Today I submitted my thesis proposal! The working title is "From Vision to Visuals: A Generative Process Tool for Gwa'sala-'Nakwaxda'xw Urban Design and Cultural Revitalization", but that's pretty long and will probably be changed. Essentially I want to look at how the Gwa'sala and 'Nakwaxda'xw people originally designed and built communities, using the four village sites shown in the map as the sample sites.

The "norms" of how we built our traditional communities can be called place-based norms and would include things like "a boardwalk along the beach" and "houses in a row facing the water" etc. etc. Then I want to take those place-based norms and figure out how they might have all been woven together to help our ancestors build our villages. Then, I want to try and figure out how they might be written down so that they can guide the way we build and develop our villages in modern times.

It's going to be a big, exciting project, and I'm excited to spend a lot of the summer at home in Port Hardy diving into the research and elder interviews, and maybe learning a bunch of new Kwa'kwala words over the summer as well.

In the meantime, here's a copy of the literature map, I'd love to have suggestions about anything to add, especially around analyzing place-based norms and/or traditional Indigenous urban design research.

​- J

I am so excited to be one-quarter of the way finished my Master of Community Planning degree at Vancouver Island University! It's a fairly new program with a focus on rural/island community planning and First Nations planning. I'm in a cohort of twenty students from all over the world, taking courses in planning history, urban design, the professional practice of planning, and community engagement.

It's been very busy, as you might imagine. The last two weeks in particular, as we rushed to get final projects completed, has been brutal. My laundry mountain can attest to that, as well as the achy joints from hours upon hours of computer work and readings! 

I continued to work over the autumn, leading the British Columbia Comprehensive Community Planning (CCP) workshop in Cranbrook, as well as the Alberta CCP workshop, in Edmonton. I also worked on my first graphic recording contract (pictures to come!) and some facilitation training for the Hupacasaht First Nation.

Oh yeah, and (drumroll please) along with two dear friends, Elaine Alec and Chris Derickson, I'm a partner in a brand-new planning firm, Alderhill Planning Inc.! We are so excited to broaden our planning work across Canada, drawing on our experiences as Indigenous planners. More to come about that venture!

No surprise -  I'm REALLY looking forward to some R&R over the holidays!

I want to share with you a school project that I'm particularly proud of - it's a site analysis of my own neighbourhood, the Buttertubs Marsh area in Nanaimo. Click on the map below to view the entire pdf.

I'm hoping to upload a few more projects in the near future as well, including a paper about the Indian Reserve system in Canada and how the Canadian planning literature doesn't acknowledge reserves as planned communities, or the federal government as community planners - stay tuned!

Happy holidays,

- JH

 Today I was honoured to attend a meeting with a regional district, to discuss First Nations Relations. As a First Nations woman, and second-term councillor, I have a bit of a unique insight into this issue, and have also chaired Port Hardy's First Nations Relations Committee for the last couple of years, and I was really looking forward to the discussion.

During my opening comments, I urged folks to not be afraid to ask anything. I promised not to be judgemental and to answer as gently as I could, for the sake of having a robust discussion. It did not disappoint, and as in the quote above, I think that allowing ourselves to a little bit "ill at ease" allowed for an open and progressive conversation.

I wanted to share some of the questions here, and my responses, because I think they are genuine, heartfelt questions shared by many people, especially non-indigenous people, and I was glad for the honesty, even if it veered away (often) from being politically correct. I am certainly not sharing these questions so that we can think negatively of the people who asked them. Maybe some of my answers could use some tweaking, I'm open to that discussion too! 

_________________________

Q: What is the best path forward for local governments to build relationships with local First Nations?

A: It's an unsatisfactory answer, but I don't think there is a best path. Every community is going to be unique, and we do ourselves a disservice by trying to copy the processes other communities have used. The key thing, in my opinion, is to first seek to develop open lines of communication and mutual respect between communities, one at a time, which could very well require stopping in at the band office for casual visits, or having informal lunch meetings between mayor and chief, and just seeing what steps naturally flow from those conversations.

I think it is also important for local governments to be willing to do our homework, and not to expect our First Nations neighbours to hand-hold us through the entire process. We can do things like acknowledge the territories at the beginning of meetings, endorse the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and even pursue our own cultural competency training (like the TRC's calls to action suggest) to show that we are genuine about understanding and working with local First Nations. 

In some cases, a high-level protocol agreement like the North Island Regional Protocol Agreement can be a helpful, formal first step, wherein we agree to recognize each other, communicate, and try and find ways to work together. From protocol agreements can come Memorandums of Understanding, service agreements, and other foundational documents to help us figure out how to work together well. However, even without all of those pieces in place, we shouldn't be afraid to reach out and begin that work of building a mutually beneficial, trusting relationship between councils and communities.

Q: Do First Nations people do cultural competency training to understand our ways of doing things?

A: I think that growing up in Canada gives all First Nations people a pretty good baseline understanding of non-First-Nations culture!

Q: How do we "acknowledge the territories" when there's overlapping territories or many different communities within our boundaries? What about treaty nations?

A: I think the ideal is to be able to acknowledge and thank the specific nation on whose land you're meeting, something like "We acknowledge that we are on the unceded traditional territories as well as treaty lands of the Kwakiutl Nation, and thank the Kwakiutl people for allowing us to gather here."

If it's more complicated than that, you can acknowledge the nation instead of the band/tribe (i.e. "We acknowledge that we are on traditional, unceded Coast Salish land") or nations ("We acknowledge that we are on the traditional, unceded and treaty lands of the Kwakwaka'wakw and Coast Salish Nations, and thank them for allowing us to gather here") or even the generic "We acknowledge that we are on unceded aboriginal territory." 

Maybe my wording isn't perfect - that's ok! I'm fine with being corrected, and I don't let my fear of mispronunciation or saying it a little bit wrong get in the way of doing the acknowledgement. Ideally, local governments would ask their neighbouring First Nations leadership for suggestions around how to do the acknowledgement properly, but the key thing is to show that we understand and respect First Nations' connection to and ownership of the land.

Keep in mind, BC has half of Canada's First Nations language groups - that means that, linguistically and culturally, there is more diversity in BC than in Europe! We know how generic it is to say "Europeans" instead of speaking about specific nations - the same applies to indigenous communities. Vancouver Island alone has three nations (Kwakwaka'wakw to the north, Nuu-chah-nulth on the west coast, and Coast Salish to the south and east) and each of these nations has many tribes/bands, each with their own dialects. How cool is that!? It's important not to lump all First Nations communities together, nor to make any assumptions about culture (traditional or modern) because each community is totally unique.

Q: Why should we invite First Nations to partner with us on these things, when they don't contribute to taxes?

A: In British Columbia, most of the land is unceded, meaning that no treaties were signed, nor were battles won by the colonizers, that would have given the land rights over to the colonizers. Cities, towns, mines, dams, etc. have all been built on lands that technically should still belong to the traditional land holders, the First Nations. 

So, any revenue that the government has received from the use of these lands (i.e. stumpage fees from logging crown land) could be considered a contribution to government revenue by the First Nations, the actual land owners. I know many people don't agree with that, but the courts continuously confirm it, and the BC Treaty Process demonstrates that the provincial and federal governments recognize the need to settle this outstanding land issue to bring them certainty.

Not only that, but many many First Nations people (myself included) live off-reserve and/or are not status Indians, and therefore they DO contribute to income taxes, property taxes, and other forms of taxation. In the north island, over half of the school district is now First Nations. While Port Hardy's population is fairly stable, my community's growth rate was 15% in the last census! That's fairly consistent with others in the area.

Plus First Nations folks tend to stay in the community that we're born in more often than other demographics. So, I think many of our small rural communities are going to see a demographic shift where more and more of our citizens are First Nations, giving even more weight to the need to do the relationship building ASAP so that we can provide the best possible services to all of our community members.

Q: What about families that have been here for 100 years - don't they have any land rights?

A: This is a really tricky question... lots of non-First-Nations folks are really, genuinely scared and angered by the prospect of having their land returned to First Nations ownership. "Are they just going to kick me out? My family has been here for generations!" - I get it, it doesn't seem fair.

However, 100 years of occupation hardly compares to the 10,000+ years of First Nations occupation. We can't ignore that. Imagine you lived in your home for 50 years, and then one day your houseguest (having been there for two weeks) decides they liked your house. Imagine they have enough power to force you out, then they invite all their friends over, and they ignore you for six months while you're outside in the yard. Eventually you call the cops, who agree that you should get your house back - doesn't that just seem inherently reasonable? It's simplistic, but that's kind of where we're at right now. 

That being said, I don't know of any band that wants to go in and kick people out of their houses in order to reclaim the land (even though it was done to us.) There are many other ways to approach this, and in some (not all) cases it means the government trades other areas of unoccupied land (or cash settlements) in lieu of First Nations getting back the heavily settled parts of their territories. 

Q: I've heard of First Nations signing peace treaties with each other, in the big house... If we're having a hard time getting them to come to our meetings, can't we hold a potlatch? Couldn't we just rent the big house and invite a bunch of people and try and do things that way?

[I have to say, this question really called upon all of my diplomatic abilities!]

A: First of all, I honestly commend this suggestion -it's creative, and it also seeks to decolonize by recognizing that forcing First Nations to take part in local government practices (like meeting in town hall, signing paper protocols, etc.) maybe isn't the best way to go. I think it's great to try and seek out new ways of doing things, that are more in keeping with local cultures... however....

The big house is not just our governmental institution. It's our church, the centre of our spiritual world. It's simply not possible or acceptable for just anyone to throw a potlatch, there is a huge amount of protocol and preparation around it. However, maybe it's possible that a town council could host a feast, which is less sacred but still a valuable way to try and encourage that dialogue and relationship building.

It's also theoretically possible that, if the council was willing to put up the necessary funds, they could maybe work together with a chief to be part of that chief's potlatch -  I would love to hear your thoughts on this idea!

Q: How can we get the provincial and federal government to keep us more informed about things like land use planning, that is taking place behind closed doors? We feel left out of the process - we're not being consulted about our land use plans!

A: First of all, welcome to the club. First Nations haven't been consulted about our own lands for centuries! It's pretty a recent development, actually, that we've had any jurisdiction and involvement at all.

Of course, it's still annoying for local governments when we're left out of processes and then big changes come our way. I think this makes an even stronger case for First Nations relationship building - if we already have those lines of communication in place, it's that much easier to ask our local chiefs and councils to let us know when big things are coming down the pipe. It's also likely to be easier, if we want to lobby the provincial or federal governments, to have First Nations allies who will confirm and strengthen the need for more communication and collaboration.

However, it's important to remember that First Nations mostly deal with the federal government, and local governments mostly deal with the province... it's not apples to apples, and we shouldn't expect to be treated exactly the same way.

________________________________

There were many other questions, many other points brought up, and many stories of amazing, inspiring, successful work happening in communities. When I hear stories of the overt racism my mom faced when she was younger, let alone my grandparents, I feel very fortunate and grateful for all of the hard work that has gotten us to this point, where government at all levels seems genuine about trying to build those relationships. At the same time, there's a long way to go! Let us all be a little bit ill at ease, and willing to have tough conversations, for the sake of moving these issues forward.

​- J

I am so excited to tell you that next month I will be leading a workshop here in Nanaimo! It's called "Leading Groups: Facilitation Skills for Community Development" and will be held at the Vancouver Island University campus on June 15 and 16.

Day one will cover basics like opening and closing an event/meeting, how to lead a great group/roundtable discussion, and how to troubleshoot some common issues. Day two will go beyond basics and introduce some group activities beyond discussion, as well as some visual tools. We will also workshop some real-life scenarios and talk about event planning.

It's $200 to come for just one day, or $300 for both days combined. A healthy lunch and supplies will be provided. You can register here and send any questions to jessie.m.hemphill@gmail.com

This would be a very helpful workshop for:

• Frontline workers
• Board chairs
• Managers
• Elected leaders
• Communications professionals
• Teachers
• Planners
• anyone else who is either leading groups or organizing community events

Hope to see you there!

​- J

People are losing their minds over "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart's comments yesterday about the racially-motivated shooting in Charleston. Not only because the shooting itself is worth losing your mind over, but at Stewart's candor (and refusal to make jokes) in the face of such a heart wrenching story. Here is one of my favourite quotes:

I think Stewart's reaction, and in turn our reactions, highlight a truth that is so blindingly obvious but often overlooked: We are all desperately seeking signs that yes, we live in a world full of other human beings, full of feelings and tears and blood and imperfection just like us.

It drives me crazy that we so often try to eliminate emotion from how we present ourselves to the world. Earlier this week I was in Toronto for a meeting of the Canadian Women's Foundation's Girls' Fund Advisory Committee. We provide funding to organizations that support and empower girls between 9-13 years old. At the meeting we talked about all kinds of awful realities that girls in Canada (and everywhere!) are dealing with - sexual exploitation and trafficking, self-harm and suicide, eating disorders and insane media pressures, sexual and other types of abuse, and on and on. It's heartbreaking stuff, and we should feel really sad about it. The fact that we're working REALLY hard to make those problems go away doesn't negate the fact that they make us sad.

At the end of this two-day meeting, working through these issues and how we can do our small part to help, one of the participants was asked to share a story of a recent visit to a First Nations community, to hear a bit about how their girls' program had gone. As she spoke about what a beautiful day it had been, and how moved she was to hear the stories about the participant girls, and especially as she recounted some of the challenges those girls face, she began crying. And it was fantastic. All of a sudden, her story seemed so much more important, because it was real. It was emotional. It was human, and she was offering her vulnerability as a vehicle for sharing that story. That is a powerful and generous gift. And yet, she was so apologetic for crying (even though nobody seemed uncomfortable about it) and I think this points to the reality that we are often made to feel that being professional means eliminating emotion from our behaviour.

So, that's why I'm excited about this Jon Stewart thing - he's role modelling emotional responses to emotional events, and I think we can all learn from that and try to bring a little more emotion, a little more heart, into our work. 

Putting the Idea Into Practice:

For all of you facilitators out there, here are two ideas for how to bring emotion into the room when you're facilitating, and how to gracefully deal with emotional expression - I welcome your additional ideas and storie!

Opening An Event: Are You a Robot?
One thing I love to do, to get participant attention and set the tone at the beginning of a workshop or conference, is to say "Could all the robots in the room please raise your hands?" and then waiting for a beat as people think through the question and look at you like your crazy. Then I say "OK, please raise your hand if you are a human being" and, of course, almost everyone raises their hand! 

Then I say something like "Seeing that we're all human beings, let's give each other permission, starting right now, to act lilke human beings. If you need to use the bathroom, use the bathroom. If you need to eat, eat. If you need to step out to deal with an emergency, by all means take care of yourself, and if you need to cry please let it flow. This is a safe place, and for the time that we are in this room together, we are a community and we must care for one another."

A Moment of Silence
Sometimes something happens in a meeting that just knocks you off track, because it is so awful, so terrifying, and/or so huge that you just can't go back to whatever is on the agenda without some kind of acknowledgement and healing. I've been in meetings where elders, after a lifetime of keeping it secreet, disclose detailed stories of sexual abuse in community meetings. I've been in conferences where young women ask for a moment of time to seek all of the participants' help in finding a missing loved one. I've been in workshops where someone fell out of their chair and we had to call an ambulance to take hinm to the hospital. 

In moments like this, never be afraid (once the person has finished speaking/crying/loading into the ambulance) to acknowledge the weight of what has just happened, perhaps ask someone to share a prayer or healing song (if it's appropriate to your group) and take a good long moment of silence for everyone to reflect on what has happened. Sometimes you may also wish to get everyone to take some deep breaths or do another grounding activity to symobolically release some of the sadness and re-connect to themselves and the rest of the group.

If possible, it is great to have a lovely, soft chime (or small tibetan singing bowl, (thank you Aftab for that idea) to mark the end of a moment of silence in a more graceful way.

And, of course, don't ever be afraid to let emotion in to your facilitating. People will likely connect with you in a stronger, more authentic way, and you honour yourself as a human being, not a robot.
______

Much love to you, and if you get a chance please read Derrick Weston Brown's poem about Charleston - another evocative emotional response to emotional events.

-JH

Many of us have been engaged in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process in one way or another over these last six years - paying attention to the news coverage, attending the community gatherings, participating in marches, protests, and walks. Over 6,000 residential school survivors and loved ones shared their testimony, a feat which should inspire any of us trying to engage people around challenging, terrifying issues. So, in that sense, today's release of the final report of the TRC seems like the end to something. But it's not.

This report contains 94 recommendations for everyone, from the Pope, to all levels of government, and to all Canadian citizens. That's you. That's me. That's all of us. This is a call to action for all of us to take active, challenging steps to repair this wound, this rift between communities, between what we think Canada stands for, and what it has actually stood for. 

As Tim Harper reported in the Toronto Star, "The chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Canada has reminded us that mature nations confront their darkest periods. They do not run from them, they learn from them and they try to right them. And he has reminded us that the ugly legacy of our residential schools is not an aboriginal problem, but a Canadian problem."

This report, and the attention it is suddenly garnering from all corners, is so thrilling that I can hardly believe it's true. Things have come so far even in the last five years that I've been an elected leader - I can't even imagine what it's like to see the tide turning for those who grew up in the worst times of abuse, oppression and racism.

Beyond my excitement, as a First Nations woman, to see so many people talking about the need to understand the history of residential schools and find paths to reconciliation (#2reconcile anyone?), I think this report has some clear implications for two of my communities, the comprehensive community planning folks and also the local government folks, and I'd like to share some thoughts for each:

Comprehensive Community Planners: This report supports what we have been trying to do for years - find more support and resources to strengthen the social fabric of our communities through healing programs, family supports, sports and recreation, culture and language, and loving, rehabilitative care for all who need it. 

Some will say that the report overstepped by including recommendations in these areas, claiming "...its voluminous recommendations – 94 in total, ranging from sports policy to funding for the CBC – have done aboriginal Canadians a disservice..." claiming that it should have focused on areas like education and land claims. But we know, don't we, that community healing is the foundation for educational, economic, and political successes. That sports program just might be the thing that helps some kid develop the confidence and discipline to pursue post secondary education - the legacy of residential schools is that so many of our people need these foundational programs and opportunities that are taken for granted off-reserve.

Local Government Officials: This report is a clear call to action, for those that haven't already undertaken to adopt reconciliatory practices into the way your government operates. I am proud to say that in Port Hardy we have at least started the work of building bridges with local First Nations (though we have a long way to go) by forming a First Nations Relations Committee with the mandate of fostering reconciliation and relationship building, and by acknowledging the territories at the start of Council meetings. Other towns and cities are doing their own things, from declarations to councillor workshops, and even the UBCM and FCM have made declarations about the need for reconciliation in the last couple of years. 

I think the message is that we need to keep going, and bring all of our political pressure to bear on higher levels of government to adopt these recommendations and start to take concrete actions which we will see benefit all of our communities.

- J

Background and Resources:

Here's a great little video from the Globe and Mail that uncovers the gaps between Aboriginal people and other Canadians:

Links to Coverage of the TRC Report:

• Indian Affairs interfered with police investigations of residential school abuse: TRC (APTN National News)

• Vancouver audience cheers Truth and Reconciliation report on residential schools (Tiffany Crawford and Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun)

• Truth and Reconciliation report brings calls for action, not words (Chloe Fedio, CBC News)

• Murray Sinclair offers a path to a better Canada (Tim Harper, The Toronto Star)

• Truth and Reconciliation: Genocide or not, Canada authored this story (The Globe and Mail)

• Overly-sweeping reconciliation commission report misses chance to be effective (Michael Den Tandt, National Post)

• A by-the-numbers look at the TRC's examination of residential schools (The Kelowna Daily Courier)
• 
  

Update: More Articles and Radio Segments Added on June 3

• Truth and Reconciliation Commission: By the numbers (Daniel Schwartz, CBC News)

• In their words: What residential school survivors told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Amy Minsky, Global News)

• What survivors told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (The Ottawa Citizen)

• Wab Kinew: Aboriginal success is the best form of reconciliation (National Post)

• Clifton & Rubenstein: Debunking the half-truths and exaggerations in the Truth and Reconciliation report (The National Post)
• 'Reconciliation is not an aboriginal problem, it is a Canadian problem. It involves all of us.' (As It Happens, CBC Radio)

• Attitude change necessary to improve life for next generation of First Nations (John Ibbitson, The Globe and Mail)

• Truth and Reconciliation: Genocide or not, Canada authored this story (Editorial, The Globe and Mail)

• Wednesday June 03, 2015Justice Murray Sinclair: TRC report, second chance at equal relationship (The Current, CBC Radio)

• Before reconciliation Canada must understand its own history (The Current, CBC Radio)

• Education 'only way forward,' says David Johnston as TRC ends (Haydn Watters, CBC News)

• Stephen Harper defends aboriginal affairs record in wake of residential schools report (Haydn Watters, CBC News)
• Truth and Reconciliation chair urges Canada to adopt UN declaration on Indigenous Peoples (Haydn Watters, CBC News)

When you think you've really figured something out, isn't it so humbling to realize that you actually need to rethink your entire approach?

This theme has been coming up for me so much lately, which makes me wonder if it is coming up for you as well?

I like to think I'm an expert at the things I really throw myself into (thank you, competitive spirit!) Community planning, facilitation, and lately, yoga. Yet recently I've been really reflecting on what it means to put aside those feelings of expertise and think about the foundations of my practice, whether professional or personal.

Let me give you an example. I have been doing A LOT of yoga in the last few months as part of a goal this year to bring my body back into good health. I have been feeling pretty skillful in the last few weeks, really pushing myself into poses that looked good but didn't feel great (and maybe showing off just a little?) until a few days ago. A few days ago, my back was so sore I could hardly get out of bed, or lean over to brush my teeth. I pushed through the pain for a couple of days, and then realized what needed to happen: I needed to re-evaluate my foundation, approach my body with gentleness, and not leap into challenging things without feeling strong and prepared first.

So, for the last few days, I have gone into each class with that goal in mind: don't worry how deep the bend or how impressive the stretch - feel strong and rooted in the simple things, and be satisfied with where I'm at, until I'm strong enough to safely do the deep bends and impressive poses. This is very humbling!

Now, if you're not into yoga, maybe you're like "where is she going with this?" But bear with me - I think this is a really important lesson related to my work, as a community planner, and probably yours too. How often do we get comfortable with jumping right to the challenge in our work (in my case, maybe a community meeting or drafting an new plan from scratch) without really taking care that the foundation is strong? A great approach to work towards is "beginner's mind", the openness to new ideas and knowledge and not feeling like such an "expert" that you prevent yourself from growing.

For me, focussing on the foundations of my work means (in part) really trying to establish excellent communication practices at the start of any new projects, so that we're not running into communication breakdowns further down the line... And also refining my own knowledge and skills, through training, reading, and deep conversations with planners and facilitators I admire, and not just recycling ideas that worked in the past unless it truly is the best approach for the client. I'm sure, through deeper reflection on this idea, more will come but for now I'm just really excited to be thinking about my work through this lens, and sharing these thoughts with you!

I would love to hear what it means to you, to focus on the foundation of your work (or play.)

- J

Is it just me, or has it been a rough go in the last while? So many people that I love are going through loss and grief right now. That's the thing when you have large families and tightly-knit communities - you lose people. 

For some reason, the last couple of books I've randomly picked off of the shelf have both been about loss, as well. Richard Wagamese's Medicine Walk, and Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. You might find either of those books a comfort, in the way that a song that makes you cry is somehow a comfort. 

Many of you who are close to me will know that my grandmother, Lucy Smith, passed away nearly seven years ago. Even in all that time, I am never very far from being caught short of breath at suddenly remembering that she is gone. Today I read this passage:

And I recognized so much of myself, my need to keep believing that somehow a mistake was made. Somehow my grandmother will come back to me. So, this evening I spent a lot of time focusing on how to really, really let her go, and the thought came to me that I have been scared to let her go because a part of me felt like it would invalidate her love for me, and mine for her, if I really let her go. And that's just not true. 

Nothing will ever, ever take away the sound of her voice as she told hour after hour of stories, laughing her head off at the good parts and chain smoking filterless exports. The smell of her kitchen after a day of baking bread together. The feeling of her hand in mind, as she got older and I got in the habit of holding her hand during visits to somehow imprint the physical memory of her in my bones. And yet it is so hard to think about her without agonizing over the last few moments of her life. The first few moments of her death. The furious fact of her departure. 

As I thought about this, these words were spoken in my mind: Think about the living, and the loving, not the leaving. Think about the living, and the loving, not the leaving. There are too many fantastic memories to only focus on the impossible ones, the sad ones. It has taken a long, long time to even get to that reality, and who know how many more years before there is at least an ease with the thought of her absence. 

This is a pretty personal ramble, but it feels really good to write this stuff out. It's important to talk about death and not just the easy, happy stuff all of the time. That goes for real life too - so if you are not experiencing a loss yourself, but someone close to you is, please don't be afraid to visit with them. Maybe the hard stuff is going to come up, maybe it won't. Maybe it needs to. 

Whatever happens, much love to you.

xo

- J

Often in planning you will come across an activity called a SWOT analysis - strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Doing a SWOT analysis helps people weigh in on all sides of an issue, but it can also be kind of boring.

Several years back, I came up with an alternative to a SWOT analysis, that I call Roots, Fruits, Birds and Bugs. I've done it with up to 40 people but I'm sure you could scale it up for larger groups.

I use this activity when I want a group of people to talk in-depth about a particular issue or idea. For example, we used when creating the Gwa'sala-'Nakwaxda'xw Economic Development Strategic Plan to get the youth in our community talking about what they wanted to see in our community in the future.

It takes between one and two hours, depending on the size of the group and how talkative people are.

Materials Needed:

• A large piece of paper (I usually use flipchart paper)
  
• Markers (big and small)
  
• Sticky notes - try and get apple/flower shaped ones, droplet/heart shaped ones, and then medium size square ones in two different colours

Process: Opening

• Introduce yourself and set the stage for your gathering, with opening comments/prayer/ice breakers as appropriate for your community or group.
• Introduce your topic: why are you asking people to weigh in on this particular topic? What is going to happen with the feedback from this activity? What is happening right now, regarding this topic, that will be helpful for people to know as they go through the activity?
• Draw a horizontal line representing the ground, and then a big tree on your paper, with bare branches. Explain that the tree represents your topic, which can grow and flourish (if the "roots" are healthy) to nurture the community with the "fruits". However, the tree can be threatened by "birds" (unforeseen impacts) and "bugs" (harm that comes from within the community/organization, and/or harm that is predictable)
  

Ever had a meeting where you just couldn't get people to talk? Or maybe you're bored with your usual icebreakers and want to add a new facilitation tool to your repertoire?

The visual deck (or whatever you call it) can be a super helpful tool for stimulating ideas, especially in visual thinkers (like myself.) Props to my friend Bronwen for introducing me to this idea, though there are many out there who use a similar deck for all kinds of activities.

This is a simple tool you can make yourself. It's just a collection of photographs and illustrations cut out of magazines, glued on to card stock and (ideally) laminated. Bronwen put hers together with her daughters as a family activity, and I did mine last night on my office floor while procrastinating and putting off a bunch of businessy things I could have been doing instead.

The more evocative the picture the better, in my opinion. See that one in the top pic, with the crying face and the word "love"? Or, in the next set down, that semi-creepy, round flower? Or the lady carrying the bear? Open to some pretty crazy interpretation, which is what you want.

Once you have your deck, use it in meetings/groups to help guide creative thinking and reflection. This can really help people to open up, think creatively about a topic, and learn to see each other in new ways, all good things for effective group work!

Sample questions could include:

- choose a picture that represents [topic x] to you. Why did you choose that one?

- choose a picture that represents how you feel today. What about this picture resonates with you?

- select a picture that represents your dreams for this community. How does that picture reflect your vision?

- choose an image that represents how you wish the world saw you. What in this picture conveys the inner you?

I'm sure you can come up with lots of your own, I would love to see suggestions in the comments! Have fun with it :)

- J