BACK TO
THE CIRCLE
Since time immemorial, Indigenous planning practices have been based on the circle, symbolizing the interconnection between people and land. By coming back to the circle, we nurture trust, improve our ability to work together, and make every voice count. In this section, we invite you to build on the strengths and knowledge that already exist in our communities.
Living
knowledge
Indigenous planning practices have always been rooted in the concept of the circle. Languages and traditions teach us how to be in relationship with the earth, with ourselves, with everything that exists. Rites of passage teach us that each being has a role and a place in the circle, at every stage of their life.
Living in circle isn’t always easy. Why? Everyone has different reasons, but there is one that most people have in common: we have experienced difficult things in the past that prevent us from feeling safe in the present.
This is why people develop practices to live well together, to make collective decisions, and to repair when ruptures in relationship happen.
In this section, we introduce tools to renew the circle through community-led planning.
renewing
Connections
To create a community plan, people must be able to trust each other enough to work together. Suzy Goodleaf (Kahnawà:ke), Nancy Rother (Montreal) and Karonhiénhawe Linda Delormier (Kahnawà:ke) – three of our mentors – developed a workshop they call “Renewing Connections: trauma-informed organizations.”
Their workshop supports the development of trauma-informed organizations, through a process based on building awareness, learning to recognize trauma, and supporting people to take action.
Since Indigenous planning is first and foremost a process of reconnection, their lessons are valuable assets in your CCP toolbox.
Tribute to Oral History
a word from our mentors
We are part of a living lineage that grows every time it gets passed down.
We have adapted these teachings from traditional elders and knowledge keepers, such as Jane Middleton-Moz (Anishinabe), Rebecca Martel (Cree), Sylvia Maracle and Darrel Thompson (Kanien’kehà:ka), Loretta Afraid of Bear Cook and Leonard Little Finger (Lakota), Emmy Mitchell and Tekanerahtèn:sere Francis (Kanien’kehà:ka), and many, many others, too many to name. We are also grateful to research mentors such as Daniel Siegel, Bruce Perry, Gabor Maté, Brené Brown, Bessel van der Kolk, Renée Linklater, and Peter Levine. We invite you to explore the meaning of these teachings so that you can embody them from your own perspective. We hope to inspire you to bring in your own teachings, and to share them in turn.
Growing
awareness
Core principles
To integrate our mentors’ teachings in your planning practice, we first invite you to explore a few key elements.
Six interrelated principles
are at the core of the workshop :
What is trauma?
A trauma is an internal wound caused by an event or a series of events that exceed one’s capacity to face danger. When we go through an event that exceeds our capacity to face danger, our body moves into survival mode.
To protect us, our body splits the information in two. The memory of the event is stored in one part of the brain, while the physical sensations and emotions related to the event are stored in another part of the brain.
Sometimes, these sensations and emotions are stuck, we can’t liberate them. This is the internal wound we call trauma. Traumas can continue to impact our physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental wellbeing long after the event or events are over.
Various kinds of trauma exist, and a trauma can have multiple labels. For example, a trauma can be both personal and intergenerational.
These three things are important to remember about trauma :
- Trauma is not the event itself, it’s the internal wound that continues to impact us long after the event is over.
- Each person is unique, so the same event can be traumatic for one person and not affect someone else.
- Even if we can’t change the past, we can change how we feel about the past and heal.
CCP invites us to revisit our collective past and understand how we got to where we are today. By creating spaces for sharing, we encourage the liberation of emotions and a revisiting of the past, both of which contribute to healing.
Why talk about trauma in planning?
Traumas are internal wounds related to past events which continue to impact us in the present. They affect our sense of safety, our behaviour, our relationships…
In everyday life, these internal wounds can be activated in several ways. A sound, a smell, a taste, a place, a name, or an anniversary date… Suddenly, we are not in the present anymore, our body is reacting as it did during the past event and drops into survival mode to protect us against “danger.” This is what we call a trigger.
When we are triggered and in survival mode, we don’t have access to our “rational” brain. Our “sensory” brain takes over and does it’s very best to protect us.
Survival mode manifests itself as three types of reactions :
Fight
-
Often looks like
anger, rage, confrontation, aggressiveness - High energy, adrenaline
Flight
-
Often looks like
anxiety, panic, avoidance - High energy, adrenaline
Freeze
-
Often looks like
numbing, absence, dissociation, paralysis - Low energy, cortisol
As community planner, you will be working with lots of different people who carry internal wounds, including yourself.
Deepening your awareness of your own triggers and learning to recognize the signs that someone is triggered and in survival mode will help you create spaces that feel safe, for yourself and for your community.
Recognizing
the Impact
In community-led planning, we work with the community’s past, present and future. Revisiting the collective past brings up all kinds of emotions: joy, pride, nostalgia, shame, disbelief, sadness, grief…
When working with a group in CCP, we need to be prepared to welcome these emotions and make space for them. Part of the preparation involves learning our history and recognizing the traumas associated with it.
Remembering where we come from
Through CCP, the community explores where they come from and where they are now, to decide together where they want to go, always grounding themselves in a place of strength.
We begin by looking back as far as possible into our past and inside ourselves, to remember who we are, and the path traveled together. We root down to have enough energy for the journey ahead.
Moving through to a more recent past and back to the present, we are confronted with the impacts of colonialism. With its destructive laws, colonialism aims to dismantle everything about Indigenous societies, all the relationships which have forever made harmony and life possible.
Some paths to help root your community :
- Revisit your creation story and the stories that tell your people how they came to be on this earth.
- Name your values and your strengths and explore what they say about you as a people.
- Explore what your language teaches about your history and identity, one word at a time.
- Learn how your ancestors made collective decisions.
- Rediscover what ceremonies can teach you about being in relationship.
- Spend time outside, with the earth.
Conference
The traumas caused by colonialism are like the ripples created when we throw rocks in the water: they continue to impact people, families, organizations, communities, and territories, through generations.
Jane Middleton-Moz, another one of our mentors, works with families and communities as they move towards healing. She teaches us how deeply oppression impacts our ability to be in relationship and work together :
Dr. Na’im Akbar also studied the impacts of oppression on communities and individuals.
“Oppression tactics aim to :
- Create a belief of personal inferiority.
- Create divisions among the community.
- Split up families and take children away.
- Create a sense of fear, dependency, and helplessness.”
– Na’im Akbar, in «Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery»
Based on this history, it makes sense that planning together is much harder today than it was in the past. By planning the future together today, we are not only creating a plan, we are renewing connections that the colonial system did its best to destroy. We are rebuilding Nations and embodying self-determination.
Feeding our resilience
Resilience is the ability to bounce back when faced with adversity. While it’s normal to experience stress and challenges,
we don’t have to go through them alone.
Protective factors help feed our resilience and face challenges without being traumatized. These factors have long been known to Indigenous Peoples. They are integrated into ceremonies, practices, traditional social structures, etc.
Everything that helps us strengthen our connections contributes to protecting us physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
PROTECTIVE FACTORS :
Moving
into action
Here are five activities to take action and put these lessons at the center of your community planning. We invite you to modify them to suit your unique context. Better yet, we encourage you to create your own, rooted in your culture and community. As always, we simply ask that you mention the names of the people whose teachings you are passing on.
Creating Safety
When starting to work with a group, a good way to promote safety is to set collective norms. It’s a different version of practices integrated into all Indigenous cultures: recognizing our relationships, bringing hearts and minds together in the present moment, and agreeing on a protocol for feeling safe together, as a circle.
As facilitator, start by asking the group what they need to feel safe – physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally – during the activity. No one is forced to answer, people respond if and when they are ready. The facilitator jots the answers down on a large flipchart paper.
When everyone has had an opportunity to speak, or when no more ideas are forthcoming, the facilitator posts the flipchart sheet on the wall, where everyone can see it. If the norm of confidentiality hasn’t been named yet, the facilitator adds it to the list.
For the duration of the activity, these norms form a collective agreement: everyone is responsible for embodying them. You can come back to the norms at any time during the activity, to remind yourselves what you agreed to, in order to feel safe together and participate fully.
Source : we learned this activity from our mentors Suzy Goodleaf, Nancy Rother, and Karonhiénhawe Linda Delormier.
Highlighting Strengths
When you start working with a group on a delicate topic, as we regularly do in CCP, people may arrive with fears and uncertainty. To continue building trust, you can use an activity called Fear and Strength in a Basket. This activity builds trust by inviting people to acknowledge their own strengths and by highlighting a fear that they have already had the courage to face. It also builds trust in the circle, as people’s honesty and vulnerability are respected, and as experiences are shared. You are welcome to use this format, and we invite you to explore what practices in your culture are meant to build trust, with honesty and courage.
The activity involves 8 steps and is best facilitated by 3 people or more, as it includes many manipulations that need to be done at a quick pace to keep participants’ attention.
- One person distributes 2 pieces of paper of different colours and a crayon, marker, or pencil to each participant.
- In the meantime, the facilitator explains the first part of the activity to participants: on one piece of paper, write down a fear you have about today’s meeting. The facilitator invites participants to put their paper in a basket when they are done. They also explain that the notes will be shared out loud with the group, anonymously.
- One person goes around with a basket collecting papers. You have to be quick here!
- As the papers are gathered, two people from the team work together to write all the fears on a flipchart paper or on a PowerPoint slide, making sure they are anonymous. Recurring ideas can be marked with a star or by noting the number of times the idea recurs (e.g. fear of being judged x3).
- In the meantime, the facilitator explains the second part of the activity to participants: on the second sheet of paper, write down a strength that you carry or that helped you get here today. Again, the facilitator invites participants to put their paper in a basket when they are done. They also explain that the notes will be shared out loud with the group, anonymously.
- One person from the team goes around with a basket collecting papers. You still have to be quick here!
- As the papers are collected, two people from the team work together to write all the strengths on a flipchart paper or on a PowerPoint slide, making sure they are anonymous. Repeating ideas can be marked with a star or by noting the number of times the idea is repeated (e.g. sense of humour x 4).
- Once both flip chart sheets or slides are ready, the facilitator begins with the fears and reads them out loud. The goal here is for participants to see that everyone has fears, that many have fears in common, and that once a fear is shared, you no longer have to carry it alone. The facilitator then moves on to the strengths, reading them out loud as well. This allows participants to see that everyone has strengths, and that everyone was able to face their fear to come to the meeting, using their strengths. They now have other examples of strengths from the group that each person can access if needed. These strengths will be there for people throughout the meeting, and throughout their lives.
Source: we learned this activity from our mentors Suzy Goodleaf, Nancy Rother, and Karonhiénhawe Linda Delormier.
Getting to know ourselves
When we work in a trauma-informed way, we never ask people to go where we are not willing to go ourselves. Introspection helps us identify our own emotions and reactions, which prepares us to support others. When we have already explored a territory, we are better prepared to support others as they visit it themselves.
We invite you to try this introspection exercise as you begin your CCP.
- Imagine a thread which connects you to each CCP theme (you can use this graph or create your own, to make sure it reflects your reality).
- Use the following questions to look inside yourself:
- How do you feel about each theme?
- What influences how you relate to each theme?
- For each theme, what aspects impact you, motivate you and/or scare you?
- What would you need to feel comfortable speaking about each theme?
- You can use your answers to create a game plan for yourself, to prepare activities with your community, etc.
- Take a moment to share your experience with someone you trust, human or not. What did you learn about yourself? How was it for you to do the exercise?
This exercise will help you prepare and be ready to support your community as you explore these themes together.
Source: this activity was created by Émie Rainville.
Shifting Attitudes
When we are trauma-informed, we consider that each behaviour has a meaning and is trying to communicate something.
To decode the message, we need to move away from judgement and shift our perspective to practice empathic curiosity.
For each behaviour, we shift from a place of asking “What’s wrong with you?” to asking “What happened to you?”
Here are a few examples commonly experienced in CCP (move the cursor over each card to see the other perspective).
To help you get ready to support your community, we invite you to practice this simple exercise with a trusted partner. It’s an opportunity to explore behaviours that activate or trigger you, so you will be prepared when you encounter them in one of your CCP activities!
You can complete the exercise one at a time, then switch and repeat as often as you like.
- Describe a behaviour that triggers or activates you.
- Using a trauma-informed lens, shift your perspective to explore what this behaviour could mean. What needs does the behavior attempt to fulfill?
- Find an empathic way to approach the situation with a person using this behaviour.
- Practice with your partner, then switch and repeat.
Source: we learned this activity from our mentors Suzy Goodleaf, Nancy Rother, and Karonhiénhawe Linda Delormier.
Promoting Awareness
When we are trauma-informed in CCP, we are constantly in learning mode, adjusting to the priorities and needs of the community.
We work from our strengths, from who we are, from our know-how and skills.
Completing an inventory of your strengths as a team is a useful tool, especially when you are just getting started with CCP. You can start with your job descriptions (for example, as CCP Coordinator), with your mandate as planning team, with your work plan, etc. Then you can explore your strengths and the places where you still feel you have things to learn to feel at ease with your work.
Strengths
- What personal strengths will help me fulfill my role?
- What do I already know how to be and do?
- What past experiences will be helpful as I fulfill my role?
- Which tasks already feel easy, simple, or clear to me?
- Who is around to support me?
Ongoing learning
- What do I want to learn?
- Which tasks are still difficult or uncomfortable for me?
- Who can teach me what I want to learn?
- Who inspires me in my work?
It’s often challenging to see ourselves clearly, so we encourage you to explore this as a team!
You need outside perspectives or ideas for community planning training? Be in touch, we are here for you.