leader.  Also, there is an end time.  When it’s over, it’s over.  In Anglo cultures we seek out leadership and then we hang on to it as long as possible. To me this is one of the reasons why Open Space is such an interesting fit for traditional leadership forums, as these are the same dynamics that underlie that process.
Governance. What are the rules that tell us what we can depend on?  Not the same as government.  Do your rules help you or hold you back?  That is the essence of governance
Lateral oppression. Sometimes called the Indian crab syndrome (in a bucket of crabs, when one tries to escape the others will pull it back down).  Lateral oppression is the way that power shows up in shadow in a community.  When you are working with empowerment, the shadow work of paying attention to lateral oppression is very important.
Racism and Inequality. A common experience of all Native people living in community is the disparity of experience on the rez vs. off the rez.  Over time, experiences of oppression, racism and inequality eat away at self-esteem and colour how we relate to the outside world. Just this evening in a cafe I was running this dynamic showed up as a difference between how a First Nations forest company and non-First Nations forest companies dealt with the stress of uncertainty about the future.
Hurt and Balance. The lingering effects of trauma from issues like residential school abuse, language and culture decline, and the subsequent multi-generational issues create a myriad complex of dynamics that often confuse and confound outsiders.
Al’s framework is a useful lens to view work in Tribal communities.  Mental models and world views matter.
Filed Under: BC, Community, First Nations, Leadership, Open Space Tagged With:

A witness to history

October 20, 2010 By Chris Corrigan

In the middle of a four day gathering of indigenous child and family services organizations here in British Columbia.  I’m back in my room even though it’s after lunch and our meeting was supposed to have restarted because history just got made.

To understand what this means, you have to have an appreciation of how the state has related to indigenous communities in this country since colonization began.  The essence is that tools of law and legislation have been used repeatedly to deny the jurisdiction, rights and responsibilities of First Nations from nearly the moment European governments set eyes on this continent.  Nowhere has that become more of a hot point than with the issue of children.

For more than 100 years the stated policy of the federal governments was to place First Nations children into the care of the state and the churches by sending them to residential school.  The residential school system was designed originally to educate the “Indian out of the child” and to assimilate people by breaking up communities, punishing kids for speaking their language and subjecting them to slavery, by forcing them to work to keep the schools running.  This one policy alone has left a legacy of unhealthy family structures, weakened cultures and multiple generations of vulnerable children. When the provincial government stepped into to take responsibility for children in the 1960s the infamous “sixties scoop” happened whereby kids were removed from their families to be raised by non-native familes.  By the 1980s the sixties scoop had ended and the residential school system was shut down.  From that time onwards, Aboriginal kids were at the mercy of the non-Aboriginal child welfare system.  In BC alone, the percentage of kids in care who were Aboriginal skyrocketed to today where it is now more than 50%.

In the last 20 years, First Nations have become more proactive in creating their own child and family services agencies and taking back responsibility and later control over the system.  Starting at a historic meeting in 2002 in Tsawassen, BC, the provincial government began the process of recognizing the authority of First Nations communities to look after their kids.  A process that began in 2002 (which I was involved in primarily on Vancouver Island) saw the creation of regional authorities around the province to oversee the establishment of First Nations child welfare systems.  These authorities, had they been passed into law, would have taken all responsibility short of law making authority and placed it in the hand of communities through regional authorities.

The problem with the regional authority model was that it didn’t work well with the inherenet jurisdiction of the First Nations governments in BC.  Problems began to appear in 2007 between the provincial political leadership and the leaders of the regional authorities.  At the last minute, literally as the enabling legislation was to hit to the floor of the Provincial legislature, the provincial political leadership – against the wishes of many First nations cheifs – shut the process down.  For a couple of years we were back to the status quo, and things looked grim.

But behind the scenes, the provincial ministry of child and family development was working to transform the child and family services syste.  Led by a deputy minister, Leslie Du Toit, the ministry worked to help nations develop their own systems and did it from a position of recognizing the authority and jurisdiction of First Nations to care for their kids.  As a result the 15 and more projects that are gathered here got off the ground, reestablishing a child and familiy services system that is deeply ingrained in the cultural, spiritual and political power of the Nations themselves.  It has been a hugely decolonizing experience (the children of the Haida Nation even wrote their own declaration of their rights which is to be passed into law).

So things are ticking along and this has brought us to today where we have gathered 120 people to share their experiences and accelerate their work together.  It has been a good meeting so far, conducted in ceremony and working productively and positively.  Today the deputy minister made an announcement though that has rocked us all.  She announced today that provincial government was now opening the door for First Nations and Metis groups in BC to create their own legislation to replace the Child and Family Services Act and to enbale indigenous child and family services systems to be established and supported designed and delivered by the Nations themselves.  It is the first time anyone can remember the colonial government ever stepping out of the power they have and giving over the legislative jurisdiction to First Nations.

Suddenly our meeting has got a lot more interesting.  Accompanied by the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Shawn A-in-shut Atleo, she stood for the principle that only a system created by the people for whom is it intended will be the right system.  Everything we have been working towards suddenly is a reality.  The chiefs are excited, the people who have been developing and delivering the indigenous systems are elated that their work will be made the formal system for their people in the province and everyone is buoyed by the right thing happening at the right time.

Suddenly we are all on the same side.  My long time mate David Stevenson who is an Art of Hosting steward is right at the centre of the work in his job as the Executive Director of Aboriginal Services for the Ministry.  Many other people who were with us through the regionalization process on Vancouver Island including Marion Wright, Kyra Mason, Pearl Hunt, Bruce Parisian and others are here celebrating and preparing for the hard work ahead.  We are taking a break now while we get ready to go to the Sts’ailes longhouse for an evening of singing and speaking in ceremony.  Tomorrow when we come back to work, we’ve thrown out our agenda and will just spend a half day in Open Space to articulate the opportunities that we have among us, all of us hosting together the very first steps on what will become the next chapter in a historic journey.

Filed Under: BC, Collaboration, First Nations, Open Space Tagged With:

Leadership from the place of connection

July 5, 2010 By Chris Corrigan

There is never a time when we are not a participant in this world. Our mere presence in any place makes us a participant.  So rule number one is “there is no outside.”

In fact I think the very idea that we can somehow be separate from what is going on around is is actually a delusion and it causes great problems.  It blinds us to our own influence in a field and it actually hides our own gifts and brilliance and denies them from being used as people find their way.

In most indigenous cultures  work with, there is no outside.  Elders do not stand apart from the groups they are working with.  They insert themselves and hold space from within.  They are never shy to share what they know, and their awareness of their presence and its power is a gift to the community.

To me this is as it should be.  Indigenous science is about discovering the connections between things, rather than isolating something and trying to understand it free from the externalities that tie it to everything else.  I think this is why the kind of leadership we all are discovering is most valuable in indigenous communities: it gives us a way of looking at and thinking about the world that encourages us to dive in, connect and put relationships to use.  In this way the path of hosting as we are discovering in the AoH community of practice is very different from standard business practices of facilitation and mediation, where the facilitator stands apart from the group and tries not to influence the outcomes.  I personally could never understand how that is even possible, let alone the impulse to withhold useful insights and perspectives from a group that is struggling.

At any rate, all I would encourage you to do is admit that you ARE in the field, that the field is influenced by your being there and that your first job is of course to host yourself well, so that with consciousness, you can play a part in the whole that is beneficial and serves the life that wants to emerge in the field.  This is not easy, which is why it is an art.  And it is a practice of constant, sharpened awareness.

In Anishnaabemowin, the language of Anishnaabe people, the word is Dinewemaganig means “all my relations” or more precisely “I belong to everything.”  That is the first principle.  From there, leadership takes on a very different face.

Filed Under: Art of Hosting, BC, First Nations, Leadership Tagged With:

Beyond Sustainability

June 19, 2010 By Chris Corrigan

On my way to Hawai’i, the big island to co-host a gathering called Beyond Sustainability: Creating a Community of Leadership based on a Platform of Reverance. This gathering has been several years in the making, and over the last two years I have been deeply involved in the design of the work, finding myself stopping and starting as we find the best way to bring high powered people together to connect existing work, explore indigenous worldviews and creating some coherent results that may positively affect the values that underlie consumer society.

It is a hugely audacious reach that we are trying for with this gathering.  A tipping of time and talent and ways of seeing that is intended to create a series of “start lines” towards new directions.  If we are successful in doing anything, the results will be quietly influential over a period of years.  We need a long view of time and a humble view of reach and we need to also play the balance of love and power that exists in the world to find the openings that will carry the seed of this work.

It has been a long slog getting to this point and the dynamics and energies of raising funds, navigating difference and balancing aspirations have given us some deep insight into what it takes to talk about values shift let alone engage in it.

Tim Merry,Luana Busby-Neff and I will be holding space all week for this, and I’ll try to blog about our experiences as we go, but I suspect my energy won’t be focused in a harvesting direction all the time.  Lots of space to hold at many levels, and in many ways, this is one of the most significant facilitation challenges I have ever undertaken.  Glad to be working it with good friends who can collectively hold all that may come up.

I feel Kiluea in my bones now, 30 minutes from departing from Vancouver to fly there.  Reverance is kicking up in my soul and I am humbled beyond belief to be in the work.

Bless us and wish us luck.

Filed Under: Art of Hosting, Being, Collaboration, Facilitation, First Nations

Saving indigenous language through fluency

May 24, 2010 By Chris Corrigan

Most of the indigensous languages of British Columbia are in danger of disappearing.  Generations of residential schools, policies of marginalization and adaptation to English speaking society have rendered most of our communities mute in their own tongue.  When I work in most places the only language you ordinarily hear is a prayer from and Elder or a conversation between to elderly speakers.

My friend Dustin Rivers is trying to change that.  I’ve written before about how he is using an fun and interactive fluency game called Where Are Your Keys? To get people speaking his language, Skwxwu7mesh snichim, the language of the territory in which I live.  Last week he took 16 or so kids from our homelearning support centre and taught them some basic conversational Skwxwu7mesh.  In a couple of hours, the kids were identifying theings, responding to commands and directions and learning a little about the names and history of our home place.

Now Dustin is set to host a conference in Vancouver on June 5-6 for indigenous language activists from around BC to come and learn about how to use fluency games to get people using these languages so that they don’t die.  Everyone is welcome.  If you are interested, register and get thee to the gathering.  It’s impressive what Dustin is up to and it’s EASY to learn it.

What if languages were saved and reawakened through fun?  What better way to dodge the bullet?

Filed Under: First Nations

The methodology of study from a Coast Salish perspective

April 19, 2010 By Chris Corrigan

A beautiful extended reflection on the methodology of study in a coast Salish context from author Lee Maracle:

The object of ‘study” from a Salish perspective is to discover another being in itself and for itself with the purpose of engaging it in future relationship that is mutually beneficial and based on principles of fair exchange. We study from the point of view, that there is something unknown to be discovered, that all life contains something cherished, but hidden from us and that if we observe from as many angles of perception that we can rally, engage one another in exchanging observations, and consider the internal dynamics governing the behavior of the being observed from the perspective of its perfect right to be, we will understand it in relationship with ourselves. We do not believe we can fully understand the being under study, but we can come to see it clearly enough to engage it in relationship.

This process is a collective process, requiring many different sets of eyes, many different points of view. This is because if we examine something from one subjective angle [and all human observation and thought is subjective] then we will only understand an aspect of the being under study and we are very likely to engage in huge errors, leap to absurd conclusions based on subjective assumptions and so forth. We engage one another in this process on the presumption that all points of view are valid, but they must be POINTS OF VIEW, not biases. The points of view are accepted. They are never right or wrong, just different. No argument, attempt to persuade one another is useful here and thus we do not need to compete to see who has the best eyes, the clearest vision. The process of discovery requires different points of view, different sets of images, and different perspectives about the being under examination in order for the collective to be able to discuss it’s possible internal dynamics. We first see how it moves, see how it conducts itself, mark its sense of movement, its sense of time and being, we connect its conduct to its own being and then we connect its movement to its desire, its sense of time to its longevity and its behavior to its condition and its history.”

When we do this, we come to see that the end result is a powerful story, a long lasting relationship and this fosters, beauty, hope, heart and song.

via transCanada.ca / Keynote Speakers and Other Participants.

This is a gorgeous inspiration for the power of collective harvesting.

Filed Under: Art of Harvesting, Art of Hosting, BC, Collaboration, First Nations Tagged With: