Changing public meetings

Sun Sep 13 21:41:40 PDT 2009

Thanks!  I sometimes take on foolhardy assignments, but typing that whole
post with thumbs wasn't one of them.  That was copied and forwarded from my
weblog, where I published the story on Friday:
http://chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/?p=2318
Thanks for the comments all,

Chris

On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 2:12 PM, Harrison Owen <hhowen at verizon.net> wrote:

> Totally Awesome Chris -- even with "thumbs" -- and the rest of you will
> have
> to read to the end to find out about "thumbs." It will be the best read you
> have had in a long while. Thank You!
>
> ho
>
> Harrison Owen
> 7808 River Falls Drive
> Potomac, Maryland   20854
> Phone 301-365-2093
> Skype hhowen
> Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
> Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
> Personal website www.ho-image.com
> OSLIST: To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the
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>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Chris
> Corrigan
> Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 1:17 PM
> To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> Subject: Changing public meetings
>
> A story from some work I did last week:
>
> “My grandmother was the one that inspired me,” said my friend Liz
> over lunch at the Valley Inn in Bella Coola.  “She said that the
> world was once all together, and then it came apart and one day it
> will be all together again.  So I just try to bring things together.”
>
> Liz is a pretty remarkable woman.  She worked for years in family
> reunification in Vancouver, bringing together First Nations kids with
> their birth families, reconnecting them to their culture and
> communities.  She is at home now in Bella Coola on council, working
> for the Ministry as a social worker, but always about bringing people
> together.  The reason I am here, for these two days of community
> conversations, is simply to be a part of designing and hosting
> community meetings that do that.
>
> The Nuxalk Nation reserves sit in this stunning valley, at the mouth
> of the Bella Coola River, where it meets the ocean at North Bentinck
> Arm, still nearly 150 kilometres inland from the open Pacific coast.
> At the Bella Coola town site is an old cannery, an icehouse and a
> wharf.  There are a couple of hotels and restaurants, a Coop store,
> some repair shops and and RCMP station.  Across the street from that
> is one of the Nuxalk communities, an old part of the reserve called
> “Downtown.” It mostly consists of old Department of Indian Affairs
> Housing, never designed for the wet climate of the Pacific coast, some
> trailers that house the band office and a couple of community
> buildings and a playground.  Yards are full of mullein, plantain and
> blackberry bushes and the occasional carved headstone can be seen in a
> yard.  A small creek winds through the reserve and joins the river on
> the north side of the community.  At this time of year there are
> people out on the river, drift netting their food fish, gathering coho
> for canning and smoking.  The Nuxalk fisheries personnel are trying to
> find some sockeye to take eggs from so they can stock some of the
> streams and lakes around the territory.  Like everywhere the fish are
> dwindling.  In the past, oolichans ran through here in the millions,
> but now only a handful return in the early spring and the once rich
> Nuxalk grease, one of the healthiest human produced foods in the
> world, is now gone.
>
> Up the river from here is the newer community of Four Mile, a
> subdivision of larger lots and larger houses.  Kids roam around on
> their bikes and young families are out walking.  The houses look like
> any rural subdivision but there are telltale signs you are still on
> Nuxalk lands.  Poles dote the neighbourhood, carving studios take up
> garage space, and the occasional lawn has a fish boat parked on it.
>
> As the Bella Coola valley winds eastward, a few more communities dot
> the landscape – Hagensborg is the biggest, another 10 kilometres
> along highway 20.  It is an old Norwegian settlement, and here the
> houses look bigger, more durable, and on large lots featuring
> manicured lawns and gardens.  No one is outside, the kids get dropped
> off from the school bus and head right inside in contrast to the
> reserves, where the kids scatter in all directions after school.  As
> highway 20 heads up towards Williams Lake, it climbs the “hill” a
> steep grade of narrow switch backs with no guard rail, that is said by
> some to be the most terrifying drive in Canada.  If you don't fly out,
> or leave for Vancouver Island far to the south by ferry, this is the
> only way to go.
>
> This is the valley in which I have been working this week.  A place of
> stunning natural beauty and deep social alienation.  Liz and the
> Nuxalk elected chief, Spencer, were both fed up with the kinds of
> community meetings that have been going on for years, where people
> come and yell at one another, where anger becomes unbottled rage and
> questions are asked that have no answers that will ever satisfy.  Both
> realized that how we talk to one another is important, so we agreed to
> try an experiment, and see what might happen if we ran meetings using
> participatory methodologies.
>
> The first day was a World Cafe, which I wrote about earlier, and
> yesterday we tried an Open Space meeting for a general community
> meeting.  As is not uncommon, we started very late, once people had
> arrived, and a pot of moose stew appeared and everyone was settled, it
> was 5:00 – 90 minutes past the posted opening.  We had about 20
> people sitting in a circle wondering what would happen, and I was
> wondering the same.  Most folks were Band employees, present to give
> information and participate in conversations as best they could.  A
> number had been reluctant to come because they had no idea what would
> happen, and feared community members being out of control.  “How are
> you going to stop people from getting on their high horses?” one man
> had asked me.  “I'm not,” I replied.  “But the way we do this
> will lessen the chance of that happening.”  He wasn't convinced.  It
> was as if I had just described the concept of magic to him.  I clearly
> knew my stuff, but that didn't make me any more in touch with reality.
>
> After a prayer and a quiet opening welcome, I stepped into the circle,
> with really nothing but an invitation to talk differently.  We had not
> been able to do very much planning, and the notices for the meeting
> had only gone out to the community a couple of days before.  Still,
> the invitation was to move from some visioning that the community had
> been doing for an Indian Affairs mandated planning process, to
> something more based in what the people wanted.  I walked the circle,
> explained the process, reminded them that they had the power to set
> the agenda, and waited for what might happen.
>
> Always in Open Space meetings, there is this moment of being on the
> edge of the complete unknown.  All of the preparation and time spent
> building the invitation and the theme and the question usually pay off
> in that moment.  If we have done all of that right and produced a
> strong social field, the ideas flood into the centre.  But there are
> times when the conditions don't tap the passion of the community, when
> people just remain confused about why they are there and what they are
> supposed to do.  When they haven't seen through their cynicism far
> enough to even listen to the instructions.  Those times only happen if
> there has been little preparation in the community or organization.
> Open Space is not a magic wand – it does not automatically generate
> participation.  Invitation is the magic wand and Open Space is the
> place where the magic can happen.  Yesterday, I feared that the wand
> had not been well used.  That we would be staring at the floor between
> our feet for a while.
>
> But sometimes passion trumps preparation.  It turns out that in
> Nuxalk, there are plenty of things to talk about.  Life is hard for
> most people.  There is 90% unemployment, the fish are disappearing,
> huge scale land rights issues loom over the heads of 1600 people, the
> language and culture is hanging by a thread, youth are drinking and
> drugging and getting pregnant.  It's no wonder really that people
> shout at community meetings.  It's the last place to rail against the
> morass of conditions that keeps these communities poor and out of the
> loop.  The last place where people can feel their power, even if it
> comes at the expense of others.
>
> So last night, as I sat down, four people rose up and we were off. One
> Elder who had been a vocal critic of how bad the Council was at
> communicating with the people convened a session on how she wanted to
> see it done  It felt at some level like there was some forgiveness
> buried in her question.  Let's move on, she seemed to be saying.
> Let's figure out how to do this better.
>
> There were similar sentiments around jobs and youth and culture and
> language.  Ten small groups were formed, and there was lots of
> visiting over the next hour as we did all the sessions in one time
> slot.  Laughter broke out all around the room.  More community
> members, who had been hanging around the outside of the hall, joined
> us.  Liz picked up a conversation that she had started two years ago
> when I had been here before working with her.  She introduced people
> to her idea of a community house – an intergenerational space where
> people could gather and be with one another.
>
> As we gathered in the circle at the end, we talked about what it felt
> like to be working like this.  People had a good feeling towards one
> another.  I asked when was the last time people had left a community
> meeting feeling good.  There was hearty laughter.  “Never!” said
> one Elder, her eyes wide with the absurdity of the question.  “Feels
> good now though,” she said.
>
> We have a choice.  We can meet in ways that get nothing done in the
> name of “information sharing” and “accountability” or we can
> meet in ways which allow our hearts to set the agenda, and our hands
> and feet to see it through to action.  We didn't begin massive amounts
> of work last night, but we cracked open something – a possibility
> that it could be different.  Hopefully we opened a jar out of which
> choice flowed.  As Thomas King once said, you can't pretend not to
> have heard the story If you were there last night, you would have seen
> and felt something different.  You can spin it to say some guy came up
> from the south and ran this kooky meeting and we talked in small
> groups.  But no one who was there can deny that it DID feel good at
> the end.  We felt like something was accomplished.
>
> What do we dare choose now?
>
> Liz reminded me that when we worked together two years ago, a young
> woman uttered a phrase that is stark in it's power and implication for
> communities like Nuxalk: Leadership is seeing the beauty in others.
> It's to draw together the world again, as Liz's grandmother says.  To
> heal by making whole, which is not to say fixing everything, but
> rather to bring things closer together.
>
> As we left the hall last night, Spencer, the chief, waved at a man
> coming across the playground.  He was a “trooper” one of the small
> number of chronic alcoholics in the community who have the hardest
> time of all.  “What's happening Spence?” the trooper cried out.
> “Community meeting,” replied the young chief getting into his
> truck.  “We were just talking.”
>
> “Oh, mmmhmm,” said the trooper.  “That's good.”
>
> -----
> CHRIS CORRIGAN
> http://www.chriscorrigan.com
>
> Sent from an iPod, typed with thumbs...
>
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-- 
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Facilitation - Training - Process Design
Open Space Technology

Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com

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