Off the Bookshelf
by Rosemary Brown
In 2015 the Banff Centre Press published an interesting and thought-provoking collection of essays entitled Restorying Indigenous Leadership: Wise Practices in Community Development. The editors, Cora Voyageur, Laura Brearley, and Brian Calliou pulled together essays from Canada, America, New Zealand, and Australia to challenge western notions of leadership and “best practices” in community development; and to explore the concept of “wise practices.”
In Indigenous cultures, stories serve as a vehicle for transmitting history, values, and cultural and spiritual practices. Restorying is about infusing Indigenous ways of knowing and being into training programs for Indigenous leaders and into community development processes.
One of the key critiques of western models of community development imposed by governments and NGOs has been the failure to incorporate traditional ways of knowing and being, and in fact to see these as deficits rather than assets.
Another critique is that training programs which rely on case studies of “best practices” assume that these will be inspirational and will lead to action. There is also an assumption of universality, that one size of community development fits all. “Wise practice” in contrast, recognize the uniqueness of different Indigenous communities and the need for each community to develop and lead their own processes, incorporating traditional values and relationships.
While the first essay in the book examines and contrasts western ideas of leadership and community development with “wise” practices, most of the ensuing essays provide examples of “wise” practices in various Indigenous communities around the world. Participants in the book club were especially interested in chapters that addressed Indigenous women’s involvement in community development; the role of the arts; and the concept of “deep listening…”
In the Settlers’ Book Club, we turned to a futuristic novel called Parable of the Sower, by Black American author Octavia Butler.
I am not a fan of dystopian fiction and was not sure how I would feel about this book. However, Butler is an amazing storyteller, and this book drew me in at once. Written in 1993, the novel revolves around a teenage Black girl, Lauren, who grows up in a small community near Los Angeles in the mid 2020’s. Lauren’s father was a preacher and educator and Lauren admired him greatly. However, she developed her own ideas about God and spirituality as a means of making sense of the chaotic world around her.
Butler says in a video interview that she wrote science fiction because it provided room to comment on many aspects of society. Parable of the Sower is disturbingly prescient. Lauren lives in an armed community surrounded by walls to keep out the desperate and destitute. Travel outside the walls is very precarious and people disappear all the time. Climate change is impacting people’s lives. Political and social order is in disarray, and the US authoritarian President Donner puts corporate interests ahead of workers’ rights. Jobs are extremely hard to find so corporations can entice people to work in “company towns” where their labour is exploited and they end up in debt to the companies.
When her community is overrun and set ablaze, Lauren escapes, and with a few neighbours, starts heading north. She carries with her a few supplies and her belief in “Earthseed” as an alternative spiritual practice. There are many violent encounters on the road, and Lauren and her companions come close to death before they find a haven of sorts and start to rebuild a community.
Butler’s book so intrigued me that I read the sequel, Parable of the Talents. While some might argue that Butler’s work describes extreme scenarios, I would remind us that in North America people do live in gated communities and are armed, artificial intelligence is wiping out jobs, we are experiencing global warming, and the US is led by a President who promotes racism, protects the interests of the rich and ignores the poor, and who is set on taking over whatever he wants.
While I do not wish to go into detail about Lauren’s spiritual beliefs and “Earthseed”, it’s important to note that in her worldview, survival depends on the community we build around us and on how we treat and support each other.
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