<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">Brendan I have had an Open Space experience - nearly two years ago - with indigenous people, This included male/female indigenous people and a few white people. I met with small groups of Indigenous people beforehand. There were several groups involved and many people coming had never lived away from home in an "institutional" setting. It was at Riverton. Although it wasn't "live-in" some people came from the country or a fair way out of town. There was a little bit of fear about this both from the "live-ins" themselves and the people who not living in.<DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">The organisers seemed to be <B>everyone</B> who was coming so I decided to catch up with as many as I could. This was an eye opener. Probably 99.5% of the women wanted it to be a woman's only experience. Generally they felt the male leaders had had enough to say about their life!!! The males didn't even get into the question of participation. I was "supposed" to be the facilitator, however I felt that the opening circle was very important and took on board the suggestions from the participants (with whom I'd met) about what might be helpful. Well the two days seemed to be a great sharing time - some who were not going to come on the second day turned up again - - - -and listening to the participants at the closing circle they were very positive about what they wanted and where they thought they might go.</SPAN></DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span"><DIV>And I felt sometimes they didn't know I was around - they took the process in their hands and ran with it.</DIV><DIV>I also learnt a lot. It was when preparing for this event I learned that not all Aboriginal Tribes have smoking ceremonies and that the didgeridoo is not common to all tribes and that the boomerang.......and the type of storytelling.......the clap sticks........ and so on.</DIV><DIV>Maybe this is of some help. Joan</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV></SPAN></DIV></BODY></HTML>*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist@listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist