October 28, 1929 was an historic day for the 50-something-year-old country of Canada.

Thanks to 5 women from the Province of Alberta – Emily Murphy, Nellie McLung, Irene Parlby, Henrietta Muir-Edwards and Louise McKinney – Women became persons. Twenty years ago, Albertan and feminist activist Frances Wright noted the glaring absence of these 5 heroes in our collective history and decided to do something about it. 

The result was a set of two larger than life bronze statues of these five celebrating The Persons Case , on Olympic Plaza in Calgary Alberta and one on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

The bronzes are a magnificent and effective piece of public art – interactive, experiential, open, accessible, moving. It acts as an educational tool, a place for individuals to find solace, a reminder of what 5 people can do to change the world, and now a tourist attraction.

The genius of the piece is that you can walk into it, touch the tea cup that represented the tactic that they used to mobilize their troops, read from the declaration, and sit in Emily’s Chair, as so many have done for a photo op.

In 2019, Calgary Poet Laureate Sheri-D Wilson launched a project inviting Calgarians to subit a poem that would recognize people or groups that represent and reflect the spirit and values of our city. But the catch was that you could not name the person or the group. She called it YYC-PoP ( Portraits of People). 

Here is the piece I submitted about Frances Wright which made it into the anthology.

Person

She made them Famous. 5 female Alberta figures,
statuesque even before the bronzes
rose out of the Calgary Olympic Plaza and
Parliament Hill in Ottawa
where only men dominated the landscape
with the exception of two British Queens, one on a horse.

A work of art, for the Public. Public Art.
Enter the circle and join in an historic conversation.
Sit in Emily’s Chair. Relax.
Women are persons. Happy 70th Anniversary.

And before October 18, 1929 we were??
Something with pains and penalties,
But no rights or privileges.
Her Mother Irma was born a something.
She left us 93 years later as a person. And voted in every election.
And so should you.

Irene. Emily. Nellie. Henrietta. Louise.
5 powerhouses of democracy who took it to the Privy Council. And won.
The Persons Case.
No coup. No violence. No war.
An overdue and irreversible transfer of power.
Strategized over decades and cups of tea.

Now they are printed and minted on our $50 Bill
and in a Girl Scout’s Badge, if you earn it.
Learn it in school, or online.
They’re everywhere. Finally. They’re Famous.

“Disturbers are never popular – nobody ever really loved an alarm clock in action….” Said Nellie.
I set my clock at 6 am as one would do.
She sets hers at 5:55
[and so should you]

Try and thank her.
To the hundreds, the thousands
she catalyzed, mobilized, inspired,
She smiles “I didn’t do this. You did.
And like Emily, may you feel equal to high and splendid braveries!”

Friend. Sister. Daughter of the quiet revolutionaries.
Builder. Illuminator. Convenor. Educator. Person

Share this:

 

 The year is 1995 and Bogota, Columbia is listed on the international watch advisory as the most dangerous city in the world, rampant with narco traficantes, warlords  and corruption. Traffic deaths alone, caused mostly by the fear of carjacking, top one thousand five hundred a year. It’s a nightmare.  You’re the new mayor. What do you do?

Enter Antanas Mockus, a university professor of mathematics and philosophy who campaigned for mayor on a platform of non-violence with the slogan “arm yourself with love.”  He won promising the first thing he would do was deal with the traffic deaths.

After two months and no policy ideas in sight, he almost gave up when an elder in the community, joked that “when there’s nothing left to do, send in the clowns.” He  had his answer.

Within weeks, he fired 400 corrupt traffic cops and replaced them with – mimes – yes I said mimes – who now controlled the street corners with nothing but signs that read correcto on one side if people stopped at the red light and incorrecto when they didn’t. 

Surely they issued tickets? – no. They had guns?  No.  They were doubly unarmed – with neither words nor weapons.

Antanas also had shooting stars painted on the pavement at every spot where someone had been killed – making people think twice before jumping into a busy intersection.

Policy makers, take note. In the first year, traffic deaths dropped by fifty per cent.

This eventually created what he called a cultura ciudadana or a citizenship culture – fertile ground for him to then introduce a volunteer disarmament program aimed at reducing the percentage of murders committed by guns. As a result of City Hall’s campaign “That all guns rest in peace for this Christmas”, the homicide rate dropped drastically in just 10 years. What did they do with the weapons? Melted them into spoons for thousands of disadvantaged children, and each was inscribed with the words “I was a gun”.

This artist mayor preferred to see himself as a creative pedagogue and his city as a large classroom. He realized that he had very little time to address a societal problem that had reached crisis proportions. And he understood the transformational power of an intervention that is “artistic” in nature and how art “enlarges the repertoire of conceivable actions”, and acts as an acupuncture point that resonates through the whole system.

And he understood how ART moves people from apathy to empathy. Pedestrians who were used to not trusting anyone, rushing through the streets, clutching their handbags, arrived at an intersection to encounter not a heavily armed, imposing police officer, but a clown. And one that appeared to have the situation under control. The clown evoked an unexpected emotional reaction. And there is never lasting change without emotion.

Invoking the mimes was what Matthew May, the author of In Pursuit of Elegance would describe as an “elegant” intervention. He argues that the best solutions have something missing, that “full power is achieved when maximum impact is achieved with minimum input.” Art, in its economy and efficiency, embodies this notion. Its seductive quality reaches out to us and invites us in a non-confrontational and non-violent way to interpret it, and through it, ourselves, our feelings, our impressions, our judgments. It invites us to play. What is key is that this moment takes us out of our normal way of looking at things, it is what renders the familiar unfamiliar, for a split second, we see the world differently. We dare to imagine an adjacent possibility.

Moreover, an elegant solution, like the mimes in Bogotá, acts as acupuncture – it penetrates a precise point and then reverberates throughout the entire system. The combination of the mimes, the stars and the cards spread virally to do much more than reduce traffic deaths. It gave citizens a sense of pride and admiration in each other. Citizens reclaimed responsibility for their safety and began to self-regulate. While saving thousands to the administration, it cracked the corruption problem. It brought security back to the streets and launched the dawning of the cultura ciudadana.

The new sense of citizenship was fertile ground for Mockus to then introduce a volunteer disarmament program aimed at reducing the percentage of murders committed by guns. As a result of City Hall’s campaign “That all guns rest in peace for this Christmas”, the homicide rate dropped from 80 to 22 per 100,000 inhabitants in just 10 years. What did they do with the weapons? Melted them, converted them into spoons for disadvantaged children, and inscribed them with “I was a gun”.

As citizens began to take pride in their city and adopt a sense of a “citizenship culture”, Mockus introduced a voluntary tax system, asking citizens to pay 10 per cent extra. 63,000 responded to the call and between 1990 and 2002, Bogotá’s tax revenues more than tripled, increasing from $200 million to $750 million. While some fifteen years later, Bogotá still struggled with gangs and corruption, as a result of Mockus invoking “surprise” and enlarging the repertoire of conceivable actions, the capital’s slogan was “The only risk is that you’ll never want to leave.”

Share this:

It is difficult

It is difficult
to get the news
from poems

yet men die miserably
every day
for lack of
what is found there.

  • william carlos williams
     

Look to the art that is being created today to see the future. Artists are the barometers of time – the recorders of history, the sensors of the present, and critically, the harbingers of the future.

When Picasso’s long awaited portrait of Gertrude Stein was finally unveiled and panned by a number of critics, one of them saying “that doesn’t look at all like Gertrude Stein”, the artist responded “Don’t worry, it will.”

In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog takes us spelunking on a 3-D peepshow into the sealed off Paleolithic Chauvet Caves in France to osmose the extant relics of the first human works of art. Contoured by the cavern’s natural relief and outcroppings, the 35,000 year old renderings of prehistoric horses and bison pound, snort and thunder, pulsing amid the dancing shadows. Upon personally experiencing the magic of these cosmic depictions, connecting to the beings that created them across the eons, an anthropologist asks “What if man had not been called homo sapiens but rather homo spiritualis?” Or homo ludens “man the player” as coined in the 1950’s by Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga?

Share this:

   International Women’s Forum

Canadian members of the International Women’s Forum celebrated when headquarters announced Toronto would host the 2019 Global conference. An opportunity to welcome over 1500 female leaders and influencers from around the world and offer them a taste of Canadian culture and hospitality. It was like winning an Olympic bid….which comes with a price tag…the obligation to raise US$650,000. Reality set in when each Canadian chapter was asked to raise $60,000, inconceivable in the province of Alberta, where the economy had been shattered by oil prices and an economic downturn.  With a bit of imagination and our finger on the pulse of our community, we raised triple the target while introducing an Indigenous component to the programming, leveraging the conference’s theme “Open Minds”. 

Fundraising

Eighteen months before the global conference, at an Executive Committee meeting of the Calgary chapter, the touchy topic came up. We need to raise $60,000 for this conference. Being the only one at the table who had any experience in fundraising, I was voluntold to be part of a committee of three to come up with a strategy. Phone calls ensued as we grappled with our options. The conversations went something like this:

“Our economy has tanked. The energy sector is on fumes. Maybe we try the diversity angle? Women in leadership is a priority – but who is going to sponsor a conference of elite women taking place in Toronto? It’s going to be hard to make the link.”

“What if we go for twelve sponsorships at $5,000 each? And maybe see if headquarters will create a $2500 level? Do we have enough members who can pull that lever in their companies?”

“That’s so much work…”

Enter Kara Flynn

Later that month, I happened to be the Calgary member, by default, on one of the national sponsorship committee calls. Every chapter was struggling. And Alberta had historically and consistently out-raised almost every other province. The pressure was on. My colleague Kara Flynn from Edmonton, Alberta, whom I had never met, but knew of as the VP of Government Relations at Syncrude, mentioned en passant that she would be in Calgary later that week. I said little in that meeting other than to ask her if she might be interested in having a visit while in my town. No idea what propelled me to do that at that moment but I followed my instincts. It was there that we hatched our “big idea”.

Kara’s background is a collage of accolades in the corporate and non-profit sector. She is a pro at raising money and giving it away. But where we connected was around her childhood. I was sharing with her my work with Indigenous people and her eyes lit up as she reminisced about growing up with First Nations children as a result of her father’s work. I don’ recall how we got there but one of us leapt onto the idea that each Conference sponsorship included two delegate registrations, or three, depending on the sponsorship level. We both knew that every energy company in Alberta was focused on “indigenization”. They were in part responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report and Calls to Action. They were also intent on building relationships with Indigenous tribes and Band Councils that had were impacted by their projects. From the perspective of IWF, we had a long way to go to diversify our membership, particularly with the “I” in BIPOC.

What if

What if….we asked our colleagues in the energy and mining sector to consider a sponsorship  and consider dedicating one of the delegate spots to an Indigenous female leader or influencer? It could be an employee, a woman from a band they were working with, or someone they would like to recognize. She would in turn meet women from around the world, take part in all the conference activities, and be profiled at a breakfast the Calgary Chapter was planning to host.

Over our second glass, Kara confirmed Syncrude’s support, made two calls to industry colleagues and we reached our target. Over the next eight weeks, we raised another $120,000,  guaranteeing a strong presence of Indigenous female leaders and influencers from across Canada. How could we make their experience memorable and leverage their presence to advance the greater project of reconciliation and open the minds and hearts of our colleagues here in Canada and around the world?

The original idea had been to host a full-on Calgary Stampede style western breakfast, complete with hay bales, country music, cowboy hats and flapjacks – celebrate the spirit of the City and profile the Greatest Outdoor Western Show on Earth. Giddy-up! Informal conversations had taken place and by then my colleague and friend Mary Rozsa was on board to help strategize the Calgary Stampede’s contribution to the international conference. Over the years, she and I had worked on numerous campaigns to bring awareness to the arts as a necessary part of our culture and a public good. Again, over a drink, we asked ourselves: Is this really the image of Calgary we want to portray? 

(For Part 2 of this article, go HERE)

 

Photos from the Event

Share this:

The Centre for Creativity and Entrepreneurship (Alberta College of Art and Design) and the Arts and Leadership Seminar at the Harvard University Centre for Public Leadership

In 2012, the president of the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD) recruited me to lead the design process for a Centre for Creativity and Entrepreneurship. He listened to the work I had done while at Harvard in the area of arts and leadership and  recognized the connections and interplay between art, design and entrepreneurship. Working with students and faculty, we created a cross-campus, interdisciplinary strategy that resulted in a concrete action plan for the centre: a world where art, craft and design and entrepreneurship are one. An economic downturn and change in government put the plan on hold but the value of such an enterprise is clear. 

This story takes place in Calgary, Alberta in 2012 but begins at Harvard University in 2008. Following an intense and challenging year creating and launching Alberta’s first cultural policy, and having reached the milestone age of 50, I needed a change. I recall the moment the universe responded to that appeal.

 It was in May and we were on the tail end of a month long trip through Argentina, in a modernish café in El Calafate, a chance moment waiting for our colleagues to finish some last minute shopping. Carolyn Goldstein,  a fellow member of the International Women’s Forum (IWF) program, and I had shared a room for the last weeks and feeling a deep comfort with this friend and mentor, I  shared with her one regret.

“I’d like to go back to school” I blurted. Though I had three university parchments to my name, they were never earned. I was in the photos but never present as only one who has suffered from addiction can understand. I dreamed of what it would be like to be present and healthy in a learning environment, without all the shenanigans. She paused, as she always did, and in her oracle way, proclaimed: “You’re going to Harvard.”

Upon our return to our respective home towns, we had two weeks to get the applications in for a Fellowship at the Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs, where each year a spot was held for a member of the International Women’s Forum, provided she met the criteria. My dual interests were in the nexus between arts and leadership and cultural diplomacy. One year led to four in large part to meeting a Humanities educator who was changing the world through the arts, her lived experience to date captured in her seminal book The Work of Art in the World.

Dr. Doris Sommer is a full Professor at Harvard and Director of the Cultural Agents program, a platform for academics, artists, community leaders and active citizens to combine arts and research in the service of civic development. She encouraged us all to think like an artist, to learn from exemplary creative agents and share lessons that challenge stale paradigms with artful alternatives. It was a magical time, reading the philosophical texts of Schiller, Kant, Habermas and Freire and learning from practitioners who were applying their theories and changing the world through art. Compelling examples of such initiatives can be found on this website on the xyz page.

I had the privilege of designing and leading a four session seminar at the Harvard’s Kennedy School, Centre for Public Leadership. Arts and Leadership was oversubscribed and students from diverse schools across the campus engaged with theatre, music, song and movement to embody the philosophical underpinnings of arts as a transformative device. They completed the seminar by identifying a campus challenge and designing their own artistic intervention to address it. All reported that much more should be done to teach leaders how to engage the arts for transformation and change.

On my return, I was introduced to Daniel Doz, the president of the Alberta College of Art and Design  (ACAD). We immediately agreed on how the school’s art and design students would benefit from real world entrepreneurial tools. Conversely, the city’s emerging entrepreneurship and start-up sector could leverage the school’s talent to amplify their innovation and incubator processes. We spent one year working across the college’s silos ranging from photography to ceramics, painting to jewelry and metals, media arts to visual communications. We engaged four classes in focus groups and enlisted students to Dragon Den style pitch competitions. The presentations by teams with the ACAD students were the most creative and scored the highest.

Student surveys and focus groups revealed a deep need for hands on experience, apprenticeships, and tools for building a career as an artist post-graduation. We worked with the industry to obtain feedback and with the emerging start-up sector to identify their needs. We achieved consensus on a cross-disciplinary approach and support from the college executive and developed a budget. Regrettably, a downfall in the economy and a change in government bureaucracy resulted in shelving the concept of the Centre for an indeterminate length of time.

 

Share this:

 

It wasn’t easy going back to piano lessons at the age of 40, having abandoned the practice for over twenty years, dark years blurred by, well, that’s a story for another day. Looking back, the seed to return was planted in Banff, Alberta at the Honens International Piano Competition’s Jury Recital. A chance encounter there led to an invitation to join the Honens board, and collaborate with Jenny Belzberg to co-found an Amateur competition for local accomplished pianists, changing their lives and along the way raising friends and awareness. Since its inception, this unique and innovative event has raised over half a million dollars for the organization. 

Back to the recital at the Banff Centre…the effusive French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet appeared on the stage sporting a white jacket, his personality, charm and charisma outsizing his diminutive physique, effacing the fact that he was at least a foot shorter than the rest of other jurors. They were putting on a concert for Honens patrons, followed by a reception, where the story begins.  Chatting with my plus-one Beth, Jean-Efflam stepped right into our space with a plate of hors-d’oeuvres and three forks. Magic.

We wound up going for lunch later that week, talked about our lives, our triumphs and hardships, the journey of a concert pianist, our mutual love of the piano. It was then I decided to pick up where I had left off and take lessons and the Grade 8 level exam of the Royal Conservatory of Music.

I was practising law at the time and it seemed at every turn, someone was playing the piano and playing it well. It occurred to me that some of them might be inclined to put on a concert and raise money, the cause to be determined. I ran this by Jenny Belzberg, my partner in crime on the Board of the Honens International Piano Competition. She looked like she had struck gold. “I’ve been telling Honens to put on an amateur competition for years, like the Van Clyburn! Let’s do it!”

So here’s the deal. As an amateur but accomplished pianist, your mission is to perform a twenty minute recital of classical music, off book, level Grade 9 or higher. This will be played and recorded on a 9-foot Steinway, in a concert hall, in front of an audience of 350 and a jury. And for the honour of doing this, you also have to raise $20,000 from your friends, family, co-workers, your network. It’s an ingenious way to raise countless individual donations from a new pool of prospective patrons every competition.

Since 2003, Honens has hosted 9 such competitions with over 40 pianists participating. Each has said that it changed their lives. I was a “substitute” for the inaugural ProAm and competed in the second. That year, I was grateful to a friend and mentor, Jim Stanford who offered to match all donations up to $10,000. Four of us practiced for months, though it was clear from the outset that the youngest competitor, Joyi Wei, would win. She was playing on a keyboard which seemed beneath her talent, so I gave her a key to my place for access to my Kawai baby grand whenever she felt the need. In the meantime, I was traveling and adhering to my daily practice schedule which necessitated securing pianos in cities across Canada and around the world.

I learned how to access churches, green rooms in concert halls, and hotel banquet rooms (before or after the catering staff clocked in or out). At the time, thanks to a relationship with Lachlin McKinnon, the winner of the first ProAm, when working in Ottawa, I was granted access to the Governor General’s residence, Rideau Hall, to practice on Glen Gould’s piano. I played and practiced in Canadian Consulates in Washington and Madrid and in the lobbies of the Moscow Metropol and hotels in Ecuador, Argentina, Morocco and Hong Kong. I cherish each of those memories and celebrate the discipline and commitment it took to prepare for the ProAm and the exam.

As the competition approached, anxiety levels rose, to the point of not being able to eat the day before the competition. My Mom had come to town for the event and that just added to the nerves. I tried to practice but it was easier to fuss about my wardrobe and hair. Finally, I settled on a stunning, shimmering brown faux alligator skin pant suit, with matching suede stilettos. I was told later that the audience’s applause and collective gasp when I walked onto the stage was in fear that I would trip and break my neck.

I learned a few things about performing that day. About three quarters of the way through Mozart’s Fantasia in D minor, I said to myself “Wow, this is going quite well.” That momentary flight of ego and breach of concentration caused a memory lapse and three repeats that were not in the score. Somehow I got it back and finished the piece and the rest of my repertoire. I had done it. Laughlin happened to be on the jury and I won – for best shoes!

The ProAm has evolved considerably since its humble beginnings, garnering media attention, fan clubs for each of the competitors, complete with T-Shirts, mentors, a wardrobe donated by local high end boutiques and a suite of prizes including a residency at the Banff Centre. Every year, more money is raised and more Calgarians and Canadians are aware of the cultural gem that is Honens, now ranking in the top ten piano competitions in the world.

Share this:

 

In 2003, some went so far as to call Alberta Ballet an oxymoron – a classical ballet company in a province of rednecks and cowboys. Soon after I became Executive Director in 2005, it struck me that we were trying to sell an art form of tutus and tights to a city of 30-something male engineers. So, as the ballet was about to turn 40, we did what any self-respecting cultural icon might do at mid-life. We re-invented ourselves. 

Founded in 1966, it was based in Calgary and had dual citizenship in the capital city of Edmonton.  A small company, but respected for the high quality and training of its dancers, recruited nationally and mostly in the classical genre. In 2001, Mikko Nissinen, now the reputed Artistic Director at Boston Ballet, had moved from San Francisco to Calgary to transition from dancer to director. He brought with him a much needed audacity and confidence and a network of international talent. Balanchine was in the repertoire, not an easy feat, as the eponym foundation will allow a company to stage his work only on the approval of an authorized repetiteur of the trust. It had a respectable and strong cadre of patrons and donors and it did its best to deliver an art form that few in this growing city, business center, oil and gas based wild west town understood or appreciated.

When Mikko left the company for Boston, the Board recruited a youngish, bilingual, charismatic,  dancer/choreographer and aspiring Artistic Director from Ottawa. I met Jean Grand Maître at the rodeo at the Calgary Stampede, in a suite hosted by Enbridge’s VP of Government affairs, my friend and Chair of the Board D’Arcy Levesque. We all hit it off, and when the organization needed a new Executive Director, D’Arcy reached out to me, with the clear mandate to “put the company on the map”.

It was September of 2005 and these were difficult times for Alberta Ballet. The Jubilee Auditorium, the company’s performance venue had shut down for a year for renovations, morale and trust were low to the point the administration had brought in the provincial workers union, the governance model was weak, there was no human resources policy and injuries to the dancers were frequent and numerous because they performed on a hard floor. And we were in trouble financially.

Notwithstanding, there was a magic about the company, its history, its tenacity and about the building we all worked in, a turn of the century sand stone train station converted into a studio and rehearsal space on the main floor and offices on the second. Nestled along the Elbow River, it sat at the heart of Rouleauville, one of Calgary’s founding communities. And though many regarded the company’s two home cities as an obstacle, a hindrance, I saw it as an opportunity – two markets, two funding sources, and the automatic go-to for the government if it needed a cultural ambassador nationally or internationally.

A lot was accomplished in the first year. Thanks to a generous gift by my friend the late Jim Palmer, we built a new retractable, portable and storable sprung floor in time for the Nutcracker that Christmas and multiple injuries were a thing of the past. We implemented an HR policy and the union was dissolved. I call this work “nuts and bolts”, the science of the enterprise. We needed the art, not the art on the stage, but in relation to our community.

One afternoon, feeling overwhelmed by all that still needed to be done,  beckoned by the music wafting up through my office window, I wandered down the marble staircase to the studio and grabbed a chair to watch the warm ups. The pianist kept the tempo as the dancers took the bar for plies and point work and moved into jetés and arabesques. Scantily but tastefully clad in their rehearsal wear, light shorts, tank tops, T-shirts, in turn they flew and spun and pirouetted across the floor, at times inches from my face. Up so close, I sat motionless, having to remind myself to breathe, in awe of the grace and beauty of these humans, at the shear athleticism.  I was told later that to perform the Nutcracker’s Grand Pas de Deux requires the stamina equivalent to running a half marathon. 

That was when it struck me. We are trying to sell an art form of tutus and tights in a city of 30-something male engineers. What we were, in contrast was elegant, strong, and athletic – dare I say sexy. As the only ballet company within a bull’s roar, all we needed to change was the perception of the art form. As it happened, the company would be 40 the next year so we leveraged that timely opportunity to rebrand with our new take on ballet – beauty and athleticism. 

By Year 2, we introduced an extra performance to each run, raised records amount of money, doubled ticket sales, and were invited by the province to represent them at the Smithsonian in Washington. Jean was choreographing modern works and that fall we made another decision that would change the course of the company. He mused about creating a work based on the music of Joni Mitchell, the question was, how would we get the rights? Knowing of his power of persuasion, I suggested he write to her to see if she would be interested in being involved. She said yes. The next season we premiered The Fiddle and the Drum, the first in a songbook series that now includes the works of Sarah McLachlan, k.d.lang, Sir Elton John, Gordon Lightfoot and The Tragically Hip.

Share this:

 

We white western colonizer folk have, for centuries, used any number of gizmos to keep time and manage our lives. Greenwich Time synchronizes the globe. It was the clock that broke open the code on longitude which allowed us to never be lost at sea again. Pre GPS of course. Prior to smart phones, to keep track of ourselves and each other, we used watches and clocks and calendars and we counted. If there is one thing I do not miss about practicing law is measuring my day by .1 of an hour, 6 minute segments, 30 minutes equals .5 hours, and so on. The goal for the year was 2000 billable hours, no less. By the time I left the practice, boiling an egg was a .1 moment. 

Our online calendars are on a 15 minute grid, corporations forecast and report on the quarter, and election cycles run from 3 to 5 years. We celebrate birthdays annually, extra attention paid to the “nickels and dimes”. Our weather app tells us precisely when the sun will rise and set, and another predicts the phases of the moon. The moon….

How did humans keep time prior to “the clock”? Maybe it was like being on a holiday or where there is no Wi-Fi. Up and down with the sun. And if the holiday is long enough, you might actually begin to measure time by the season. What if nature was our clock, our calendar and we had a longer view of time?

It was July, the moon when chokecherries fall off the branch, at sunrise.  I was the first out of the teepee, or so I thought, at the annual Kainai Sundance on the Blood Reserve. A voice called out “You making coffee over there?” It was an Elder walking about. Honoured, I poured him a cup and we sat on lawn chairs, speaking quietly, two strangers bonded by circumstance. As I looked to the rolling hills, waving my hand across the horizon, I mused aloud: “How long have your people been gathering here for the Sundance?” “About 6,000 years”, he replied. “The last 300 haven’t been so good but we’re going to be okay.”

I was born in the Moon when Raven freezes on the branch. In Canada, that would be January.  If you are a Taurus, then it is the Moon of the red grasses appearing; September is the yellow leaves moon; April the Moon when Ptarmigan lays her eggs.  So if you agreed to meet at Mokinskis (where the Elbow river meets the Bow) when Ptarmigan lays her eggs – that was understood by everyone in the territory. There is a ten day period when Ptarmigan lays her eggs and so the next spring, whomever got there first would set up camp and wait. No hurry. No tapping of fingers. No huffing and puffing. A calm knowing that the other humans would eventually show up.

So how did First Nations people keep track of what we call “age”? The exact time and day of a birth would have had little relevance as it would not have been recorded the way we can and do. How many turns around the sun? How many “frozen ravens”? Close. An elder shared with me that in his part of the world  “age” was tracked by the number of winters survived. Whether born in the bud moon or the moon of the drying grasses, the “clock” started when a winter was survived. “months” were “moons” and each had a name and ran 28 days.  My next question, did they count those winters in tens? Another rabbit hole to explore.

I became acutely aware of our misunderstanding of “Indian Time” on the occasion of a funeral on the rez.  A Chief had passed. Many dignitaries from the City were invited. It was scheduled to start at 11:00 am. The Mayor, Councillors, a number of other important people arrived at Bullhead Hall, glad-handed a bit and took their seats. A half our passed and then another.  The sense of being disrespected silently but visibly became palpable. After three hours, most of them left, not doing a good job of hiding their indignation. They had things to do.

Those of us who have spent some time on the rez, with families and friends, sat quietly, visited with the people we knew, caught up on the news, expressed our condolences. The family who lost their loved one was gathering, somewhere, and would eventually arrive and the ceremony would unfold.

On Indian time. When the time is right.

 


 

Woosa

Or In the Future…

Dina tu wunasdina guts’i niihits’i nadałi at’a.

Gimiyisdla ii dikiizh.Tł’adina tu

wunasdina guts’i nadałi at’a.

Gimiyisdla dik’iizh.

Sinajunagha tłanistsiyik’i kida nagilo? i at’a

The Tsuut’ina are a nation of just over 2200 who live in the Treaty 7 territory, west of Calgary and east of the Rocky Mountains. Treaty 7 was signed on September 22, 1877 by five First Nations of Southern Alberta: the Siksika (Blackfoot), Kainai (Blood), Piikani (Peigan), Stoney-Nakoda, and Tsuut’ina (Sarcee). This badly drafted but binding agreement as between the Crown and the Chiefs was never “signed” as the First peoples were an oral culture. They had come with their songs and their pipe, a time-honoured way to “make treaty” as between nations. A century earlier, the Selkirk Treaty was concluded in Winnipeg, Manitoba and by each Chief’s signature is drawn the image of the animal of the Chief’s clan with the English words “His Mask”. Beaver. Otter. Weasel. Bear. Catfish.

Selkirk Treaty

It is believed the fall Equinox was the “day” chosen by the Treaty 7 Chiefs, whose calendar was dictated by the cycles of the sun and moon, not the political agenda of the Dominion of Canada. It was the drying grass moon, the Moon when the Deer paw the Earth. This is the most important agreement entered into by Southern Albertans yet so little of it is known or understood.

Many have asked of the tribes “Why didn’t you fight back?” It was a combination of sickness caused by the introduction of Small Pox, decimation of the buffalo, trade in alcohol. Thousands of people died. Teepees empty. Whole families wiped out. They would give up their land, and sign onto life on the reserve on the promise that the Queen Mother would look after them.

The Tsuut’ina would say they saw it coming. An Elder shared this prophecy which had been passed on through generations, hundreds if not thousands of years.

People are coming from across the ocean

And these people have no colour to their skin

These people are going to put us in corrals

They’re going to be flying

They’re going to wrap Mother Earth in iron

They’re going to turn Mother Earth inside out

They will feed us white dust.

It may be worth sharing that on the northern most tip of the continent, the Kalaallit-Eskimos had their own prophecy. It may be worth heeding.

“The Ancient Ones say, that one day, when the world needs it the most, the Sacred Fire will come home to the people at the Top of the World. It is the time when the trees will stand up again. We will, once again, be able to ignite a fire with wood from Mother Earth and relieve animals, like the seal, of their duties. The Ancient Ones say that the way in which we know the calendar will come to an end. What does this mean? Today we know spring, summer, fall and winter. These seasons will be no more. And when you ask what will be, they say, ‘No one knows’. The Ancient Ones say many will die, many more will hardly survive, only few will have a life. Only by melting the ice in the heart of man, will man have the chance to change and use his knowledge wisely.”

 

Chief Lee Crowchild – photo by Bert Crowfoot

SMUDGING ALL THE TIME

A story by Chief Lee Crowchild 

“His nephew said we are still slaves to the master.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have done all that has been asked of me in trying to follow this Red Road but it is hard to keep the focus.”

“I pray all the time… Praying for better times… praying for the people,…. praying for justice to be served but it feels helpless and the prayers seem hopeless”. [Read more…]

“I try to smudge to put me in a better frame of mind but the thoughts are still the same when I walk out the world to take on the day.”

“I have listened to your words and advice carefully but I just want to give in and start to hate the world all over again. Those White People have done us wrong and they continue to take from us all of what we have left…

What more is there?”

Wakinyan sat and thought in silence for a long time as his nephews sat around the fire they had built to watch the day surrender itself to the evening. All that could be heard were the frogs singing their songs in the distance and the dogs barking every once in a while at some thing they saw in the distance that only their ears can hear.

The fire crackled and one nephew threw another log into the fire. They sat and stared at the fire and gently smoked their cigarettes.

The night was clear and the stars led the way to the Milky Way and the Star Blanket Woman who waited there for the next person to pass as she continued to make her quilt of stars and cook her stew over her fire.

“One day I will go see her” Wakinyan finally said.

“Who?” asked another nephew.

“Star Blanket Woman” Wakinyan replied.

She will ask me if I made relatives while I was on this good earth. Did I treat everyone as human beings and give them the respect they deserved. I will have to answer her truthfully and say that I tried my best. That it was very hard for me to find forgiveness of the Whiteman for what they did to my ancestors and continue to do to my not yet born relatives.

That will be hard to say that I did. All I can say is I did my best.

“How can you say that uncle?” Look at how they treat us and look at how they treat their own. They have no respect for anything. They kill each other over different ideas and the like to mock the people they defeat.

“The Whiteman slept with our women and created some us that hold the enemy’s blood in our veins. What am I supposed to do? I don’t feel like I belong on the land because I get ridiculed by my cousins for having White blood in me. I can’t help that. It is what I am” said the first nephew.

“I thought practicing tradition will make me feel better but I only feel farther away from where I think I should be.”

“I had a brother who served with me when I was in the Navy. He was Ojibway and had a white father as well. It made him angry and he tried to hide who he was by trying to fit in with the other sailors. He always visited me when it got to be too much. I would sing him a kinship song and we would sit out in the deck and smoke a few cigarettes.”

“I invited him to come and stay with me when he finished his service. After he got out of the Navy he drank for a couple of years trying to forget what he went through and the ugliness he saw. He was really wounded. He did show up one day though. He was crying through his eyes even though he never showed it. Kunshi saw it right away and cooked him up a good meal and made him a bed and he slept for 4 days only to get up to eat and shower and go back to sleep. He was very tired.”

“We both fasted together up in the hills and together we tried to find the peace we were seeking so we could make it into the world. He became my brother and we cried together for the things we lost. We washed away our feelings of hate together. Hate for the unseen enemy we killed. Hate for the other sailors who would mock us, calling us Chief or drunken Indians or scalp hunters. Those words were always hard to hear but they had to be dealt with in a good medicine way.”

“Isaugha and Kunshi had ceremony for us for a good 2 years. They had to bring back our humanity”

Slowly he came back to the world and we helped each other. He learned to love his father for what he was. His father. Even though his dad passed away he found the place to love him again. He stopped being mad at his mother for marrying a Whiteman and realized that she really did love her husband for who he was.

One day we were working outside the house. It was early fall and he was in deep thought for a few days before. He stopped brushing down his horse and turned to me.

“Brother,… I want to tell you something”. We have been through a lot for the past few years from when we served in the navy. I really didn’t like you because you had darker skin than I did but I saw how you were treated by other sailors. I even laughed at you at the same time to try and fit in with them but I always felt guilty about it. I would come to you and try to apologize but couldn’t find the words. Every time you just smiled at me and we smoked cigarettes”.

“When we launched those missiles at the enemy I realized then that you were doing the job as best as you can and when you sang death songs for the enemy I knew then that I had a long ways to go to get back to where I think I was supposed to be”.

“I think I have found it now. The forgiveness… I mean…. I am asking you if you will forgive me for not telling you these things a long time ago.”

I just looked at him surprised by what he told me but we were brothers for such a long time that I said it was alright all along. I never thought of him of being anything less than my brother. Still I knew it was important for him.

“I am going to head home now. Back to the east to see my family and work with the young men there. They are going to need me to help them just like your nephews will need you to help them soon. I have my bag already packed and am going to head out in the morning. I will come back in a few years to see you again and we will continue our journey again.”

The next morning he hugged Isaugha and Kunshi. Kunshi had packed him some food and hugged him for a long time. She was losing her son but she knew he had to go and fight the enemy. She cried very hard because she knew she would not see him again. Her time was getting short.

Isaugha gave him a final blessing and said from this day on you will be known as “Standing Soldier”. He too knew this would be the last time he would see him.

I hugged him and said don’t be gone too long. He smiled with tears and did up his navy Peacoat up tight and started walking east into the foggy morning. I sang my friend his gone song but it was hard to sing because the lump was high in my throat.

“So my nephew I tell you this because you are wounded by life. You want to change things but the woulds sit like daggers in your heart. You can’t change anything that is happening in the world. People will continue to hate each other and kill to justify it.

“Human rights and Civil rights don’t go far enough and that is where the White world is stuck.”

“You just have to change the things around your world that you can change. All of these challenges and hardships you have are just preparing you for the change you have always wanted”

“Don’t lose faith in what you think is helpless and hopeless.”

“Hoping in quiet desperation is the way that the Whiteman taught us. You have to live with hope with faith in what you believe is treating people as human beings”.

“That is really hard”

Wakinyan then just sat quietly and watched the fire as did everyone else. He put another log on the fire and sang a heart calling song. He thinks his brother will be back soon.

(Find more stories by Chief Lee Crowchild at his website HERE.)

 

Share this:

Turning tragedy into opportunity was at the heart of Breaking the Fast. In 2001, immediately following 911, as the Western Director of the Canadian Unity Council, we responded to this event by designing an opportunity for Calgarians from all faiths to come together to explore the challenges and opportunities arising from this tragic event. Leveraging the timing, symbols and experiential methods, we broadened perspectives, addressed fears and established foundations upon which to build a more inclusive community. 

Imagine being invited to participate in an all-expense paid, four week tour of the United States as a guest of their US State Department’s Visitors Program. I would get to choose six cities to visit and request meetings with individuals and groups that would help inform my body of work with the Canadian Unity Council. On September 11, my bags were packed, as I was scheduled to depart on September 12, on a flight from Calgary with a connection in Toronto.

It was the opportunity of lifetime which on that fateful morning got cancelled and then re-instated provided I could get myself to Washington. The first stop, New York, had been struck from the original itinerary as all flights to the big apple had been cancelled until further notice. Through some stroke of fate, Air Canada got me on a flight to Toronto and sixteen hours later, I nervously disembarked a Greyhound bus in Washington, DC.  As the cab driver noted, with not a plane in sight, a rarity for this capital metropolis, “It’s quiet. Awful quiet.”

They say that you might not remember a person’s name, or what they do, but you can always remember how they made you feel. Over four weeks, I met with community and political leaders, and experienced the major attractions of the five cities I had selected to explore their unique solutions to issues of race, language and diversity. Along the way, I was moved to tears at the Chicago Museum of Art’s Van Gogh – Gaugin Exhibit, went behind the scenes at NASA, was welcomed with open arms as the only white person at a Sunday Baptist Service in Houston, and learned by osmosis The Star Spangled Banner, which inaugurated most events and concerts, including opening night at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra which closed with Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. Over these four weeks, I felt America, the shock, the trauma, the anxiety, the depression, the bewilderment…and the kindness, hospitality and generosity of spirit.

From Washington, DC the train took me Chicago, then I boarded my first flight since Calgary to journey to Houston and from there I flew to Santa Fe. My final destination was San Francisco and on my way to listen to a talk by David Eggers on his newly released, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, I received a call from the board chair of the Canadian Unity Council to discuss how we as an organization might react to 911, suggesting a full page ad in the Calgary Herald in support of the Muslim Community.

We can do better, I thought. We needed to talk about this, bring people together, quell the fears, put out the metaphorical fires that were igniting in Calgary’s Muslim and Jewish communities. Casting back to that time, our homogenous, energy-based town knew little or nothing of Al Queda, Osama Bin Laden, or Islam in general. This, if there ever was one, was a teaching moment.

On my return, we gathered the leaders of the three faith communities and proposed a dinner where we would invite 350 influencers from all sectors – education, non-profit, law, policing, business, and social services – to explore the challenges and opportunities arising from 911. The timing was ideal, it would occur 90 days after 911, during the holy month of Ramadan, an annual celebration unknown to the majority of our citizens.

We called it Breaking the Fast and designed the event so that every viable element would be an opportunity to learn, about Islam, about each other. Iftar, the evening meal, began with the call and prayer mats welcomed all guests in the room adjacent to the ballroom. The Palliser Hotel catering staff prepared a Halal feast, served family style. The dialogue was facilitated and each carefully curated table used a feather as a talking stick, to ensure that all voices were heard.  Participants enjoyed the opportunity to engage in conversations about Islam, pluralism, racism and bridge-building initiative ideas.  They put faces to names and settled into a comfort level with the “others”. I watched the evening unfold as we all experienced the power of symbols, rituals, music – art in its many forms.

The result? Smaller groups continued to convene to address specific issues and a second dinner was organized for 2002. The initiative was perceived as a ground breaker and the model was repeated in Vancouver with the UBC Museum of Anthropology as a partner.

 

Full report: Breaking the Fast 

Share this:

Crossroads

We piloted Crossroads in 2000 in Calgary and due to its success, reproduced it annually over the next five years in Winnipeg, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Yellowknife and then back to Banff, Alberta with a focus on youthIn retrospect, the concept was revolutionary, bringing sixty Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women from Calgary and area together for a weekend long “sharing circle” to explore the challenges and opportunities facing urban Aboriginal youth. The theme was not as important as the gathering itself. This was a first. All but a few of the participants had ever had a meal with a woman from the other culture. We were in every sense foreign to each other even though, geographically, we were neighbours.

It took nine months to plan with an extraordinary team of courageous women from both cultures who committed to understand each other, exercise patience with each other’s cultural idiosyncrasies and unconscious biases, calmly point out insensitivities, all united in the common goal of finding common ground. This is where I had my first taste of art and experience as a powerful tool for profound change. Our cross-cultural committee was appropriating what Indigenous people have known and lived for millennia – art, design, creation is in everything.

Quoting from Gerald T. Conaty in the preface to Honouring Tradition – Reframing Native Art:

“Art has always been an integral part of Native People’s lives. It was interwoven with the production of tools, the construction of dwellings, and the manufacture of clothing. While European cultures separate art as a practice that is distinct from most aspects of daily life, First Nations people have a more holistic understanding of the world. Visual art has always been integrated with song, dance, ceremony, and oral traditions. In these cultures, it is not possible to speak of art; art is part of everything. “

Over the weekend, we came to know each other through sharing meals, art, dance and stories. But first we had to “break the ice” as the Westerners would say. Would we do something with name tags? Play a game? We wanted to create an interactive activity that would establish trust and encourage the women to get to know each other, and one that would establish a theme that could be carried through the weekend and beyond.  We landed on “talking sticks” – a symbolic branch decorating activity. Carol put the suggestion forward and as with all elegant solutions, the positive outcomes are innumerable and unpredictable.

On arrival, all the participants sat in a large circle. In the middle of the floor was a basket with a number of branches from a fruit bearing tree, each carefully harvested and pruned by Carol’s husband, an arborist, and later blessed by an Elder. The concept of the talking stick in Aboriginal culture was explained, how it was passed from one person to the next in a sharing circle. If you had the stick, you could speak or not speak and for as long as you needed. We would use a talking stick in sharing circles throughout our sessions.

Carol also spoke of the strength of the group versus the individual by demonstrating how easy it is to break one stick, but if you hold five or six in a bundle, it becomes impossible. She spoke to the symbolism of uniqueness (each being different), of strength (all together, they couldn’t be broken), of womanhood (fruit-bearing trees), and of community (part of a whole).  The branches united the women during the weekend and continue to serve as a reminder of their personal and group commitment after the event, a memento of our learnings.

After each participant handpicked her stick from the basket, we distributed small containers of colored ribbons, beads, feathers, strips of hide, small silver jingle bells. Our task was to take the weekend to decorate our stick, and take it home as a memento of our learnings.

We spent the next fifteen minutes meeting each other by “shopping for our supplies”. I smiled as I watched the Indigenous women circulate, knowing exactly what they were looking for, the others in new territory, with trepidation but open to the adventure. This, I realized later, was perhaps the first time the non-Indigenous women felt at some level that there may be more to learn from the people who had been here for millennia. Through the creation of something together, through humility, bonds were being forged, braided, like sweetgrass.

 

Full report on the conference:Crossroads 2000 

Share this: