Changing public meetings

Sun Sep 20 19:12:35 PDT 2009

Please, quote use and share as you need to.
Chris

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:06 PM, Suzanne Daigle <sdaigle4 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Chris, Yours was a story that touches the soul at an almost cellular
> level.  In it's simplicity it inspires as if we become part of this small
> hopeful community.  I cut and paste some words that struct me so and how
> amazed I was to see that they were the same exact ones that Robyn had cut
> and pasted..  What a gift you gave us:
> May I quote you on these words in the future?  I imagine already all the
> times I will use them. .
>
>  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.
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 5:29 PM, Robyn Stratton-Berkessel <
> robyn at positivematrix.com> wrote:
>
>> Chris, a powerful story, beautifully told.   I found especially powerful:
>> "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."
>>  Thank you,
>> Robyn
>> +1 732 291 0462
>> www.positivematrix.com
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sep 13, 2009, at 1:16 PM, Chris Corrigan wrote:
>>
>>  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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>
>
> --
> Suzanne Daigle
> NuFocus Strategic Group
> 7159 Victoria Circle
> University Park, FL 34201
> FL 941-359-8877;  CT 203-722-2009
> www.nufocusgroup.com
> s.daigle at nufocusgroup.com
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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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