On this day however, the organizer’s response was a masterclass in how not to handle a complaint. Fortunately, it is easy to avoid - if you know how.

_{original collage, trisha mcormond}

So, today I want to talk about what happened, how to avoid it, and what if it still goes wrong? I end the essay with Do’s and Don’t’s for organizers and 6 things to remember to protect yourself from relational violence.

Let’s get started.

Avoiding Complaints - Easy Button

(boring, safe, and no shame)

The easiest way to avoid a complaint is to use a pre-written land acknowledgement. These are innocuous, a bit bland, and most importantly achieve the objective of acknowledging where you are.

But that might not be possible. Or as more people are learning about Land Acknowledgements and reconciliation, some want to write their own as a way of demonstrating their commitment to learning and moving forward in a good way.

This decision is courageous and the writer should be supported by the organization for which they are preparing the land acknowledgement.

A colleague, Matthew Dyck, has created a cool land acknowledgement generator called Open in a Good Way. This tool helps you navigate the process with a variety of tools for opening and closing statements, as well as prayer and reflection. It’s a good place to start.

If you personally want more flexibility, or organizers who want to have more freedom in development then it is important to remember the obligations to the writer, the audience, and the People whose land is being acknowledged that need to be met.

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Obligations for Organizers who Want to do More

Here are 4 obligations for organizers to ensure land acknowledgements are developed in a good way:

1. Have clear guidelines on what language is required and what language is inappropriate

2. Provide information on how to write a good land acknowledgement (links below) to the author.

3. Review the draft land acknowledgement for factual accuracy and cultural sensitivity. Read it out loud to someone who you trust to provide honest feedback

4. If the person giving the land acknowledgement has never given one before, as the organizer you are responsible for providing necessary education and support to prepare and deliver the land acknowledgement. This support is best from someone with experience and cultural knowledge

It’s Written, Now What? Continued Obligations

The organizer’s obligations to the audience and the people continue beyond the preparation of the land acknowledgement. Even with these steps in place, mistakes are possible during the deliver. Yes, even by the most well-meaning, well-educated, well-connected people. That’s what happened a few weeks ago.

Why? Because mistakes are unavoidable when you are learning to do something new and growing. Mistakes are also deeply uncomfortable to people who were raised in Western systems.

I was involved in the event, the complaint and the aftermath - which has been unpleasant - including my own resignation from an organization I really enjoyed being a part of. I want to share what I learned to avoid this happening to others, and to set you up for success if you find yourself in the same position.

What is a Land Acknowledgement?

Land acknowledgements have existed long before settler colonialism landed on Turtle Island. For the purposes of this essay however, I am writing specifically about Land Acknowledgements as they are currently used in Canada by predominantly non-Indigenous organizations and individuals.

A land acknowledgement is a statement by a business or organization, and often something read at event openings, to acknowledge who stewarded the land and thank the people who live on these lands under colonial government rule. Many businesses and organizations have land acknowledgements on their websites and email signatures, as do some individuals.

The current iteration grew out of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Call to Action 92, which calls on businesses to acknowledge their responsibilities in reconciliation, including building respectful relationships with First Nation, Metis, and Inuit communities and people. Acknowledging the land is one way of increasing cultural awareness and creating a shared understanding of history.

If you want to write your own, there are a lot of resources available on how to write a land acknowledgement in a good way. One of my favourites to help you understand the purpose and practice is available from Atlantic Canada PressBooks:

_{source: Atlantic Canada Books}

If you want to deepen your understanding why we acknowledge the land, another great resource that provides some history of land acknowledgements with historical context is from the Canadian Museum Association.

Understanding the history of acknowledging the land helps create a more meaningful relationship between the person giving the acknowledgement and the people receiving it, as well as the attendees of the event or patrons of the business.

Even with all this information, and the best of intentions, sometimes Land Acknowledgements go wrong. And sometimes people then find the organizer and complain.

If you are that organizer, here is my list of Do’s and Don’t’s

Got Complaints? Organizer Do’s and Don’t’s

Scenario:

• The land acknowledgment was historically inaccurate and culturally insensitive.

• The person reading it was older and very nervous.

• Three Indigenous youth complained to me as a representative of an organization that was part of the organizing committee and had invited the youth to participate

• I asked the youth if they wanted to let the organizer know how they felt, one of them said yes.

• We approached the organizer to raise concerns

How to avoid turning a mistake into a racism, the Dos and Don’t’s if someone complains at the event:

Do

• Let the person speak freely about their concerns at first. They are hurt and need a place to express that hurt.

• Acknowledge you have heard what they said by repeating back the main point and ask for confirmation that you have understood their concerns correctly

• Ask if they have anything else to add

• Apologize.

  • Ask if they need anything in this moment

  • Ask what they need to experience relationship repair (sometimes people just need to voice their concerns and be acknowledged and it isn’t any more complicated than that)

  • Identify whether or not that is possible

    • If possible, identify possible timeline (if needed), and act

    • If not possible, explain why and ask if you can provide an alternative

    • Act on the final, agreed repair

Don’t

• Interrupt the person who has concerns when they start to speak. This isn’t about you and how you feel. You made the mistake and now you have to be accountable for the injury

• Remain emotionally centered rather than expecting the person making the complaint to soothe your shame or guilt

• Say “I hate land acknowledgements” to the person raising the concern. If you hate them, why are you doing them?

• Say “I have learned so much from my Indigenous friend” because if you are interrupting, clearly you have not learned from said “Indigenous Friend”

• Tell the person who has raised concerns why they are wrong. Especially if you are old and white

• Blame the person who made the mistake. Particularly if said person has no experience. You are the organizer, do your job

• Explain why it wasn’t the problem we think it is

• Defend why you did not review the land acknowledgement

• Explain there are more important issues to be dealt with and this one has to wait

But say the concerns are raised, and you - as the organizer responsible for the land acknowledgement that created the concerns - act from the Don’t category more than from the Do category. Can you recover?

Yes you can. Because most Indigenous people recognise that this is a journey, mistakes happen, and it takes courage to recognize and admit when a mistake has been made and an injury has been caused.

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Recovering From The “I Did a Don’t” Category

Indigenous worldview does not expect perfection. Learning curves and different ways of experiencing responsibility are recognized as a part of everyone’s journey. This is the only way we are able to expand our skills is by being bad at things until we learn to be good at things.

However, Indigenous worldview does require accountability for relational violence. This accountability is required to repair the damage and restore trust between parties for the future.

If you are not able to provide these, you will create more conflict and I would recommend you do some reflection on why you want to take a leadership role if you are not willing to also accept the leadership obligations.

There are three non-negotiables:

1. When recovering from the “I Did a Don’t” you must accept the issue has evolved from the original concern

2. Recognise you are part of the problem

3. Respecting the person, and your relationship with them, as they work to address the concerns.

A key part of respect? Do not lie about what you’ve done. Do not talk behind people’s back. We find out and you look like an idiot.

Once you accept these non-negotiables, there are a few things you can do to try and salvage a working relationship. It is important to realize however, you have done significant harm and it is unlikely the person who raised concerns will trust you again quickly.

1. First you must accept accountability and name what it is you have done and how it has harmed the other person.

2. Return to the Do’s and Don’t’s above

Bad Recovery Example

Here is an example of the wrong approach and why. The example uses words that mean concern and commitment, but the email demonstrates the exact opposite.

First, the full email, including my response at the top:

Now, here’s the breakdown of what went wrong in this email response:

1. No one has asked me why I continued to raise the issue so this is starting off on the wrong foot. I already know the writer is not overly concerned with their apology because they don’t know, or care to know, why they are apologizing.

2. First, don’t lie. You do not appreciate that I brought this to your attention so why are you saying you do? If you are committed to Indigenous worldview, as you say below, you would know that honesty and truth are two of the seven teachings so we take that -ish serious.

Also, I don’t know how you learn from mistakes if you don’t ask what the mistakes were or how to correct them.

3. A commitment to “continually learning how to integrate Indigenous solidarity and Indigenous worldview” feels a bit like I am being chastised for doubting their sincerity because their actions are not following the sprinkling in several $10 phrases from acceptable journals.

4. This sentence is deceptive. It looks like the writer is making room for the recipient to decide. But the start “If you would like” is not an invitation to repair the relationship, it is a way of evading responsibility by placing the onus on the injured party. Kind of tedious, definitely immature.

My Response

I decided to turn my response into something everyone can benefit from and wrote this essay. I chose not to discuss this with the individual any further because I don’t waste my time meeting with people who think they are better than me.

No one has my permission to belittle me as a way to make themselves feel good.

My initial response to the email was longer. A bit of an essay on what went wrong. I wrote it, learned a lot about why I was upset, realised the information would be wasted on the organizer. (Takes me a while to catch on sometimes.)

The person who wrote this email explainer to me is experiencing this as though they are the injured party because I raised a concern; that I “just don’t know how hard they worked”. I can do nothing to change their mind, but I can share what I have learned with others.

Final observations about this response:

There are a lot of words written in this email that tick the box but have nothing to do with actually committing to change. At this point, the relationship is fractured and requires tenderness and concern.

What do I see here? A person more committed to looking good than doing good. Someone who decided to make their discomfort my fault.

The Rescue that Would Have Had a Higher Success Rate

How could this email have rescued the relationship instead of completely ending it? It’s so simple:

We understand we made a mistake. We are not sure how or where but we are committed to learning, Indigenous solidarity and Indigenous worldview. Are you willing to meet with us to explain what happened and how we can do better in the future?

Instead the organizer chose relational violence. No questions, no curiosity, no invitation.

There are some people who may continue to be willing to engage in a relationship if you get this third part wrong too. As you can tell from my response at the top, I’m not one of them. I have chosen to take a much more enjoyable path:

Protecting Yourself From Relational Violence

I will end with this message to people on the receiving end of relational violence outlined in the email exchange above.

We cannot avoid getting hurt, that is part of life. We can avoid repeat injuries by recognizing signs and having clear boundaries of what is acceptable. If you are on the receiving end of relational violence, here is what you need to remember:

1. You deserve better. Two chances for redemption are more than sufficient.

2. Evaluate their actions, not just their words. People who say they are interested and do not ask questions are not interested, they are angry. Walk away from the angry people to avoid being hurt again.

3. Deciding to end the relationship might be hard, but staying where you and your culture are disrespected is harder because the disrespect will continue to grow, undermining your self-worth

4. People who cannot admit they have made an error will always attack those who can, usually when you are vulnerable. Avoid people who avoid accountability.

5. Go beyond comfort. Learn to celebrate standing up to bad behaviour. It’s the most radical thing you can do.

6. You do not need to be polite to people who have consistently failed to be respectful to you. You can walk away and block their toxic excuses. I do and it feels great.

Most importantly, do not allow one (or twenty-five) selfish individuals make you give up on people. Take risks, meet new people, read new books. Right now, respect yourself and use your voice in small moments so when the big ones come along you you are prepared.

Start now. Start small and when you are scared. That is the only make big changes.

Registration for Indigenous Systems Thinking Crash Course is now open. I’d love to have you join us

Class starts July 23. There are two times 10am-noon and 6pm-8pm MDT. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/indigenous-systems-thinking-a-crash-course-evening-edition-tickets-1992374094550?aff=oddtdtcreator

OR book a 30-minute call to learn about my coaching services https://tidycal.com/trisha2/30discover

Finally, if you want to know more about Indigenous Worldview and what I do? send me an email at trisha@trishamcormond.com

Harry Tuttle’s Demise (screengrab) Brazil 1985 Terry Gillam

I know that for some reason it is important, but I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would want to spend time tracking old receipts for shit that happened months or years ago, when there are living breathing people right here in front of us and books to read, music to listen to. Woods to walk in, cats to pet and dogs to howl with.

Why would anyone want to spend time with stupid bits of paper with arcane symbols telling someone I happened to buy cherries, ginger ale, and get $50 cash back on May 2, 2025 at the superstore in Windermere so the people I was meeting with had a snack?

My books are still all on shelves, and my journals are all stacked in storage, my work products is sourced and I ensure I do no harm. These papers make sense to me and as a sociologist, what people document of their life is deeply compelling.

But my receipts and paperwork for things that the government cares about but for me feels like onerous ridiculous justification for complexity are overwhelming. And this has been exacerbated by the fact that the government has asked me after more than one filing to prove that my children are mine. But they won’t tell me why. And that creates a lot of nervousness for me as a single mum already under social scrutiny.

Paper is also an excellent way of keeping track of things that happened in the past that we would all be better off if we just let go. Like old report cards that you worked hard for and then the grade came and it wasn’t as high as you were hoping. Or the feedback was something like “Trisha is a bright girl, but her constant questions disturb other learners.” and you knew you did something wrong by someone’s standards, but since you didn’t get that book you have no idea what. Or who can tell you what you should do instead.

I am not talking collective history - that is something else entirely. More importantly, we lose our collective history when we are only interested in tracking things that relate to documenting performance, money, or extraction-based, based economic activities in ways that make them justifiable.

For example, my receipts for volunteering are not tracked - I don’t get a rebate on my taxes for the time I spent at the community league or on the school council.

I am talking specifically about the way paper is used as a mechanism of control and to enforce obedience, and when - like me - you grow up believing your very life is a mistake, then paper and records and all the institutional exchanges can become overwhelming.

Paper that proves I exist and that my kids are mine. That I have the right pedigree to live in the house I live in, to justify the job I do. My degrees stand-in as a proxy for capable.

This is the kind of paper I am talking about - the bureaucratic paper that exists to justify the paper that existed before. So I sit on some sorts of paper until it feels like it might sweep me away Brazil style like poor Harry Tuttle.

And then there is money!!

Everyone knows there is a right way to spend money and a wrong way to spend it. And if you spend it the wrong way, it means you don’t care about your future, or what will happen to you as you age. How irresponsible!

Also, please buy now because if you don’t the economy will collapse and no one will be able to afford to live and all the good things we have will vanish: food will never grow again, and everyone will blame you.

By the way, did you file your taxes so we can evaluate whether or not you’re spending your money correctly, according to arcane rules that feel unnecessarily confusing if this is supposed to be about government administration, you know?

Money has become this totally perverse proxy for value. We increasingly see that those with the most money do not seem to have values that ensure the wellbeing of others, even as we hand them more power.

And since the people being targeted by legislation and corporate policy changes (hello Deloitte getting rid of family-friendly policies and then bidding on contracts to create healthy workplaces?) are the same ones as me, I have a low grade anxiety that they will judge my spending and then evaluate me as less worthy of belonging.

And these fears have held me back for years because I don’t know how to manage the paper (and electronic records, so it’s constantly expanding) that comes along with 21st century life. I am afraid

1. I’ll “get caught” and someone will discover I am a ‘bad person’ and I will go to jail

2. My alcohol purchases will raise some eyebrows and the government will start an investigation into my ability to be a fit mother (my kids are well into their post-secondary)

3. Car rentals will suddenly become illegal and I will have to explain to them why I rented a car so many times in 2024 and 2025

4. My paper records will result in the government raiding my house for evidence (what kind? I don’t know … on who? I have no idea … did I do something wrong that they would raid my house? No but have you read the news)

5. My regular professional upgrading will be seen as unnecessary and I will lose my business license.

Now, I never said these were rational fears and that is actually the point. Many of the fear I have about paperwork and money are a result of watching news and movies and hearing all the time about how people are irresponsible both growing up, and now as an adult.

The undercurrent is:

Fiscal responsibility means job cuts, and service cuts

Fiscal prudence means no treats or extravagance - austerity for all

Fiscal wisdom means always finding ways to save, even while maintaining appearances

Good people tighten their belts and buckle down to make things work. That kind of life feels exhausting to me. What are we constantly tightening our belts for? Where is all this belt-tightening leading, since there don’t seem to be a lot of benefits for my neighbours either.

And so I don’t stop buying good olive oil from my local Italian grocer but I also feel guilty about wanting to enjoy my life right now. While I am living it. Rather than watching other people enjoy a good life that I might someday win the lottery to access.

And since I feel guilty, and ashamed of my lack of commitment, I ignore my receipts, and my mail and sometimes my bills (thank creator for automated payments - I am sure it is the only reason I still have a house) and then the paper grows. And the more the paper grows the more I ignore it. Until …. Harry Tuttle.

Getting it under control

I knew, and am still hyper-aware, that not being responsible each week (or month) meant that eventually there would be all the months at once to combat. And I knew that would be almost debilitating. So I asked a few people I knew if they would help me.

They said yes. Offered to “show me their system” and “walk me through records management”

But when I followed up to set a time? Crickets … I began to feel like even just asking for help to get my paperwork in order was a sign of weakness. A failure to be a ‘responsible adult’ and therefore deserving of whatever horrible fate I was on the receiving end of for failing to be good at bureaucratic paperwork.

Finally, after 15 months of letting this paperwork and receipt juggernaut pile up in nooks and crannies and ziploc baggies, I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders and began to look for supports. It just so happened a workshop was happening in early May and there was a session for entrepreneurs about building a stong business:

It felt like exactly the catalyst to get me reoriented in a good way. Strong habits? definitely needed those!

Manage cash flow? Yes please!

The promised moment of truth

Because the session was advertised as ‘learning how’ and ‘walk you through’ I expected a presenter who understood financial anxiety at least (I had hopes for financial or institutional trauma but didn’t expect it) and would introduce this with respect for early learners.

But when the session started there were a lot of acronyms, numbers, and references to organizations that I wasn’t super familiar with. Not surprising because, like I said, finances and administration is not my strong point. So I sat and listened for a few minutes and then asked

“Sorry, but I don’t understand the acronyms, or a lot of what you are referencing. And maybe that’s just me - I can leave if this is everyone else’s knowledge level?” I looked around, no one said anything.

I turned back, “can you dumb it down for me please?” They did, for that subject but swiftly returned to banker-speak and lost me (and much of the observable audience).

A few minutes later, one banker stood up to discuss business plans - not quite what I was expecting, but ok. He joked a bit as he opened and then said “What you put in your business plan doesn’t matter to me. It just has to be meaningful for you.”

Now, what kind of bullshit is that? We all know that there is an expectation of certain information being in business plans. That’s what we were there to learn so to make a “it doesn’t matter to me …” statement is completely disingenuous. These sorts of statements create institutional harm and distrust because the representative is being intentionally obscure.

Statements like this are what sets people up for failure. I sat in my chair in disbelief at the absolute lack of awareness from the presenters. And then I left. The session, the full conference. Why?

The weight of money mistakes

I was super nervous about money and finances because finances are unforgiving. I know of no confessional where our financial sins can be forgiven. If we take financial risks, there’s no search and rescue to get us off the cliff edge. And I am pretty sure I am not the only one who carries this weight - it’s why government pensions are often referred to as ‘golden handcuffs.’

So sure, businesses, send random bits of paper every year to an unforgiving bureaucracy. But I am behind the business and I am sending this without context or a chance to explain my decisions and what I learned. Why this person? Why that provider? Clearly they failed me since 6 months later I needed to start over. Or sure, maybe I failed myself or needed something different. The point is, there is always that feeling of judgement.

And for me, that is sometimes almost unbearable. What will these strangers think of me and the mistakes I’ve made over the last year, two years? Five? Because this is all documented and my history is exposed to anyone who looks.

It’s makes me feel vulnerable in ways that are hard to explain. But the death of Tuttle captures it - that my identity, all of who I am and what I’ve done over the years - all the good things even in the midst of mistakes - are lost under paper receipts of miscalculations.

And given the rise of credit card debt, and the success of financial insolvency experts, I’m guessing I’m not alone.

So how do I tackle this for me? Looking at the headlines about consumer debt and economic confidence after sitting in that stupid conference room filled with speakers who also knew very little about how finances work, I decided that come hell or high water, I was not giving in.

I embraced this newfound righteous anger at systems designed to fail people who asked questions or try something different. Or just want to do something that isn’t about maximizing profit.

I was not going to let some stupid set of bureaucratic rules set up to be intentionally difficult to navigate, reserving access to those who could afford it or had the time to learn it themselves, beat me. Instead, I looked at the times I had hauled myself up, figured out what it was I needed to do, and then with the help of prayer, meditation, wine on patios, walks in the river valley, yelling loudly at Creator, painting and task-avoidant housecleaning, I did it.

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How I conquered my financial and paper overwhelm

Decide to do something different

Maybe it was feeling talked down to at the seminar, maybe it’s menopause, maybe it’s a combination but I realized that after 30 years of this somewhat debilitating fear, I was still alive and no one was coming to arrest me so I could tackle it.

Reach out to the right people

It occurred to me that people presenting at conferences who can’t speak to an audience without sounding like there’s a stick up their butt were the wrong people to speak to. Instead, I needed to learn to rely on the people around me who had proven themselves supportive

Rather than being afraid of not knowing things when I spoke to them, I decided to be honest - completely transparent.

Don’t get me wrong: this was still as uncomfortable as feck! It took me three days to finally accept that was what I needed to do.

I happen to have an accountant who I finally was able to open up to. I cried at her desk as I tried to explain how every time I opened up the spreadsheet the numbers just swam in front of my eyes

And I spent almost a decade doing hardcore data analysis so this made no sense to me. Why are these numbers so hard?

At this point, it is important to make sure you work with the right people for you. Not everyone who says they can help are actually able to help. Sometimes they just want to hit their monthly sales goals.

And sometimes their values are different than yours. This matters if what you are interested in is building a better future rather than just making money. Two years ago I still was worried people would think I was a loser if I told the whole truth. Part of that is because I was choosing the wrong people to ask for help because their values didn’t align with mine, I didn’t feel safe

What does this mean? Stop going to the hardware store for cold cuts. Ask people who want you to win and when you are around them you feel secure. Maybe people you know and trust aren’t able to help you with your paperwork but they might be able to help you find someone they trust.

This last part is important because for a few years, my nervous system was out of whack and often confused people who felt familiar with safety. But since I had just come from a highly toxic workplace, the people who felt familiar in professional settings were also toxic. I was not making good decisions so I needed to bring along someone who could.

Embrace fierce self-compassion

Being radically self-forgiving also means being fully accountable, because forgiveness means there are no excuses. To do this, I did the same thing for this as I have done over and over again:

1. What are the values I used when making decisions?

2. Examples of when those decisions worked (to counter when those decisions backfired)

3. Other challenges I felt overwhelmed by and overcame?

4. The strengths I called on to persevere?

I reoriented from the things I’ve done that needed to be corrected to the things I’ve done that were the right thing to do.

Then

5. I identified a role model to recall when I started to feel defeated

6. I created a mantra (well, picked one actually) and put that sticky on my desktop to remind me each time I started to give up

The mantra? I am stronger than my fear

And the role model story was a random tweet I read that popped into my head one day. I don’t even go look for it, just recalled the following details

Or something like that. And I decided that if some random person on the internet could do this, why couldn’t I? I was reasonably smart and apparently not dead yet, so what did I have to lose?

Accept and Act

This part is where so many times I had failed. I made plans, even developed entire timelines, and then just sat there and looked at them for days. In order to act, I had to accept I am going to make mistakes because I have in the past, and I have also been successful, sometimes because of those mistakes but also remember I have done good things well and will do so again

> Then I set a deadline with my accountant.

> Cancelled everything in my calendar

> Bought myself a few easy to prepare meals

> Told my kids they were on their own for a couple days (and totally failed to achieve that, so …)

And sat down to tackle the paper.

I did arts and crafts, taping receipts to sheets of paper in chronological order while listening to ((put the song here that I’m thinking of. ))

I made excel spreadsheets and entered receipts in order

I downloaded receipts from company websites and searched my email

I cringed over and over again.

And each time I reminded myself that:

1. I made the decisions I made because I only had so much capacity and my kids came first. Always

2. I corrected mistakes as soon as possible

3. I chose impact over income each time (something I need to work on)

4. I followed my first principle consistently: first do no harm

Accepting and Acting are not a one-and-done thing either, you will need to accept and act over and over again. Particularly if, like me, you get distracted by your children.

I developed a routine to help me get recentered each time. This was like a moving meditation, a somatic intervention to short circuit the anxiety by cross-body puttering with my hands.

Make Decisions Grounded in Values

Then I reminded myself of when my approach worked. I made a win list of the things I did and continue to do well to remind me that we all have different gifts.

And then I listed my strengths: perseverance, fortitude, educated risk taker, pattern recognition.

Pattern recognition stood out. I looked at the list of things I needed to do and every single time again, I felt stupid. I felt like of all the things I can do, this ability to collect later continued to be my undoing.

And I finally accepted that it doesn’t matter how much time I spent sitting in front of my desk, or how many spreadsheets I made and how many times I taped paper to paper and submitted a pretty envelope to my accountant, this will always overwhelm me

In fact, even as I’ve been building better habits into this year

Better tracking

Proactive spreadsheets and paper taped to paper

A more structured work schedule

Clearer business KPIs (yes I have them now. Well, 3)

A business calendar of events and calls to action

I have realized each month this paper/financial admin still creates panic in me. Perhaps in part because I’m still emotionally maturing into looking at my finances and thinking about my decisions strategically rather than just “Do I need it? Can I afford it? Then I’ll get it”

And so in the end? I found all the receipts I could, stuck them in a folder with bank statements and credit card statements and sent them to my accountant.

I decided I wasn’t going to force myself to ensure something that literally makes me cry at my desk. How was this embracing my values?

Well, I was gentle with myself and recognized my weaknesses, we do not all have the same gifts for a reason. And I did as much as I could within the time frame I had made with my accountant, and I was honest with her and myself that I was not able to get it all done and that I needed her assistance.

I persevered even though I was crying sometimes. There was no one else in this world who could do some of the paperwork required (including my accountant) so I had to keep going. This led me to the final step that until recently, I hadn’t been fully grown enough to understand.

Systems are important, so build some

As I worked through the paper, taped receipts to bigger pieces of paper, stuck sticky note and paper clips, wrote names and topics on the back of receipts based on my journals where I track all my work, I realised I hadn’t avoided having a system, I just hadn’t really understood that I needed one.

In the past, I was an employee and there are all sorts of things that are just automatically taken care of then I suddenly had to worry about that in the past were handled in the black box labeled “Government Things” and since paper was a government thing, I never made the connection I needed to make my own government things black box all of a sudden.

And I am no good at black boxes, so again: accountant and another friend who is an organizational genius were my helpmates. But here there was also my yoga partners, and my Friday night patio companions who always had their own stories of failures. Systems are not just filing and records keeping, systems are support and safety.

Build some of these, you will need it. This goes beyond reaching out to people, as some of those are relationships grounded initially in transactional service provision. These people are important, but support in this case something different: this is the person who you trust when you are scared, and who you know has your best interests at heart.

Learning how to create systems that build both sorts of relationships well is important, because these relationships are a reflection of how you feel about and support yourself. If you don’t like and trust the people you do business with, you might want to check that out.

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Final Thoughts

Even just thinking about the look on Janet’s face when she got the email makes me cringe a bit. Because I kept insisting I was totally capable. And you know what?, maybe I am after hours of dedication and sweating and crying.

Or I could just hire someone I trust and hand things over to them, use the tools they provide going forward so I am not in this place ever again. This removes the pain from my life while also giving me an opportunity to work with someone who can help me develop these skills.

For some reason I had this idea in my head I was supposed to be able to do this myself. The financial, business admin, paper stuff was an unavoidable prerequisite. But it’s not. We can decide to do things differently.

So that’s what I did.

1. Decide I want something different

2. Reach out for assistance (my kids, my accountant, prayer, random people) and check qualifications.

3. Embrace fierce self-compassion: be radically, delusionally self-forgiving and actively accountable for all my actions

4. Act on my strengths, Accept mistakes

5. Make decisions that align with your values.

6. Systems help maintain habits, so build some

And I realised that these steps are the same over and over again. There are tools that I use to help me get through each of these, like breathing or walking or making lists. Reminding myself I am a good person, being involved in my community even when I would rather sit on my sofa.

There are so many tools out there, but the tools have to be put to good use. These tools, well-applied, create meaning and purpose, they bring me joy. And maybe that was what I was missing: the understanding that work and joy are inseparable, not mutually exclusive.

Paper and financial stress had been an impediment to joy, to doing work that really mattered because I was so nervous about things I was ‘supposed to do’ to ‘be good’. Letting go of these chains around my neck that I never asked for has been amazing.

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At some point, women stop trying to be good at everything.

For some of us, that happens at 49. For others, it happens when we’re drowning in receipts and shame. For most of us, it happens during menopause - that recalibration where our bodies are asking us to stop performing competence and start claiming power.

If you’re navigating this shift and want to explore what it means to lead differently - not better, just differently - I’m running a workshop on June 20 for women in their mid-to-late 40s discovering their fiercest selves. Registration link: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/1989624500440?aff=oddtdtcreator

OR 📩 drop a note to ask questions.

On Saturday I attended a community emergency preparedness workshop hosted by my community league. I’ve spent over a decade working in emergency management in some capacity but I hadn’t attended a community preparedness workshop for years and figured I needed a refresh.

I went with one question: How will our city support women and children as we experience increased creeping disasters like heat waves, drought, and prolonged wildfire smoke since all of these lead to increased male violence, particularly domestic violence and child abuse?

There were 10 of us at the event. Seven women, all community residents; three men: the presenter, the organizer (also a resident), and the city’s neighbourhood resource coordinator. A great way to get to know our neighbours, with a notable absence of men concerned about collective safety.

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Overall, the workshop provided an overview of how disasters have been managed in the past in Alberta, what the presenter had learned, and some anecdotes that exemplified how emergencies often result in creative solutions.

Like Jabbar Gibson, a 20-year old man from New Orleans, who, after Hurricane Katrina, “liberated” a bus and headed out with 8 people to drive the 300 miles to the Houston Astrodome. They rescued stranded strangers along the way and riders pooled their money to buy gas and diapers.

So did the material in this class teach me?

1. Need for clear communication in the community.

But the workshop offered no follow-up on what that meant for the community or how to do it. There was also no information provided on emergency communications other than the alerting services or how residents could be in contact with officials.

There was also no information about best practices for communities who would like to be more proactive in developing relationships with the city to facilitate communication in emergencies.

2. The community needs a resource list.

Sure, we played “bingo” with the attendees to learn the room had things like generators and landlines. But there was no suggestion on how to operationalise this, or actually build a community resource list or what to do with it when you had it.

Later in the day I made a patently ridiculous suggestion that there should be no resource list at the main hub and the presenter accepted that as a reasonable statement.

3. People see our neighbourhood in different ways.

We made a representation of our neighbourhood on posterboard and it showed how everyone experiences their community differently. I don’t have a car, so my boundaries were informed by side streets and bus stops. For others it was based on major arteries, or official mapped boundaries. Or what it ‘felt’ like, where they accessed green space.

Doing this, coupled with the feel good stories was encouraging; we perked up at our imagined heroism. (Or maybe that was just me). At the end of the event, after a 20 minute game where we imagined there had been a tornado, the different table groups shared their experiences. Overall it was a mostly pleasant day.

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Key Takeaway for Community Preparedness.

I had noticed throughout the day there was a difference in how the groups answered the questions. The men, when they responded during the exercises often identified the issue as “Someone should have told me _____.” The women started their responses with “I needed to ____.”

I thought this was a strange difference, but since there was only a small number of people, I didn’t think anything of it. Until the end, when the presenter gave us the grand finale, the main piece of advice for community preparedness.

The answer? Block Parties.

I felt my jaw drop. I raised my hand and said “At the start of this event I raised concerns about the increase in male violence against women and children during emergencies and disasters. I don’t see how this addresses those concerns?”

The presenter had no answer.

I pressed him “We have known about the increase in domestic violence and child abuse since at least Mt. St. Helen’s in 1980 and we know women and children bear the brunt of climate change, so how is this addressed in the emergency planning process?”

The presenter hummed and hawed and eventually admitted that he had no answer.

Not even for the place where he was responsible for the safety of the community when there was an emergency.

Even worse? There were no suggestions on what should be included at these block parties, or how they create more emergency preparedness.

No information on who will organize these or what to do after the block party. And no financial assistance from the City. Although they are happy to provide traffic cones for our safety.

The list of concerns I left with feels overwhelming:

1. If men are in charge of emergency management (and largely they are), why is the most important part of community preparedness expected to be done for free?

2. Women are consistently left out of the decision-making process, and the impacts of disasters and emergencies on women and children are not a factor in any planning. (I looked at the Alberta Emergency Plan, and there is no mention of gendered violence or increased risks to women.

3. Why are women expected to do the relationship building that emergency management depends on, but not provided any supports during evacuations that ensure they are kept safe?

Under International Humanitarian Law (IHL) there is protection for:

Women Prisoners of War

Protection against Sexual Violence

Protection for Mothers (Pregnant Mothers, Nursing Mothers and Mothers of Young Children).

But during disasters, NONE of these requirements are considered in evacuations or quarantines and confinements. During COVID, domestic violence was considered a “Shadow Pandemic”

What does this mean for our communities?

I went to the event because disasters and creeping emergencies increase male violence, particularly domestic violence and child abuse. Crimes we already see increasing as the economy stalls. There is a lot of research on the impact of climate change on the safety of women and children.

But do you know what was not mentioned once in this entire 4 hour event?

Male violence and the increase in domestic violence and child abuse during disasters.

Instead we were told to organize block parties.

I have worked in emergency management since the 2013 Southern Alberta Floods and the ongoing failure of emergency management organizations to address the unequal impacts on women and children speaks volumes about what we can expect as disasters become more common.

There will be an increase in:

• Women being isolated from the larger community

• Increased violence against women, both in quantity and extremity

• Restrictions on women’s economic freedom

• Increased child and elder abuse

• Decreased access to social supports and services

• Increased domestic responsibilities on women and children

• Decreasing housing stability

• Increasing food and water insecurity

How do I know? This image shows the trends in reported intimate partner violence during hot months, no emergencies noted, increasing as temperatures increase. The research on this as a causal link is overwhelming.

The research on the need to address the increase in male violence toward women and children during and after disasters has been available for decades. Even without additional stressors, as the heat magnifier graph above shows, just a temperature change is enough to increase male violence against women.

Additionally, in multiple after action reviews worldwide there are recommendations to provide safety for women and children from male violence. And year after year no action is taken. Instead, All-Hazard Incident Management Teams are built. Or fancy radios are bought. But no action is taken to provide safe accommodations for women and children.

In fact, after the 2013 Southern Alberta Floods, the names of women who had been evacuated from a domestic violence shelter and were in hiding from their abusers were publicly posted. And nothing has changed since. (There is an excellent article that goes into more depth here)

I am also familiar with this failure personally, and not speaking from a distance. I was on the receiving end of male violence in the workplace responsible for addressing men’s violence against women after disasters. In fact, I was the lead for GBA+ (gender-based analysis) implementation. And so when I complained about what happened to me, I thought the system I had been teaching would support me.

But I was wrong.

Even as an employee - someone who’s name they actually know - they still chose to protect the men who perpetrated a violent act. If they won’t protect female employees, people they know and rely on, why would they protect women they have never met?

The Preparedness We Need to Build for Ourselves

First:

It is really hard to accept that the system that we have worked in and supported for so long has so little care for us. So take the time you need to accept this is being left on you by the very people who tell you they have the answer.

Perhaps there are skeptics: “how could she possibly know there is no positive change coming soon?”

I left government to do this for a reason, and it’s not because government was doing cool, innovative things that I could not wait to be a part of. That’s how I know we need to do this for ourselves.

The good thing? Emergency preparedness is something women are generally fairly good at. It’s the men in charge who are incompetent.

What men are good at is heroic measures that require pulling out all sorts of fancy equipment and not sleeping more than 3 hours in every 24, while yelling at people to “follow the chain of command” and in this fever, they believe they can do anything. This hangover lasts, based on my observation, for at least 10 months before they start to revert to their baseline, and then crash a wee bit.

So long-term planning and preparedness that fully integrates the lessons observed after disasters doesn’t happen unless the answer is coordinating important roundtables to discuss the hard work they have done, or trying out new toys. I know because when I needed major documents signed, I organized meetings at “unique locations equipped with a range of opportunities to see and test response equipment”. Never left without the decision I wanted.

Second:

We need each other to make this work.

More than that, we need to be honest that for women to get this done efficiently, we need to leave men’s block party suggestions at the door. When women acquiesce our safety to men, our safety is not considered.

There is a recently developed Gender Emergency Management Framework that provides a great visual for developing a plan that creates safety for women and children. It looks an awful lot like what a healthy community looks like.

The Social Determinants of Health (the blue column on the left) entered the conversation in the 1970s-ish, and are an effective way of identifying injustice, and still women are not part of the Emergency Management Continuum Process.

I am not saying block parties are a bad idea but they are insufficient so here is where I think we start:

1. Support women-owned businesses, particularly women working in industries and occupations that are male-dominated

2. Join a gardening or walking group in your local community

3. Attend community events at small businesses or public spaces

4. Donate to the food bank

5. Learn a craft or skill - woodworking, knitting, cooking on a fire, archery

6. Pay attention to local politics and attend council meetings. Meet with others afterwards to share concerns or develop plans for things that are not being addressed to be presented to council

7. Be active advocates for moving to renewable energy quickly, reducing energy volatility

8. VOTE for people who protect women and children, not profits

9. Plant garden vegetables - even if it’s a tomato plant or basil on the window - to feel the connection with growing something

Men have moved decisions in a direction that they want for years by leaving the organizing and implementation to women. This community preparedness workshop made this abundantly clear to me. There were so many opportunities for the presenter to acknowledge the disproportionate impacts, especially since he’s been in the field for over a decade. But they weren’t raised at all.

“Plan a Block Party” is not a preparedness strategy. But it certainly seems like “Women taking care of ish” is men’s preparedness strategy. We cannot trust this in their hands if we want a future where the wellbeing of women and children is part of the plan, not the plan itself.

What Does Any of This Have to Do with Indigenous Systems Thinking?

Everything.

The emergency management failures described above are not accidents. They are the predictable result of a worldview that extracts from community rather than enriching it. That measures success in equipment purchased and roundtables held rather than in the safety and wellbeing of the most vulnerable.

Indigenous Systems Thinking starts from a completely different assumption:

Everyone is wanted here. Everyone’s safety matters. The community’s job is to ensure everyone’s needs are met - before, during, and after disaster.

This is not idealism. It is the oldest model of sustainable community resilience we have. And it is exactly what emergency management is failing to provide.

If you want to understand the framework behind community resilience that actually works - for women, for children, for all our relations - I am running a 5-week Indigenous Systems Thinking crash course starting June 23.

No prior knowledge necessary. Just curiosity and a willingness to consider there might be a better way.

📩 Email trisha@trishamcormond.com to join the waitlist or ask questions.

Because block parties aren’t a preparedness strategy, community grounded in Indigenous Systems Thinking is.

“When you were little, mummy, what did you dream about being?”

I was not prepared for that question.

I had a good job. A government salary. Nice shoes and good dinners and the comfortable language of someone who talked about change for a living.

And I had absolutely no idea what I was actually working at.

That question cracked something open. Because the honest answer was: I dreamed about being free. About being loved. And about making sure other kids didn’t grow up feeling the way I felt about myself - unwanted, unloved, and alone at 16 with no one to catch them.

But none of that was in my job description. My job description was policy and program development to serve the local population by making my hierarchical superiors happy.

Here’s what I’ve learned since then: most of us are working incredibly hard. We just rarely stop to ask what we’re working at - or whether it’s actually our dream we’re building, or someone else’s.

These are 6 ways I used to get in my own way, and how I stopped.

1. Fear of being laughed at

The thought of being laughed at immediately sent my shame meter to a three alarm alert. I would feel sick to my stomach and take zero risks.

Fix: When I did things alone that were dumb, like break a glass or trip going up the stairs, I would force myself to laugh at myself instead of be angry or ignore it.

A few weeks of this at home and one day I took a faceplant on a sidewalk at lunch. Sat up and laughed my arse off before wiping off my knees and continuing on. Realised later that not once did I wonder what other people thought of me

2. Thought it was either/or

I was either a failure, or a success, at what I was doing. It was a binary switch, no nuance and no room for error. This kept me from making decisions because what if I got it wrong?

Fix: decided it was either — or —? Making it a question, rather than a declarative statement allowed me to fill in the blanks differently. I started asking what I could do instead of what the outcomes were

3. Got up for other people

Mornings used to be horrible - I would hit snooze 4 times, I would barely eat but felt rushed anyway and always picked the most urgent task to get done. I got up for other people, worked for other people, almost lived for other people.

Fix: Making the first 10 minutes of my day all for me. It didn’t matter what I wanted to do, I got to do it for the first 10 minutes of my day. For a while it was doomscolling and a few wake and bakes; I was so angry at having to spend my day on things other people wanted.

Those 10 minutes eventually became walks, journaling, yoga, 30 minutes, then eventually my life.

4. Used shame as a motivator

Anyone remember Nate spitting at his image in the mirror in Ted Lasso? I think Dave Goggins talked about how he used to tell himself he was fat and ugly. That was me, for reasons of indoctrination. My mum saying “You really think you’re attractive, don’t you? Might want to fix your hair.”

I’d say things like “Smart, hey? You did it again and are late on the report. Idiot.” I’d wake up at night panicking that I’d said something stupid in a briefing.

Fix: Strangely, it started in the weirdest way. Agreeing I did the stupid thing. The voice would go off, and rather than arguing I wasn’t stupid or I was actually working hard, I would just agree with the criticism and keep going. Eventually, I started adding a reminder of a good thing I also did.

5. Chased someone else’s dream

I didn’t have a dream of my own. Sure I wanted to get promoted, or make a certain amount of money and have a certain kind of house and lifestyle. And I wanted a career I enjoyed that ‘made things better.’ None of those are dreams though. They are both normal part of life since forever - just now we get money for our ‘jobs’ - and material outcomes that can be quite comfortably accomplished by doing what other people tell you to do.

I didn’t understand the difference for a long time. The two paths Frost mentions, I understood we got to choose but I didn’t understand that one was about aspiration and one was about obedience. I spent so much of my life thinking that being obedient meant my dreams and their dreams could be the same.

Fix: I had the job and the house. But when I suddenly could only keep my job by sacrificing myself, I was angry and wanted revenge. I also felt empty. I realised I didn’t have a dream - I had a plan. I asked myself what kept me up late when I was a teenager, when I was in university. And then I set out to build that.

6. Believed in analysis-paralysis

I spent many hours writing and re-writing briefing notes to achieve the objectives of my minister or deputy minister’s chief of staff while also passing arbitrary grammar standards set by the policy coordination office. I was told this was very important work.

I would research different articles and studies to find evidence that was more aligned with the desired approach than I would on explaining how good research applied to each outcome. This made me believe that I was doing analysis when what I was actually doing was finding ways to justify undemocratic strategic policy changes. When I left I still believed in analysis paralysis and said it was procrastination.

Fix: Pretended I was my boss and asked myself “What do you need to feel safe?” every morning. Sometimes it was a cup of tea, sometimes it was music, but I still felt stuck. Over several weeks of asking myself that, creating safety within my own working relationship, one day I said “to be able to tell the truth” and so I did.

This taught me that analysis paralysis may actually be a lack of safety to say what you know to be true.

Maybe it's Time to Ask: What Are You Actually Working At?

I still work hard. Often harder than I did when I had a regular paycheque and a boss telling me what to do.

The difference is I’m working on my dream now, not someone else’s. I never have to question whether what I say will upset the person who puts money in my bank account.

And when my kids tell me they’re worried about the future and ask what I’m doing about it, I can answer with complete sincerity: “Everything I can.”

Final Observations

Getting out of your own way is not for productivity. Or performance. Not someone else’s vision of success.

It’s for your dream. The one you had before anyone told you to be practical, the one that when you were young you cried yourself to sleep over saying “I don’t want this to happen to anyone ever again.”

Rescue it, dust it off, and make it the first thing you see everyday.

What does decolonization mean to you - and have you thought about what comes after?

Something I've been building for a while is finally ready.

You've heard about decolonization, but do you know what it actually means? Or, more importantly, what comes next?

As a Métis sociologist and systems thinker with over 22 years of experience in policy, leadership, and Indigenous worldview, I've spent years studying exactly these questions as a former dedicated civil servant turned entrepreneur and futurist.

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The answer I keep coming back to: Indigenous Systems Design, grounded in a worldview where we are all wanted, and we work together to make our communities safe and abundant.

Not a buzzword, or a trend. Instead, a practical, sustainable alternative to colonial models that aren't working for most of us.

So what is this alternative? For the last 6 years, I've explored what might work and now I want to share that with you.

I'm opening a 5-week crash course introducing Indigenous Systems Thinking and Indigenous Worldview. Since this is a survey course on a topic new to a lot of people - no prior knowledge is necessary, and questions are very welcome. We will move fast and I will share a suggested readings list.

Because this is the first time I've offered this course, I'm offering it at 50% off the regular investment, for $210. Spaces are filling fast.

In this 5 week class, you will explore

* What even is decolonization? What happens when it’s done?
* How Indigenous and Western models understand human needs differently
* Living a good life in a good way
* The Five Pillars of Indigenous Systems Thinking
* The First Law of the Hunt and what it means for leadership today

This is a high-level, fast-moving introduction designed to give you practical frameworks you can apply immediately.

Interested? Email me to register or ask questions.

All I knew was I needed clarity in my direction or I was going to have to find a job. Not because I couldn’t pay my bills, or didn’t like the work I was doing. Rather, there was a hole in my day that was affecting my wellbeing: I was growing increasingly isolated and disconnected from my community, even while the work I loved doing is in part about building healthy communities.

Lesson 1: There is a difference between isolation and separation: one can make your life more fulfilling, one will drain you.

When I worked in an office, my work life was separated from my social and family life by location and who I spent time with in each. This separation of work from my personal life created opportunities for self-reflection, hearing different opinions, and finding commonalities with people who didn’t know me outside of work.

It also created growing tension as increasingly decisions by my leadership were not aligned with my values and I was being asked to execute on things I knew were potentially harmful to our communities with little recourse for change. So I left.

Which led to isolation. I didn’t understand how to create an effective separation from work and personal life, so increasingly (in part because I work a lot) my personal life disappeared because I could always work.

Eventually I looked up and realized that I hadn’t done something not work-related for almost a year. And that isolation from my community was showing up in my work because I was feeling increasingly unable to connect with people in social situations.

Learning the difference between isolating from others and creating a separate time and space to work on my business was not intuitive, and it took some time which leads to my second lesson.

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Lesson 2: Success requires discernment: Doing business in a good way involves compromise

About four days before I was to do my pitch, a friend I hadn’t spoken to in several months called. They asked “Have you heard what’s going on? Are you still going to pitch on Wednesday?”

There had been a few events in the recent weeks that created a bit of stir in our community and I had sat with whether or not I should pitch in the days before this call but still I was caught a bit off-guard.

After consulting with some colleagues, I made the decision to pitch rather than withdraw ‘on principle’. This is why:

1. There were other people pitching who were relying on me. Behind the scenes drama is not sufficient to break my commitment to my peers

2. Opportunities to pitch are new to me, and I could not say with complete honesty that I was not withdrawing because I was afraid and using external events as an excuse

3. My business idea is a good idea that needs to be heard - but I am never going to find someone with whom I am in 100% alignment, so I need to be discerning about what I compromise on

4. The background drama did not compromise my core values

5. I would no longer allow the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I have non-negotiables in my life that are part of my decision-making process. The background drama mattered but what mattered more was the people I was doing the pitch night with and the relationships the experience built. The commitment we had made to support each other through the process.

I cannot, nor should I try to, control people and their actions. All I can do is make sure my actions align with my values in the situation I found myself in. Recognising the limits to my control and how I show up strengthened my commitment to and ability for discernment.

Finding the courage to pitch was the first hurdle. Now I had to figure out what to pitch. For years, I had been carrying an idea around but felt a bit embarrassed to share it. In the days leading up to the event though I started to trust my dream because I felt safe in what I know.

Lesson 3: When we feel safe we are capable of more than we believe

I did my pitch on an idea I have been carrying around for years, but didn’t understand how to actually start. I did not go to the pitch night with what is currently paying my bills, but rather a vision of what we could do.

My idea started small: a seminar for communities on how to create healthier personal practices and resilient workplaces, with a focus on Indigenous Systemic Design. A full day maybe, something to introduce the concepts to organizations and leadership.

As I developed it however, it grew. I started to dream about what might be possible if I went beyond seminars and teaching, to incorporating the work of Judith Herman and the practices of trauma-informed community development. What if I actually put into practice the Indigenous principle of miyo pimatisiwin (a good life in a good way) and trusted Creator?

The program I built goes beyond what I thought possible at the beginning. My Elder has given me her blessing and I have gained clarity how to execute on my ideas.

This makes it sound like once I knew what to do, it was easy-peasy and just a matter of putting the words on the paper, but that is not the case. I ended up looking perfectionism right smack in the face.

Lesson 4: Let the game come to you

This is from an old Queen Latifah movie “Taxi” when she teaches Jimmy Fallon how to overcome his driving anxiety. It was something that helped me navigate being a new mum and then I forgot this saying and moved on.

Until I began building my pitch and found myself chasing ideas, chasing the right look, trying to be the kind of person who was good at pitching. The more I acted this way, the harder it became to actually build a deck that did justice to what I wanted to say.

I was focused on form, not function and getting more lost by the hour.

As soon as I took a breath and reminded myself I knew my topic (see below), that the service is needed, and the only people there who mattered were me and my kid, I felt empowered. I decided I could say whatever pleased me since I was doing this for me, and no one else, and things began to shift.

It didn’t become easy, but it became less hard - something that was in the realm of possible. And every time I leaned into what I know, options started to present themselves for the next step.

Lesson 5: Play to your strengths, use them to overcome your weaknesses

One of my strengths is strategy and pattern recognition, one of my weaknesses is overthinking and so I had to learn:

1. When to stop thinking and start doing

2. How to stop thinking so I could start doing

I reviewed when I worked well and when I didn’t and discovered I needed an interruptor when I was doing research. The issue wasn’t I didn’t know how to execute, procrastination or “analysis paralysis” rather it was my brain diving deeply into a topic I love and wanting to understand nuance.

To provide value I also have to have customers. So just like when I began coaching, and had to learn how to tell people what I do, when building workshops I realised I needed to interrupt my desire to learn more. So I built a plan

1. I created two roles for myself: research assistant and writer/editor

2. Set a timer for research and note taking on my computer is required.

3. When the timer goes off, the research assistant takes a break

4. I get up, get a drink of water, turn on my music and sit down and edit my notes into necessary format

The auditory cue identified it was time to transition to a new task, and this kept me from getting lost in research. The key is to make sure I do both parts together. I cannot research one topic and then another successfully, instead I need to write as soon as I am done the research. (I endured several stressful weeks thinking I could do separate research days and writing days.)

My strategic thinking brain was able to see the patterns, identify an interruptor, and then plan to execute so when my research brain took over, it could only be in the leadership position for so long.

Start to notice where you get stuck, what you get stuck doing, and then when work flows. Then find ways to shift your mental state so you are able to signal when it is time to change roles.

Final Thoughts: Do the cobbler’s children have shoes?

There is a lot of work that needs to happen on my business to make my business work. A long time ago, my mum was a social worker and after a few months she stopped being a social worker. When I asked her why, she said “The cobbler’s children have no shoes” and never elaborated.

Over the years that line’s popped into my head several times but until doing this pitch I really didn’t get it. She meant that many of her colleagues expected of their clients behaviours and outcomes that the social workers themselves could not achieve.

The standard they had for others was not one they themselves met, not just professionally but in their daily life. People demanded parents never have dirty dishes in their sink while having the entire unit’s spoon collection dirty in their desk drawer.

Doing my pitch reminded me, when starting something new or hard, the things I tell people to do are also things I need to do. Not just when doing something new like a pitch, but regularly so I continue to learn and grow.

I need to challenge my routine, question my assumptions, create opportunities for reflection rather than just blindly, doggedly following previous success and expecting different results. Trying new things doesn’t always take new tactics, but it does take deploying tactics in new ways.

What I learned:

1: There is a difference between isolation and separation: one can make your life more fulfilling, one will drain you.

2: Success requires discernment: Doing business in a good way involves compromise

3: When we feel safe we are capable of more than we believe

4: Let the game come to you

5: Play to your strengths, use them to overcome your weaknesses

You Probably Want to Know: What happened with the pitch!?

It went well - better than expected. I got the words out, in order, and covered the material I wanted to cover. I stood up and shared my vision. I trusted my preparation, I spoke from my expertise, grounded in my ‘why’. The pitch may have been the goal, but the trip that taught me what I had previously missed: I wasn’t doing the work I needed to do.

So: I had a blast and I shared the stage with powerful Indigenous entrepreneurs, made connections with people in the audience, and have already set up two meetings to continue talking about what I am building. And yes, I started by telling people my experience, how awesome I am, and the person it mattered to the most was me.

I also realized that regardless of what happens next I am happy. I want to do more scary things, learn what else I can accomplish in the service of what matters to me.

• What if I fail?

• What if I succeed?

• Our fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure.

• Choosing brand over substance, form over function

• Imposter syndrome

All of these are ways of trying to name what I’m starting to think is a lack of safety, no real sense of belonging. If you believe failing makes someone less valuable, that means you are only free to grow or change in already accepted ways.

When we realise none of us are special, that we need each other to be free, we are provided a sense of safety and the dignity of risk. It’s a paradox: to be special you have to accept you aren’t special, otherwise you are not safe to be yourself. Only when all of us are safe to fail, make mistakes, be bad at things and still be welcome at the dinner table, are any of us free.

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What is the dignity of risk?

Life includes failure. Failure is how we learn: no child ever stood up and walked without a hard landing at least once, the alternative is to crawl indefinitely, knowing you will never fall but also you will never run:

There can be such a thing as human dignity in risk, and there can be a dehumanizing indignity in safety.

Perske, 1974

The right to make choices that may result in injury or failure is the only way to be free to make choices that may result in wild success and transformative, needed change. To fail though, we have to trust there is something to catch us.

The risk of going to university, or moving for a job, or even just deciding to wear a different hairstyle are all possible only if we know we still have a place that we can retreat to and recover.

For many however, risk is not available because their lives are lived on very thin margins. Financial, food, health, employment, housing insecurity reduce the freedom people have to step outside of what’s acceptable if they want to continue to fit in. They do not have a place for recovery because they are not safe. So they do not, cannot, take risks.

The Security Trap

Collective security is meant to enable risk-taking for individuals. Unions are a great example. Employment security, and thus economic stability, is meant to provide the collective ability to take risks to preserve the safety of others, and enhance everyone’s wellbeing.

Unions are often misunderstood to be about worker’s wages and benefits. But at their core they are risk mitigation strategies to support the wellbeing of everyone. When a worker spots unsafe conditions or unethical practices, speaking up shouldn’t mean risking their livelihood.

Unions used to provide that safety net – they were essentially collective insurance for workers to advocate for and protect the goals of broader civil society. In the pursuit of being special however, people decided they didn’t need each other and left unions.

Now collective wellbeing has been lost and instead individual financial stability has become like a big comforter that people wrap around themselves to keep the peace. I know because I used to do it too. I used to think that I could make enough money that one day I would be free and could build my dream then. All I had to do was fit in long enough. The longer I worked to fit in however, the harder it became to find the self-worth to leave.

Learning that promotions and paycheques are often a hindrance to building big dreams has been hard because I wanted to believe that I could have security provided by someone else and also build my dream - but that isn’t how it worked, at least not for me.

Instead, I found myself often confronting leadership that prioritised image and profit over improved outcomes and people. I doubted myself - who was I if my work required me to act in ways that protected bad decisions while sacrificing the people I grew up with? Eventually obedience became too high a price for fitting in and financial security.

Pitching and Personal Growth

Tomorrow night I am pitching my business. Something that has been in the back of my mind for a long time that I often talked about in the context of what we can build. A “What if …?” that felt too huge for me to accomplish. Something that has consumed me for the last 8 months in unexpected ways that are only starting to fit together now.

As I have been prepping my slides and speaking notes, my routine is in the trash. I am sleeping at weird times and eating donair bowls for breakfast. Yesterday I realised I hadn’t left the house since January 2 and the entire 7 seasons of Star Trek: Voyager has played through in the background.

It took me a long time to accept that when I have big things to do, 9-5 doesn’t work for me. That morning routines were great if what I was doing every day was the same but not if I was trying to create something bigger. Now I have non-negotiables: prayer, tea, food, journal.

When being ‘special’ gets in the way

Yesterday as I was working on my “why” for the pitch I realised how specialness gets in the way of taking a risk, how thinking we are special means we never belong and we also tend to avoid doing things that make our hearts race and our breath catch.

If I believe only people who are good at pitching should pitch, that means I lose the opportunity to pitch. I am taking away possibilities that need other skills to be effective simply because I acknowledge that pitching is a growth area for me.

BUT!
I also know that what I have been working on for the last 2 years is important and will work, the research is clear both academically and in the field. My Elder has given me her blessings.

People who have participated in workshops with me, taken training from me, and hired me to work in their communities have given me their time and energy and knowledge which forms the skeleton of my model.

People have trusted me with their dreams and their fears. What I have learned is that so many people have dreams for their kids, their friends and neighbours, and themselves that feel out of reach because people believe they aren’t special enough.

Maybe, like me, they struggle to put their vision into words in front of an audience. Or perhaps getting to work by 8:15am is impossible because they can’t fall asleep until 2:00am. And there is always a part of them that needs to be fixed before they know they’re accepted, they belong.

Accepting what is

I am socially awkward. Money is insufficient as a motivator. I need long periods of reflection and thinking time to do my best work. I make excellent Yorkshire pudding. I can read 250 pages of text a day with summaries and next steps but can’t start work until 10:00am. None of these make me good or bad, they just make me.

So in the process of preparing for a pitch I suspect will be awkward AF, but is also the only way to get my ideas out there in a way that matters to me, I have learned the following things about being special by being the same:

1. If you believe only certain people can belong, that means you believe only certain parts of you can belong

2. Shame inhibits growth, acceptance enables it

3. When you trust yourself you are more free to take risks

4. Trusting myself is a result of consistently making decisions that support my values, building a sustainable world for everyone through aligned actions

5. The day I stopped punishing myself to fit in is the day I became free

If you knew you were safe, that someone will still love you - catch you when you fall - what dream would you chase? What wrong would you right?

“The cruelty is the point”

“The system is working exactly as intended.”

These statements are becoming increasingly common but what do they actually mean. What system? And who’s cruelty?

These statements start something and leave questions unanswered. As though the observation of cruelty addresses the problem. Eventually people tire of reading statements that feel true but don’t have a framework or context in which they can be addressed.

In this essay, what it means when we say the system is working exactly as it’s designed will be discussed, and some steps about what you can do will be included at the end.

The system everyone is talking about is the one that creates the wound we diagnosed in the last essay: Colonial Dislocation Trauma.

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Getting Started - Colonial Dislocation Trauma

Trauma in a people looks like culture.

~ Resmaa Menakem

The idea of Colonial Dislocation Trauma developed for me after years of reading about symptom-based diagnosis that seemed consistent across multiple presentations: people who have been deprived of feelings of safety and belonging look for that in myriad ways as they grow up and this is reflected in their interactions with the broader community.

Referencing the Indicative Trauma Impact Manual, which is described as a non-diagnostic, trauma-informed guide to emotions, thoughts, and behaviour, a number of the behaviours identified as toxic, like coercive control and grooming, are represented in our workplaces and our strategic policy choices.

Furthermore, just like in individuals, the outcomes - like creating rigid rules for safety, violent and sexually violent imagery, and dependence on substances for emotional regulation - are strong indicators of a system under duress.

What are you willing to do to keep your money and power?

Many people look for a way to feel safe and fitting in is one way of doing that. In our culture, fitting in is often determined by one’s wealth, financial success being a proxy for safety and belonging.

In the last essay, we named the wound of Colonial Dislocation Trauma (CDT)—the pain that comes from living in a system that severs our connection to family, culture, and self. But what happens to the people who benefit from and perpetuate that system? What is their diagnosis?

The result of money being the goal, as we are increasingly experiencing, is a culture that rewards greed, domination and control. Selfishness, and transactional business models are the norm because these provide short-term economic gains.

Unfortunately, people who succeed in this model generally display the less virtuous character traits because being greedy, controlling, and selfish is rewarded financially. Power becomes increasingly concentrated by creating ever-narrower criteria for belonging. Perverse incentives develop.

This brings us to the great inversion, the two paths of pain that define our culture.

People with Colonial Dislocation Trauma tend to internalize pain. This leads to toxic shame, self-loathing (”dirty Indian”), addiction as a form of pain relief, and the feeling of being broken.

People with Colonial Dislocation Psychosis (CDP) externalize their pain. They believe that they should have all the good things and that other creatures—because they don’t see those who are different as truly alive—should bear the burden.

Colonial Dislocation Psychosis is the psychosis of the colonizer, a mental state disconnected from reality of their actions and required to inflict and ignore mass suffering. It is a sickness of entitlement and I suggest it is a form of hierarchical collective derealization.

The Operating System

To thrive within a colonial system is to adopt its dysfunctional operating system. It is no coincidence that the traits required for success are often the same traits used to diagnose personality disorders that are considered anti-social:

• A grandiose sense of self-importance

• Sense of individual entitlement (as seen in doctrines like terra nullius)

• A complete lack of empathy; unwillingness to consider the impact on others

• Perpetual exploitation and violence against other people, animals, and nature

• A constant need for admiration; money excuses any behaviour

• A pattern of exploitative, manipulative behaviour, using lies to accumulate power regardless of the impact.

• An inability to accept mistakes, even in the face of catastrophic consequences like climate change

• Unwilling to share

• Lack of accountability; might makes right

This psychosis is exemplified by a mindset that rewards executives with massive bonuses after causing immense harm, creating a feedback loop that bad behaviour is deserving of reward.

In an abusive relationship with a narcissist, the person in pain is punished for speaking up. Our system functions the same way.

A Modern Case Study: The Weaponization of Needs

This psychosis is not a historical artifact. It is alive and well in our boardrooms and coaching masterminds. I was in a session recently where I was talking about how money should be a tool for well-being, not the primary desired outcome. The coach responded that she loves money as much as she loves her children, all of us in the room. She loves it as much as she loves God.

We no longer work to feed ourselves or build our own homes; we must work for money in a way someone else deems acceptable to be able to meet our basic survival needs.

So many people live without a sense of confidence in the future. People are anxious the rules will change without notice and suddenly what’s in is out, and everything could be lost. Arendt carefully laid out how as people become increasingly isolated, money and rules become increasingly associated with safety and authoritarianism begins to set in.

Business under this psychosis is not about creating conditions for us all to prosper; it is about keeping people hovering at mere survival, because there is no profit in a fulfilled, sovereign population.

Colonialism and capitalism are required to weaponize our basic needs against us to ensure we continue to work at things we don’t like, not just food and shelter - but safety, esteem, and interpersonal relationships are all increasingly defined by socio-economic conditions rigged to incentivize anti-social behaviours.

The Social Symptoms of a Psychotic System

When a society is run by this dissociated, narcissistic mindset, the culture itself begins to exhibit the symptoms of the psychosis. This is the social breakdown we see accelerating around us:

• The embrace of militarization and violence as the natural order

• Rampant and increasing inequality

• An accelerating degradation of the environment

• The destruction of social bonds and contempt for community

• The sexualization of children and the rejection of elders

• The reduction of human beings to their most base motivations, with economic systems built on minimums of behaviour rather than aspirations for the collective good

• Limiting the definition of who is human by legislating away rights

• Rejecting children as autonomous being worthy of rights, nurturing, and respect

The functional goal of this psychosis seems to be to try and recreate what the universe provides freely as a way of proving dominance over nature. It is a profoundly immature and destructive worldview.

The Hollowness of the ‘Special’

In The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen (1899) makes clear his derision for conspicuous consumption as a terrible foundation for social organization. Cultures geared toward profit eventually do not produce useful products or healthy humans, as the pursuit of conspicuous leisure undermines social utility and perverts the human predisposition to useful production.

The ultimate expression of this psychosis is the belief that some people don’t have to work, that they are somehow special. This entitlement to a life of conspicuous leisure, as Veblen called it, can only be sustained through the forced labour *and* forced consumption of others. (Others, in this case, is us. The 99% of people who don’t own their own islands and personal jets.)

Essentially, the market will force workers to make things they don’t need, and then force us to buy what they’re selling us, even if we would much prefer something different, so we can access our basic needs like food and shelter.

As resources become increasingly scarce, these mechanisms of control will become increasingly rigid, which means our children will inherit a new form of slavery, where the necessaries of life are privatized for maximum extraction.

Sound familiar?

This stands in stark contrast to healthy humans. Healthy people like to work. They like to contribute to something bigger than themselves, being a part of the labour market is one of the number one indicators of mental health.

In our current social system built on ideas of extraction, however, social colonial dislocation results in work that controlled by people who want to limit access to resources, is not pragmatic or even really worthwhile, often results in moral injury, and is exploitative of the worker and the natural environment.

In contrast, conspicuous consumption is not only suspicious in Indigenous communities, but generosity and giving freely is seen as an act of leadership. It is why many traditional Indigenous ceremonies like the Potlatch were banned by colonial governments: these ceremonies were cultural expressions of shared responsibility and shared benefit in action.

For those with CDP, work is for others, and those others only have value as long as they are producing for the economy, regardless of the impact on them or nature.

This is the hollowness of a dislocated system: your life becomes so empty of personal meaning and authenticity, that the only goal left is to not have to participate in it at all, to be able to buy your way out of being part of the world.

Conclusion: The Next Step is Your Choice

The system that is operating as intended is one that prioritizes profit for the few over the wellbeing of everything and everyone else. This is an anti-social operating system run by people who believe their cultural entitlement is more important than our shared humanity.

This system, and the people who benefit from it, externalizes its pain, rewards cruelty, and has the desire to fully consolidate power and resources in an increasingly small minority. The result is trapping us all in a market where our survival is conditional on our obedience to arbitrary, artificial rules.

Colonial Dislocation Psychosis is the answer to the question, “How can they act this way?” The people making decisions that seem irrational to the rest of us act this way because they are living in a dissociated state. The dissociation exists in two ways

1. A belief that what is written on paper is more real than what is happening in the physical world they are standing on, a collective derealization

2. A practice of externalizing the impacts of their decisions onto others with less power by framing colonial, or leisure class, wants as needs.

The majority of people experience the psychosis as living in a system that

• prioritizes profit over people,

• values domination over connection, and

• decides the consequences of the wealthy and powerful on the world are not sufficient to change their actions

A more sustainable future that does not reward anti-social behaviours starts with you. By choosing to reject a divisive operating system in our own lives we begin to act in ways that challenge transactional economies, creating the reciprocal and restorative relationships so many of us are seeking instead.

The most powerful antidote to a system that denies our agency is to begin exercising it. We can choose to value:

• contribution over consumption,

• community over extraction, and

• empathy over entitlement.

Many people already make these choices everyday. The proof is in the collective action taken in our daily lives:

• People who volunteer, donate to foodbanks, or buy from school bakesales.

• After disasters, many people open their doors to displaced people

• Volunteers clearing up after community events, sending letters to and phoning politicians, people driving others to vote

We are not powerless, but the path forward requires us to see the system for what it is—and then choose to build something different. How? Decide which values matter to you and then take action, and find someone to do these small steps with, have fun along the way. If trauma in a people looks like culture, then healing in a people looks like community in action.

This is Part 3 in a series introducing the framework of Colonial Dislocation Trauma. In the last essay, we diagnosed the cultural wound. Today, we diagnose the psychosis of the system that created it. In the next essay we will introduce some common experiences of people living in a sick system, and ways to begin to create safety for yourself.

Why does naming this matter?

For too long, many of us have operated on the assumption that the people making destructive decisions simply needed more information.

But the system is not broken; it is a successful machine designed to protect the entitlements of a few. We cannot heal it by providing more data to those who benefit from the sickness.

We can only heal it by building something new.

This is where the real work begins. The antidote to a system of dislocation is community. The antidote to a life of meaningless work is to find the work that reconnects us.

If this conversation is one you want to be a part of, I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter.

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Two mums are catching up while watching their boys at a basketball practice.

The first mum, (Black), says “I heard Connor made the honour roll. Congratulations, you must be so proud!”

Conor’s mum, (White), says “Oh, we are. Connor’s done so well. His dad and I are delighted. And you, I heard that Jake got a full-ride scholarship. How wonderful!”

Jake’s mum says “Yes he did, thank the good Lord, because basketball’s about all that boy can do right!”

When Dr. DeGruy told that story, I was struck by how much pain we carry may have had a protective origin. On the surface, the mums react very differently. Jake’s mum sounds dismissive. Connor’s mum is obviously pleased. The two kids, hearing this, might very well think Jake’s mum is not as proud, leading to feelings of shame and confusion.

But, as Dr. De Gruy points out, when we step back and look at the legacy of enslaved families being torn apart when children were strong, obedient, and did well, Jake’s mum’s reticence to celebrate her son makes perfect sense. Even if she herself does not understand why she answers compliments with dismissal, her body and her intergenerational memory remind her: “Don’t let them know your son is a good boy,” because the outcome could be bad.

We have all sorts of syndromes or disorders named after the experiences of people in psychological pain. This may be an effective tool for helping individuals, but it does so within existing social norms. “What’s keeping you from participating in a socially acceptable way?” is the underlying question.

What might a sociological perspective reveal after decades of diagnosing symptoms for individuals with little long-term change? What if we located these various syndromes in the context of our culture?

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Identifying a Systemic Wound

That kind of cultural context is exactly what sociology is designed to analyze: “the study of human relationships, the rules and norms that guide them, and the development of institutions and movements that conserve and change society.”

As a sociologist, I looked at the commonalities across these psychological manifestations and identified a unifying causal event enduring over time: a culture of dislocation from home and family as a result of colonial or capitalist endeavours.

I propose naming the social trauma created by this cultural imperative: Colonial Dislocation Trauma (CDT). By giving the source behind the symptoms a name, we provide the right target to address.

By renaming the symptoms as a result of colonial and capitalist structures and systems, two things happen:

1. Normal, human responses to the pain caused by bad or abusive treatment are not pathologized,

2. the root cause of the problem as systemic means systemic solutions can be leveraged.

Leveraging collective solutions such as appropriate mental health and wellbeing supports rather than incarceration, and making sure everyone has the basics like food and a safe place to sleep, creates broader social improvements. Every person who’s ever gone through recovery knows: first we have to accept we have a problem and then identify the problem correctly.

There are three different psychologically accepted syndromes that informed the development of CDT:

1. Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome

2. Residential School Syndrome

3. Boarding School Syndrome

These syndromes, born from specific historical atrocities, might seem like isolated events that impact only a segment of the population.

But they become suggestive of a wider cultural malaise when we see their symptoms mirroring the distress we are all experiencing in the general population:

1. Growing wealth inequality and the use of police and prisons to protect the comfort of the few.

2. Deteriorating working-class communities (including those who believe they are the pretend thing called the “middle class”).

3. Rising levels of psychiatric disorders like Borderline Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

When the general population begins to show patterns of distress that reflect the trauma of those with documented experiences of institutional abuse, a sociological explanation is no longer just a reasonable next step—it is a necessary one. (The specific connection between these modern psychiatric diagnoses and CDT will be explored in a future essay, but it is crucial to name them here as part of the wider pattern of evidence.)

1. The Beginning

Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome, named by Joy DeGruy, Ph.D in 2003, is a response in the physical, psychological, spiritual, and mental wellbeing of individuals and communities to long-term enslavement.

Multigenerational trauma together with continued oppression and absence of opportunity to access the benefits available in the society.

Joy De Gruy, Ph.D, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome

The work on Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS) creates a lens for the trauma and pain many Black people carry. But intercontinental abduction and enslavement is not a shared experience.

Behaviour Patterns in PTSS

1. Vacant Self-Esteem: people experience feelings of hopelessness, depression, and engage in self-destructive behaviours

2. A propensity for Anger and Violence: This includes feelings of extreme distrust of others and feelings of suspicion. There are violent eruptions toward self, others, and property.

3. Racist Socialization/Internalized Racism: a sense of aversion for one’s self, community and culture, and heritage, with particular emphasis on physical characteristics. This, coupled with a loss of cultural and ethnic traditions and rituals undermines any sense of safety. Community cohesions, literacy and agency are negatively impacted.

2. We Never Left Our Land

For the Indigenous Peoples of North America however, the story of our dislocation happens even though we never left our lands. Rather First Nations were corralled on the land, still living and loving on them but unable to care for them the way stewardship requires. As Vine Deloria says, “on Turtle Island our God is Red.”

A lot of the focus on the Indigenous experience is Residential Schools. This resulted in Brasfield (2001) proposing Residential School Syndrome (RSS), a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. The symptomology of RSS includes:

• as with post-traumatic stress disorder, the person has undergone or witnessed some degree of trauma and received insufficient care and support to recover, resulting in flashbacks, hypervigilance and dissociation.

• interpersonal relationships are characterized by detachment and friction

• Additionally:

  • loss of connection culture and language

  • a persistent tendency to abuse alcohol or other drugs

  • substance use is associated with violent outbursts of anger.

  • also highlights possible deficient parenting skills.

I am not the first to propose that the symptomology should focus on the perpetrators of the violence. Figure 2* shows that when Residential School Syndrome was first being proposed, many already thought it made no sense to put the weight of change on the victims rather than the people who implemented these policies.

There are attendees of residential schools who have gone on to be very successful: “I was surprised that many Saskatchewan chiefs and councillors were of the opinion that these schools had contributed to their success.” (Roberston, 2006). While uncommon, these stories of success cannot be excluded, as they are often used to defend the very system that created so much harm.

3. Colonial Success Does Not Prevent Pain

But these two separate psychological assessments do not create a pattern allowing for a broader systems theory. Until I heard about Boarding School Syndrome, something more common among those who have both the money and the desire to send their children away to school.

What was remarkable to me was the similarity of symptoms to both PTSS and RSS. Joy Schaverien is a psychotherapist who coined Boarding School Syndrome and describes the symptoms as:

• Abandonment: the child has been left with strangers

• Bereavement: more than just homesickness, the child is bereaved

• Captivity: the child is captive in their new environment, often having to follow strict rules

• Dissociation: when the child is unable to come to terms with the pain of their bereavement, they often cut off and dissociate from their feelings

People seeking mental health supports after attending boarding school report similar problems – marital difficulties, feelings of isolation, substance abuse – to those who survived other institutional systems of dislocation. Substance use, inadequate parenting skills, and mood disorders are also common.

What is notable however, is the many people who have left these boarding schools and thrived in our current capitalist culture of greed. One expert, Piers Cross, in the field notes that many of our corporate and government leaders are graduates of the same institutions he attended, and the treatment they received was no different from the treatment he received.

Syndromes and Victim-blaming

The similarities across these different Syndromes led me to question whether I was falling into the same trap at a community and cultural level that happens at the individual level when we ask women “What were you wearing?”: diagnosing the trauma but believing I’d identified the cause.

There is a Guardian headline, ‘Breaking our spirits was the plan’: the lifelong impact of having gone to boarding school’ that could have been written by any Indigenous child, or Black child but is instead a quote from an economically and socially privileged boarding school attendee.

The trauma is inherent in the system itself, poisoning the whole structure by requiring people to sacrifice their empathy to achieve success. This framework, therefore, is not just about the wounds of the oppressed; it is about creating a container for the pain in all of us caused by dislocation from our shared humanity.

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Colonial Dislocation Trauma

Indigenous, or community, systems understand that our culture creates our people, and our people in turn sustain our culture, so communities must be healthy. We are both subject to and creator of the world we live in.

We are wanted in the world, and our community supports our wellbeing by ensuring everyone has food, shelter, and companionship and in turn we all contribute to our community to maintain and enrich that relationship. We are permanently located in a system and we know where we belong.

This is not the case in a colonial and capitalist system because extraction can only operate under coercive control. People understand that their ability to buy food and shelter is dependent on their ability to please their boss and keep their job, no matter how unfulfilling or undignified.

Therefore, we do not belong in a system, but rather have to constantly prove we fit in by pleasing someone with whom we have only transactional exchanges. We are dislocated from the outcomes of our work, and for many their needs outstrip what they are able to acquire because of systemic norms.

Some manifestations of Colonial Dislocation Trauma in all people affected by it:

• Maladaptive Daydreaming: because of trauma, individuals create a fantasy world to escape into where they have more control. Because people are not safe to exercise their will in real life, they do so in fantasies.

• Unacknowledged Grief and Shame for Grieving: There is an endless hole of loneliness when everything is ripped away and it is not acknowledged. Trauma and healing from trauma are relational. Without language for dislocation from the loss of familial relationships, and resulting grief, people can instead become angry. “Mad is sad in disguise.”

• Gendered Violence: the violence perpetrated by those in power is modelled down the hierarchy, and environmental destruction has long been tied to violence against women. Resource extraction and large scale infrastructure projects, and the man-camps needed to undertake them, are closely tied to gendered violence.

• Loss of connection to the real: In order to be successful in colonial states, you need to be able to ignore what your senses tell you and only believe what is written down and approved by the decision-making authorities. However this requires us to ignore what our senses tell us whenever we go outside, thus creating a split between what is known and what needs to be believed for survival in an imposed make believe hierarchy.

• Perverted relationship with work: leisure as a result of hoarding and displaying wealth becomes the desired outcome of work, rather than participating in creating your life and the work of community. The impacts of business decisions on community members and the environment are ignored or covered up if businesses show profit.

Conclusion: What the Pattern Reveals

For too long, we have treated these traumas as separate tragedies. We have studied the pain of the enslaved, the Indigenous, and even the privileged elite as if they were unique, isolated events. But when we look at the mechanism—the foundational tactic—the pattern becomes undeniable.

Whether the goal was to create a compliant labour force, assimilate a “savage” population, or forge an emotionally detached administrator for an empire, the strategy was identical: break the bond between the child and their family.

This reveals a profound truth: the trauma is not a bug in our system; it is the system’s primary feature. It is a technology of disconnection designed to produce a population that is compliant, disconnected from its own heritage, and therefore easier to control.

Colonial Dislocation Trauma is the name for this feature. It is the diagnosis for the operating system itself. The manifestations we see—gendered violence, maladaptive daydreaming, perverted relationship with work, loss of connection to the real—are not our personal failings. They are the predictable, adaptive human responses to living inside a system that runs on our dislocation.

The ubiquity of these mental and social ills is not evidence of mass personal failing, but of a real and present cultural wound. Now that we have named it, we can begin to heal it.

In the next part of this series, we will examine the results of the progressive denial of pain of dislocation and how it might explain part of how we got where we are. Subscribe now to get it in your inbox

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You can read part one here

References

Most are linked throughout the essay, but additional information is here:

For Figure 2: Chrisjohn R, Young S, Maraun M. The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada. Penticton, BC: Theytus Books Ltd., 1997:87.www.treaty7.org/document/circle/circle5.htm

For more on historic trauma and syndrome, Robertson, 2006 is a great discussion on whether historic trauma is actually a syndrome

I have two daughters. When I was assaulted at work—and then forced to continue working under the man who did it—I wanted to burn the whole place down. Instead, I got a diagnosis: Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. C-PTSD.

I did the rehab, and then became a trauma-informed coach, driven to help people navigate the very challenges I had faced. I wanted to help them keep working, if they chose to, while healing. But as I worked with more and more people, a pattern emerged. They all echoed the same profound sense of “something just isn’t working,” regardless of how obediently they had followed the professed rules of the game.

They were disillusioned but hopeful, just as I had been. As they progressed in their careers, they either witnessed, were asked to participate in, or were on the receiving end of unethical behavior in the name of profit—all while social inequality grew around them.

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It’s all in your head

It is confusing as a worker, at the least, when the profits we help make are used against our communities rather than to support and enrich them. How did we get to the point that the people in pain were the ones who were diagnosed with the problem?

My search for an answer began with Judith Herman’s landmark 1992 book, Trauma and Recovery where I learned something about Freud that began a cognitive shift, permanently altering my perspective on healing, wellness, and power.

The Domination of Women

As part of the rise of the anti-clerical movement in France in the late 19th century, more investigation into hysteria was undertaken. Not to alleviate the suffering of women, but to show that science could triumph where religion had failed.

Herman revealed that Freud, in his early work on “hysteria,” discovered a simple, powerful truth. When his female patients could speak about their experiences of abuse and have those experiences validated, their symptoms began to alleviate. Anna O., one of the most prominent patients, called it the “talking cure”. Freud developed his theory of psycho-analysis as he interviewed these women.

But Freud’s research uncovered an endemic pattern of premature, incestuous, and abusive sexual exploitation of women across all social classes. Although “The Aetiology of Hysteria” was published in 1896, within a year, Freud repudiated his own findings.

This truth was not the key to enter the social elite he craved to join; it was a threat to their entire structure. So instead, he repositioned the issue as “Penis Envy”, thus pathologizing victims.

The Allegiance of Men

The allegiance of men to this system was cemented during the World Wars. Soldiers returned from the front with feelings they weren’t supposed to have: sadness, fear, constant anxiety. This “shellshock”, a completely normal human reaction to the horrors of industrial warfare, undermined the propaganda of glorious empire. It proved that men, in fact, do not enjoy killing other people for amorphous goals.

In fact, men’s completely normal reaction to the horrors of war was considered proof of failure, not humanity.

We know this because Yealland, in his 1918 book “Hysterical Disorder of Warfare” based his entire treatment regimen on browbeating the soldiers - for laziness, for cowardice, for failing their fellow soldiers. Electric shock therapy was suggested and used.

By World War Two, loyalty was weaponized. Men experiencing profound mental distress were shamed back to the front lines, told their vulnerable, under-staffed units needed them. Love of their comrades was used as a tool of coercion.

A year after WWII, two American psychiatrists concluded that one cannot “get used to combat” and that after 200-240 days of war, even the most committed person will experience psychiatric casualties but this information did not inform training or treatment of soldiers.

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Consciousness Rising

In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a growing awareness of the impact of domestic violence on women’s well being combined with burgeoning economic independence. Women began to go to consciousness raising groups to talk about their lives and experiences. These groups created a sense of solidarity as women learned they were not alone in experiencing violence.

Similarly for men, initiated by Vietnam veterans who had been ostracized on their return home, rap groups grew where men could come and share their stories and be witnessed and believed by others, reducing isolation.

These groups are examples of people who have survived things many want to ignore supporting each other in peer-to-peer relationships. Such relationships are empowering because the isolation and self-blame are replaced with purpose as new skills are developed and others are supported in their journey.

Where we are now in understanding trauma

In 2008 Gabor Mate’s In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts changed the conversation around substance use, bringing the idea that addiction is a response to pain—not a personal failure—into the mainstream. Since then, research and publications on the impacts of trauma have become increasingly common.

Yet the system’s tendency to locate trauma within the individual remains. The goal is still to “fix” the person so they can return to being an economically productive member of society. This isn’t a pathway to healing. It is a form of gaslighting, designed to make you believe that your wellness is the same as your economic productivity for someone else.

My Revelation

The final piece of the puzzle fell into place for me during a somatic embodiment course with Linda Thai. She shared this simple but powerful progression in understanding healing:

• Colonial: What is wrong with you?

• Trauma-Informed: What happened to you?

• Cultural safety: What happened to your people?

• Liberation: What happened and continues to happen to you and your people?

This was the bridge. I started to think about what it meant for me having had a childhood I needed to heal from, and how I probably wasn’t the only one. So what was it that was creating so much harm in our lives? If creating harm and separation was our normal state, how did we ever leave the caves?

As a sociologist trained to recognize social patterns, I realized the endless, discreet diagnoses given to individuals were too similar to be a coincidence. They were not individual failings; they were symptoms of a systemic wound at a cultural level.

This is the pattern I named Colonial Dislocation Trauma, and its end stage, Colonial Dislocation Psychosis.

I invite you to join this exploration. If this piece sparked something in you, I would be honored to hear about it in the comments.

This series is the beginning of a necessary conversation, and it starts with my own story. For the next week, I will be publishing a multi-part series to introduce a new framework for understanding the systemic trauma that poisons our work and our world. It’s called Colonial Dislocation Trauma.

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Originally titled “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?”, a New York Times opinion writer is now asking if ‘liberal feminism’ ruined the workplace.

You know what? The answer is yes. Yes, we did. Let’s stop pretending that we didn’t ruin the 1950s workplace, and the ‘60s workplace, and the ‘70s workplace.

We ruined them because they sucked. They only worked for white men of a certain age and disposition—for everybody else, they were a nightmare.

This workplace we supposedly ruined: women weren’t allowed to have decision-making input or resist male advances, Black people didn’t even have the vote until 1965, and most immigrants were relegated to crappy jobs unless they came over as professionals—and then they were tokenized.

The majority of the work was designed to extract free female labor, so men could hang out, drink scotch, and objectify women while pretending humans weren’t real things that needed care and consideration.

When we challenge this system, we’re told it’s just about qualifications and merit, and our lack thereof. Let’s have a look at the current state of our economies and communities though, and they don’t seem to be doing great right now.

If women working for free running a household and taking care of children and making sure everyone is fed and the school bake sale doesn’t poison people is required for the economy and our communities to be healthier, why are women the ones who are dumb?

And if men are so smart, and women have ruined the workplace, why don’t men just leave since it’s so awful now, and go garden.

Or start community groups to replace what us callous women have left behind?

The Pipeline Excuse

For years, we’ve been fed the line that C-suites and senior executive positions were mostly white men because “there just wasn’t enough talent moving up.”

Let’s decode that excuse. Yes, hiring practices were part of it, but there’s a deeper truth: women, Black people, Indigenous people, and Asian people were not willing to sell out their values to get promoted.

Why would you want to advance in a system designed to kill your spirit?

So we left. Then the next generation tried, and some stayed, but many left too. It’s not that there isn’t a pipeline—it’s that the pipeline is full of sewage, and people with dignity choose not to swim in it.

And this is where the real resistance to change becomes clear.

What We’re Really “Ruining”

And here’s where it gets interesting. The real challenge isn’t about competence or qualifications—it’s about power.

People (coff, coff, men) in the executive suite are refusing to let go, convinced they have a divine right to be treated like princes and kings while viewing the rest of us as livestock. Did women ruin that system? I certainly hope we did, and I hope we keep ruining it.

Because what we’re really talking about isn’t ruining work—it’s reclaiming it for our dreams, and the dreams of our families and communities.

Work as Medicine vs. Work as Poison

Our work is the most powerful thing we have. It’s how we make manifest our purpose here on earth. It’s how our gifts are developed. It’s how we heal. Our work is the avenue through which we make our dreams real. Or at least, that’s what it should be.

Instead, we’re trapped in an economy that reduces this sacred exchange to mere transactions, paying us poultry money to build some lunatic sociopath’s dreams of becoming a trillionaire, all while sacrificing time with our families and communities.

Resisting the temptation to make work about money and instead embracing its true value in building our lives is the path to freedom. Because our power lies in this knowledge, we have been told that money is more important than time with your children or clean water and healthy ecosystems.

The Real Resistance

This is where the machinery of oppression kicks into high gear. Look at how hard AI is being pushed, despite widespread resistance.

Why? Because it’s another tool to avoid accountability, to maintain control, to keep building their dream—not ours. Our work is being turned against us, twisted into something that serves their vision rather than our communities.

That future is maintained through violence, intimidation and fear which is one reason it feels inevitable and also why so many of us are bent under the yoke. There is an alternative though.

The Future We’re Building

Our work is our medicine. With correct focus, and a few community lunches, it’s the way we heal ourselves and our communities.

Liberal feminists, and all the people that colonization and colonialism keep trying to silence have been saying this for generations.

To all the influencers who say “I can’t believe nobody said this before”—get over ourselves. People have been saying this since Columbus hit the ocean, and actually probably before that. What we need to say is “Following a long tradition of people who refuse to be controlled, I resist my work and my worth being commodified.”

So when they ask if we ruined the workplace, the answer is “Yes. Thank you for noticing.”

Embrace the “Ruining”

We ruined it by wanting to be respected. We ruined it by demanding time off. We ruined it by speaking up when we disagree. We ruined it for the men who think they are gods, and I am here for it.

I am absolutely here for ruining any workplace that requires our souls as admission price.

The frustrating irony: this “ruining” might actually save the men who resist it most. Look at the male loneliness epidemic. It will definitely start to address the youth mental health crisis.

These are direct products of the toxic workplace culture we’re dismantling and the unsustainable future it was building. By “ruining” their playground, we might just help them find their humanity again.

I don’t even need to read the article to know that whatever this person with an opinion wrote about whether women ruined the workplace, the answer is yes. And we’re not done ruining it yet.

Want to be part of the rebuilding and not sure where to start?

I have 2 spots open for November to get tailored coaching from me.

Building something new can be intimidating, for support for you or you know someone, book a call with me here https://tidycal.com/trisha2/30discover

Isn’t Indigenous thinking full of nepotism? I’ve heard that you only get roles through your family.

This question has sat with me for a few weeks. At first, I thought it was an easy answer but every time I sat down to write it, the ideas weren’t flowing. How does one explain that relational or heredity roles are not nepotism, but western approaches are. In part because in Canada on reserve we see a lot of rampant nepotism.

First and foremost because the idea of nepotism in an Indigenous worldview makes no sense: we are all related so obviously we work with our relatives.

That said, I know that is a slippery answer – one that doesn’t wrestle with the stickiness of who is in charge and how that happens.

In almost every Indigenous community we know family names. We have a pretty good idea of where the Ribbonlegs fit compared to the Saddlebacks, or the Carrieres to the Chartrands.

It’s no different than the Hiltons compared to the Trudeaus, or Churchills compared to say, Smith or O’Malley.

So yes, nepotism and favouring relatives is rampant. On smaller reserves it is more visible because there is a smaller, more isolated population. Thus, small numbers effects make it appear more common, as does the fact it fits with our interpretation of history. Hereditary lines traced through the mother, the power is subjective a result of nepotism, but when lines are traced through the father representing an institution[i], the power is objective and merit based.

This framing supports the idea that Indigenous systems are somehow more ‘primitive’ or provably less civilized because of the subjectivity.

But that doesn’t capture the underlying ontology that creates it in the first place.

How We Understand Our Place in the World

What is the worldview that makes people reject their family as an organizing unit? Providing instead the impossible goal of needing to meet an external standard set by some vague authority to whom someone somewhere is probably accountable somehow?

Once we have a worldview, we also need a way of understanding whether what we believe is legitimate and sustainable, is it knowledge? This is our epistemology and we interpret our experience through what we know.

How do these fit together? Well, if we believe humans exist, and these humans are fundamentally flawed, we will look for evidence that supports our perspective to create knowledge. Once we identify what we consider flaws, we will develop mechanisms to enforce what we believe is “good” behaviour on others by rewarding them for behaving ‘properly’.

If, however, we believe humans are fundamentally good but malleable, we look for evidence that supports people’s ability to correct mistakes when they have the proper resources and their ability to self-govern when their communities are supportive and safe. Once we identify people who are struggling we collectively look at what might be needed to create behaviour that is self-regulated.

These are the substructures that determine whether family accountability and responsibly are a sufficient or insufficient organizing paradigm. These different philosophies need to be addressed to begin to address the difference between Western and Indigenous Systems Thinking and understand how to navigate the transition.

First, what the feck are ontology and epistemology?

At the most basic, as I understand these concepts and how I will use them as I discuss this material are:

Ontology – Worldview

• What exists?

• How do I know what I believe exists is what actually exists?

• How do I relate to what exists?

Epistemology - Knowledge

• How do I know what exists is sustainable over time?

• How does what exists relate to me?

• What else is there to know?

Philosophically, ontology is the way you understand existence, your place in it, and how your relationship to the rest of creation. Practically, ontology is the structural framework in which you create and hold knowledge.

Epistemology is a way of understanding whether what you know is actually what you know and if it is a true understanding of the world. Think of “There are unknown unknowns, known unknowns, known knowns, and unknown knowns” and basically this is epistemology.

Our knowledge is interpreted through our worldview, just as our ontology is impacted by our epistemology.

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Shaping the Systems

At the most basic, every worldview starts with a belief about the nature of being and beings[ii].

The first crucial difference between Western thinking and Indigenous thinking about the nature of being and whether it is fixed or evolving. There is substantial literature on how the different understandings on the nature of being but for today’s purposes, these are summarised as Established Binaries and Emergent Spectrums.

Established Binaries

In the current dominant system, the majority of issues are approached from a black and white perspective: yes and no, good or bad, done or undone, fixed or broken. There is a cultural understanding that these binaries are established and fixed by a trusted authority and enforced by appropriately vetted representatives who are decision-makers for everyone.

A fundamental assumption is there is one way to behave. Safety is a function of fitting in on the correct side of pre-established, generally very narrow, definitions of success. There is only one good way.

Emergent Spectrums

Indigenous systems do not start, in general, with established binaries but rather view life as a continuous unfolding, an emergence. Multiple perspectives and interpretations provide a spectrum of possibilities for people to engage with.

The way to move forward is determined by what is known to be true through observation of all the parts of the world that will be impacted. Not just people, but land and animals, structures and traditions.

A fundamental assumption is that there are diverse ways to behave that all add to the world, and each person can choose for themselves within the boundaries of community wellbeing and cultural respect. Safety is a function of each person being sovereign in their decision about what is a good way for them.

Note the fundamental differences between Established Binaries and Emergent Spectrums and the impact how systems operate. The operating system ultimately stems from engrained assumptions about human nature and our relationship with the world around us.

These core beliefs about self and nature shape not just how we make decisions, but how we understand what it means to be human in relationship with others and our environment.

Views on Self and Nature

There are fundamental differences between Indigenous and Western or colonial worldview on the nature of people and the universe that shape how people interact with the world and how people make decisions.

When your worldview starts from the premise that human nature is fundamentally corrupt, you are starting at a deficit. It doesn’t matter what a person does, they can never make up for that is essentially wrong with them at the core.

Because this worldview starts by believing humans are inherently flawed, no one is deserving of support or assistance until they are already successful, and thus worthy of the resources necessary to maintain and grow that success.

In this view, belonging is not inherent but rather based on how well you perform the externally set rules.

Nature is only considered in this worldview with regard to how successful people can profit.

The belief that humans are both separate from and superior to nature, puts an incredible burden on each individual as well as on the community at large.

The aim, generally, is to make up for being less than good enough by conquering other things that are not good enough to prove that one is, at least, better than the wretched beings that you just conquered. Everyone is always in competition.

With this worldview, decisions are made to control and prevent sharing resources. That which is considered unworthy cannot benefit from that which is valuable. Various tools are used to ‘save’ resources from being wasted by people who have not proven their success.

The alternative is starting from the premise that humans are part of nature, and we cannot live a good life without acknowledging and honouring this interdependence.

Wahkohtowin

This interconnected worldview is embodied in the Metis concept of wahkohtowin, which describes our nature of relationships, natural law, and mutual obligations.

We understand all aspects of life - people, land, ancestors, future generations, and all living beings – are a web of relationships carrying reciprocal responsibilities. Thus, decision-making is grounded in honouring and strengthening these relationships.

When we understand wahkohtowin, we see that what appears as ‘nepotism’ in Western systems is actually part of a sophisticated framework of multi-generational responsibilities and accountability. Family members in leadership roles aren’t simply benefiting from connections; they’re carrying forward long-standing obligations to their community, land, and future generations.

Wahkohtowin in Practice

This shift helps us to understand there is enough for everything because we all work together to create safety and wellbeing.

Actions are taken based in long-standing and thus sustainable, cultural practices that support the community. Supporting the community in turn creates safety for people to respect what others need for their wellbeing.

There is no need to take more than you need today, because it means there may not be enough for someone else. In this way, the community creates safety and trust for individuals to ask for what they need.

Since we trust in each other and the universe, there is a cultural understanding that if an individual is acting in a way that does not align with their wellbeing, the community also has a responsibility to understand why the pain?

Self-actualization grows in communities that create safety for everyone because people are able to make decisions based on what they need to feel they are living a fulfilling, responsible life.

Success is an internal experience that is supported by being part of a community that acknowledges obligation to each other[iii].

Thus, our worldviews shape our interpretation of what we experience. For example, Indigenous worldview shapes our experience of the world, it is how we understand the world and how the world understands us in relationship. This worldview understands we exist as part of something larger.

Ontology – Indigenous Worldview

• What exists? I exist. All I can see and experience exists.

• How do I relate to what exists? When I interact with what exists, I experience outcomes I want more or less of

• How does what exists relate to me? When something interacts with me, I experience outcomes I want more or less of

In colonial worldview, there is limited understanding that we interact with the world. Disturbingly, as I was preparing the image below, I realised that for a colonial or forced worldview, understanding that the what exists relates to people is outside the acceptable boundaries because it suggests a world that is not human-centric.

Ontology – Colonial Worldview

• What exists? Things have been proven by people who know more than me

• How do I relate to what exists? Interaction has prescribed rules based on success of acting appropriately, as decided by a human authority

• How does what exists relate to me? I do not understand the question

These fundamental differences in worldview directly impact how roles and responsibilities are assigned within communities. When humans are seen as inherently flawed, extensive, artificial validation systems become necessary to maintain an illusion of ‘separate from” the flaws of people.

In contract, when humans are seen as inherently good but malleable, community observation and relational accountability become the natural methods for understanding how everyone contributes to the wellbeing of the community as and when needed.

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Hereditary Responsibilities or “Merit-based” Roles

We have arrived at the observation and question that started all this based on the concept of Relational Accountability (”Trust flows through relationship, not roles. Responsibility is shared, not assigned):

In the work I’ve done with employees (Native and non-Native) at places of tribal employment, I often hear people saying nepotism is a big problem. Perhaps you have some insight?

Short answer: Yes. Currently nepotism in First Nations is a problem. The structures put in place to meet the administrative demands of the colonial culture they must respond and report to create the conditions for nepotism.

The current model is filled with extraction and self-protection. There are a lot of places where the paid work is filled with family members of elected councillors or long-standing employees. And there are a lot of places where money is missing with nothing to show for it.

This is also true in jurisdictions governed through Western Systems Thinking.

The growth of nepotism mirrors that the practices in the colonial states that imposed these structures. Monarchy, anyone?

Nepotism is a big problem in all economies where the only goal is power, usually as measured thought money.

The Western interpretation of Indigenous hereditary roles as ‘nepotism’ fails to recognize how traditional Indigenous systems create community wellbeing through interconnected responsibilities.

Embedding leadership within a framework of relational accountability creates multi-generational obligations that extend far beyond individual benefit. Leaders are accountable not just to today’s community members, but to past teachings and future generations.

Thus, the wellbeing of the people and community they live in, coupled with long-term cultural sustainability, demonstrate whether leaders are upholding these responsibilities and contributing to the collective wellbeing of the community.

This stands in stark contrast to Western corporate nepotism, where family connections often serve to concentrate power and wealth without corresponding obligations to the broader community.

The difference lies not in whether family members hold positions of influence, but in how that influence is expected to serve and to whom people are responsible to: the greater good or individual enrichment.

Traditional Leadership Selection vs. Western “Merit-Based” Systems

Hereditary Indigenous leadership selection processes reflect a fundamentally different understanding of merit and capability. While Western systems rely heavily on credentials, competitive assessments, and individual achievements, traditional selection processes often unfold through long-term observation of character, demonstrated wisdom, and community service.

Future leaders are identified early, not through formal applications or interviews, but through their demonstrated commitment to community wellbeing and their ability to understand and honor complex relationships.

For example, potential leaders might be observed for years by elders and current leaders, who assess not just their decisions, but how they make those decisions. Do they listen to all perspectives? Do they show patience in conflict? Do they demonstrate an understanding of how their choices affect the broader community? This stands in stark contrast to Western merit-based systems that often reduce leadership potential to measurable metrics like profit generation or efficiency improvements.

There is also a competitive edge to Western systems that undermines true community because the goal is to win, not to thrive.

Why Context Matters for Interpretation

Western researchers and thus the broader public miss that nepotism is common across western economies, it’s hidden with euphemisms: “followed in her mother’s footsteps” or “His dad and uncles are all firefighters too.”

“Good at business” is a way of ignoring/erasing the broader, cultural nepotism and power dynamics that enable the accumulation of capital such that others are excluded from having their basic needs met.

Cultural artifacts also obfuscate nepotism through phrases like “Alumni clubs,” blinding us to the social networks that impact people’s access to post-secondary education. Because these external institutions have data-driven entrances standards, and networks are often invisible, there is an illusion of objectivity. This illusion obscures how people’s ability to navigate these systems is grounded in personal relationships, to name one example.

Indigenous peoples are going to act in the ways that are expected and modelled, particularly when trying to integrate the western systems thinking imposed on top of traditional governance models to meet culturally-imposed administrative demands.

When these actions are layered on top of both traditional community practices and the use of western interpretation to explain them, claims of nepotism seem to be reasonable because the argument of ‘family bias’ can be made, obscuring that Indigenous worldview that embeds long-standing obligations that are missing in Western worldview.

Anything removed from context is incomprehensible

The fact that many Indigenous Nations are/were matrilineal, and western anthropology as a discipline tends toward language like “hereditary” when speaking about different social roles as identifiers plays on and embeds the interpretation of relationships being traded for positional power.

Importantly, this western interpretation does not understand that the role is secondary to the inherent responsibilities people carry when they are in these roles. Responsibilities that are discussed and advanced based on the input from the community by youth councils, elder councils, and broader discussion.

Western Systems do not have a worldview where obligation and community wellbeing are the foundation and therefore interpretation will always be coloured by the hyper-individual competitive urgency that informs much of the systemic design.

In this way, the importance of relational structures is overlooked. In large part because there was no desire to create a theory of knowledge that was expansive enough to accept it may not be the best way to interpret the world.

From a sociological standpoint, it’s fascinating to me how quick we are to see behaviours we have been taught are irresponsible in others but blind to our own versions. Different names, comfort level, degree of familiarity are all a part of interpretation, as is how able we are to say “I don’t know.”

A Season of Reclamation is Here

To be clear, there are also a lot of Nations where nepotism is not an issue, where governance has begun to reorient toward community and responsibility once again. This return is rapid and powerful. We see it in the rising matriarchy movement and growing calls for wholisitic models of social and personal wellbeing and development.

Connecting Community Wellbeing to Leadership Effectiveness

Leadership effectiveness in Indigenous systems is inseparable from community wellbeing metrics that extend far beyond financial measures. These metrics include the community’s physical and mental health, the strength of cultural practices, the vitality of traditional languages, the health of the land and water, and the wellbeing of future generations.

When leaders make decisions that negatively impact any of these elements, their effectiveness is questioned regardless of any economic gains because there is an understanding that economic gains made at the expense of the community are not sustainable.

This holistic approach to measuring leadership success creates a natural accountability system that Western metrics, focused primarily on financial outcomes and short-term gains, often fail to capture.

Other indications include the growing number of legal actions, as well as the resurgence across cultural, economic, environmental and territorial, and food sovereignty movements.

This rising commitment to more sustainable ways of governance and decision-making is supported by emerging western science supporting how best to address macro, the growing ecological uncertainty, and micro, the number of people experiencing loneliness, challenges.

One that serves and enriches the community it is a part of rather extracting resources for an absentee landlord.

What Now?

There may be claims, as these new frameworks emerge, of nepotism and favouritism. There will probably be accusations of fraud or misuse of funds. What I mean is: There will be bumps. Some will be brutal betrayals that we need to recover from.

Betrayals exist now. These are built into the systems and we are experiencing the results in such profoundly unsettling ways right now.

The crucial difference? In the current western model, betrayals are either hidden to avoid reputational damage that may affect profits or are celebrated because they have enriched the correct stakeholder because the system prioritizes profit.

In the indigenous model, each of these betrayals provides opportunities for growth because of the commitment to accountability and truthfulness across the system because the system prioritizes relationship.

Relational Accountability in Practice

Relational accountability operates through multiple interconnected layers of responsibility and reciprocity. Leaders must regularly engage with various circles of accountability: immediate family, extended family, community elders, youth councils, and the broader community.

This practice cannot be reduced to a checklist for efficiency, because people are not efficient. Decisions are not made in isolation but through continuous dialogue and consultation.

These principles of community accountability are increasingly visible in contemporary Indigenous governance. For example, the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke has implemented a Community Decision Making Process that combines traditional consensus-building with modern governance needs. Major decisions include extensive community discussion, ensuring decisions reflect collective wisdom rather than individual authority.

Indigenous communities are reclaiming traditional accountability systems, more decisions are made with full awareness of their ripple effects across relationships and time with the intent of strengthening the web of relationships that holds people, builds community, and sustains culture over time.

Unlike Western systems where accountability often means quarterly reports and annual reviews, Indigenous relational accountability is continuous, dynamic, and embedded in daily interactions.

When a leader strays from their responsibilities, they face not just formal consequences but the immediate feedback of damaged relationships and community trust - a powerful motivator for maintaining integrity in decision-making.

Start. And Keep Going

Such a reclamation takes time and commitment, and for a long time it can look aimless – hopeless even – as a small group of people continue on guided by a common goal. Others work in isolation, driven by vision of something different and seeking others.

As this reclamation work gains momentum these smaller groups connect, more people begin to learn about alternatives to what for many years has been the status quo, and the friction starts to generate more interest.

Learning alternatives is one thing, living them is another. One of the dangers of Western Systems Thinking is how quick it is to declare failure: two missed quarters of expected results and the search for a new strategy is underway.

Thus any transition, personal or public, to a new way of relating to the world, each other, and ourselves, requires a new framework for understanding progress. An iterative approach that is grounded in community observation and connection rather than timetables.

These sorts of frameworks are less generalizable, often growing out of the community they are in and rooted in what the community needs. As frameworks are built, more and more stories will be told about strategies and weak spots to others who are working toward a sustainable, community-wellbeing model. The stories will inspire others, but not direct them.

Any questions that get us thinking about how systems operate in our communities and on our culture are important. Engaging with what we see with curiosity offers us opportunities to develop a broader worldview.

Based on this, discussion I offer the following for consideration:

1. Where do you see nepotism in your workplace or community?

2. What are the benefits and drawbacks of nepotism?

3. Is hiring your child in your business nepotism? Or is it part of building a family?

4. What kind of community do you want to live in?

5. How do your actions support the kind of community you want to live in?

[i] I know this seems like a bit of a leap, but when I say that patrilineal inheritance is institutional, what I mean is it needs something other than the woman’s word that the child is who she says it is. It is one way of removing sovereignty from women and thus, their children. It is why the Indian Act stripped status from women who married colonizers or settlers, and why women and their children continue to fight to have their ancestry acknowledged.

[ii] Please note that, as much as possible in this discussion, I am going to avoid discussions on how time is understood in these systems because it adds an unnecessary, I believe, layer of unnecessary complexity. I am also going to avoid, as much as possible, any discussions on spirituality, faith, or the divine beyond what is necessary.

[iii] I notice as I write these paragraphs, in the back of my head, there is a voice saying “well, what if Joe is fulfilled by hurting someone?” like this is some gotcha, rather than an example. My response to myself is the reminder that in a relational worldview, if Joe is fulfilled by hurting someone, it is because there is something hurting in Joe and the community will act to both protect the community while also addressing Joe’s pain with dignity. This approach reinforces relationship while maintaining dignity because human nature is essentially good, but malleable.

Despite the multiple thank you cards and commendations, there was a moment, as a fiercely loyal civil servant, when I realized work was poison for me.

It was later than you might expect for a labour market theorist who has spent her career thinking about meaningful work. But that’s the way with systems we’re born into—we often can’t see them clearly until we’re forced to step outside.

In part because I never really took a break to reflect on whether my values were reflected in the outcomes of the work I was doing.

Part 1: The Awakening

My journey through the civil service led to a gradual awakening, ending with a sharp kick in the teeth. At first, professional momentum coloured everything—my sense of value, my perception of impact, my belief in the importance of my work. Like many, I got caught up in wanting to please my boss and impress my colleagues. In government service, that’s not always aligned with serving the public good.

The cracks in my belief system started showing when I stayed in one senior management position long enough to see the patterns. Before that, I’d moved roles every 12-14 months, too quickly to witness the full cycle of institutional amnesia and intentional undermining that plagued our work.

What do I mean?

During a major legislative overhaul, my team made a deliberate policy decision not to build an app for assessing the affected administrative limits under new legislation. The reason? Liability.

HUGE liability.

We had received multiple legal opinions and drafted an explicit statement, agreed to by three ministers and their deputy ministers, that an app would not be considered to preserve the legislation’s integrity.

There was an unexpected twist: the government’s strategic policy coordination office partnered with a policy group to hold an innovation competition and someone submitted the idea for the very same app we had just ix-nayed.

Ironically, I had started this policy group when I joined the civil service. Though no longer an active member, I was still involved in discussions. When I saw the app listed as a finalist on the competition website, I reached out to the organizer.

I explained the legal issues and why the submission needed to be disqualified. Instead, they not only kept it in the competition—they awarded it first place for innovation. This despite our team’s proven legal concerns and the submission’s lack of any subsequent legal due diligence.

Unsurprisingly, the app never got built because legal refused to clear it. None of the other, genuinely innovative policy proposals received any attention. The competition died, and with it, a little more belief in the possibility of change died among participants.

BUT! The senior manager did get a promotion for their “commitment to policy innovation,” so all good.

This experience made it crystal clear: there was no institutional memory. Worse still, there was no desire for one. No intention to mitigate harm or build a cohesive civil service. There was only the dance of constant approval-seeking, with a made-up urgency dressed up as progress.

Part 2: The Breaking Point

Few people spoke up about their concerns and dissatisfaction in the civil service when I was a worked there because the repercussions were often dire. I experienced this firsthand in my position before leaving government. And from what I hear from former colleagues, it’s even worse now.

The breaking point came when my government employer defended misogynistic behavior and engaged in blame-the-victim games. That’s when I realized there was no organizational integrity left—no commitment to doing right by employees.

How Good People Get Caught

Let me be clear: I’m not saying there are no good people in government. The civil service is full of incredibly talented, committed individuals who go home every night struggling to understand why obvious, necessary changes are just. not. happening.

The data is clear

Solutions to social issues are widely understood

And most front-line and professional staff are deeply committed to making life better for humans. That’s why they became civil servants.

(As an aside, since leaving government I have learned that most people choose their jobs because they want to make life better for their communities and do something they enjoy. This isn’t, in my experience, always true for those leading in large consultancies, large corporations, or unfortunately, government leadership.)

But what happens is the endless recycling of the same decisions with different messaging. This devastates employee engagement, life satisfaction, and trust in the organization while concurrently undermining the population’s trust in their institutions ability to provide the right programs.

A lot of people eventually just kind of give up and start counting down the days until retirement. Legit, some people have a retirement countdown clock on their desktop. But when employers are always telling the public that the civil service needs to be cut and don’t deserve regular pay increases, why would workers give anything else?

The Executive Bubble

How does this happen?

Most bureaucrats in executive positions are captured by capital’s interests because they rarely spend time with people making under $100,000 a year (except those high-potentials marked for future leadership). Instead, they’re spending time with others in their income bracket ($250,000+) and higher. Lobbyists and consultants have endless event invitations and corporate accounts.

To be clear, this often is not intentional but rather a function of social dynamics and how power operates. In Power for All, the authors provide a case study of Vera, an NGO founder who slowly accumulated her own power, eventually alienating those she originally wanted to serve. She began to cut people off, focused on attending awards dinners rather than tending the community.

She was fortunate, she had friends, colleagues and family members who called her back into the circle. Reminding her of who she was, and she listened. Battilana and Casciaro offer this wisdom: “Having once been wary of power is no guarantee you will be immune to abusing it.”

Over time, executive civil servants’ interests align more closely with the capital class than with the population they’re meant to serve. They interpret information and make decisions with this perspective. Not because they’re bad people, but because it’s human nature to adjust your perception of “normal” based on those around you.

Even more, when an organization doesn’t believe its employees deserve good treatment, it rewards executives who share that view. And if an organization doesn’t value its own employees, it certainly has no genuine regard for the population it’s meant to serve.

“If my boss is interested, I’m captivated”

I witnessed this pattern play out in a colleague’s story—a woman who had been a vocal advocate for servant leadership and strong employee rights.

Smart and ambitious, she hit the classic ceiling: unable to make the leap from senior middle management to executive leadership. I knew the frustration well, having spent years watching less qualified people advance while I remained stuck.

I believed I could make change once I was an executive. Once I left government I realised I should have been paying attention to the current rate of change executives were achieving to understand my frustrations. So When I finally heard her introduction speech to her new team, everything became clear. I could predict:

· How she got the job

· What it cost her

· What the next 6 months would look like

My predictions proved mostly accurate. Her shift to micromanagement and “my way or the highway” thinking meant her formerly high-producing team was looking for work within a month. Within six months, most were gone, almost a quarter on medical leave.

This “didn’t bother her” because “it happened at her last job when she took over too.”

Why? Because toxic workplaces, grounded in extraction and profit-driven mentality, demand we sacrifice our integrity—our sovereignty—to be ‘successful’.

I know because I did it once too.

Part 3: The First Steps

When I first left government, fresh from what I’d call an economics-driven approach to rehabilitation, I was consumed by anger. I was convinced this had happened because no one had figured out how to address it before.

But I was obviously smarter than everyone and knew how to fix it (spoiler: I’m not smarter than everyone else, thinking that is like the number one clue I still had some learning to do).

I was going to prove to everyone that I was right and my employer was wrong.

Beyond Right and Wrong

Except… then what? What was going to get better by proving someone else wrong? Wasn’t I just doing the same thing they were and refusing to be accountable for making things better?

Through reading and research, I (re)discovered that obviously other people had had answers in the past, there was policy already in place to address the exact situation that had happened to me - and thus countless other people before me. It wasn’t lack of policy and legislation in place, it was lack of will.

Here’s a curious phenomenon about human nature: knowing something intellectually and knowing it as lived experience are completely different things. If you’re reading this thinking, “Gosh, how did Trisha not know this?”

I’d said that exact same thing about others… until it happened to me.

My initial response was predictable: anger, self-righteousness, and a burning desire to prove everyone wrong. But that’s just another form of the same poison—focusing on winning rather than healing.

The Safety Equation

So what now? Proving people wrong when an organization is designed to protect them is self-destructive. I was stuck in assigning blame and playing by the rules of the very organization that had harmed me.

Why would I want to keep engaging with the group that hurt me? I’d been doing that for decades, ending up in the same place again and again. (I’d been bullied at more than one job—it’s fairly common, check out the research from the Workplace Bullying Institute.)

Looking back now, I can see how that self-righteous anger fueled me through the fear of doing something most people don’t do: leaving a permanent government job and pulling their pension when they’re a single mom with two kids and a complex post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis.

I did it because I slowly came to understand that I didn’t feel safe returning to that employer. Everyone’s attitude seemed hostile: “What’s the big deal?”

That’s when it hit me—if my employer couldn’t care for its employees, how could it effectively and respectfully administer programs and services for the population it was supposed to serve?

The Real Data

Recent data from Gallup’s State of the Workforce (2025) report shows I wasn’t alone. Employee engagement has fallen to barely more than one in five (21 percent), with middle management engagement dropping from 30 percent to 27 percent.

Since managers are among the most influential factors for non-supervisory employees, Gallup warns that if manager engagement continues to decline, it won’t stop there—the productivity of the world’s workplace is at risk.

This research isn’t new. Wellbeing has always been linked to having meaningful work. Understanding how our labour market currently functions to make us ill sent me on a path to discover what makes us well.

Part 4: The Medicine of Meaningful Work

This journey led me beyond trauma-informed approaches to what I now call dignity-centered work—where the focus isn’t just on avoiding harm but on creating spaces where people can thrive.

Beyond Scarcity Thinking

When I started coaching people, I was still operating from a scarcity mindset—how to get more money, work harder, push more into each day. I believed success meant constant striving, that my value was tied to productivity.

Despite investing tens of thousands in coaches and programs, something still felt off. It wasn’t imposter syndrome or low self-esteem exactly. The usual suspects—fear of failure, anxiety, public speaking fears—didn’t quite fit.

I kept showing up, doing the work, trying to understand what was keeping me stuck. I had two mantras I used almost hourly:

“I am worth the work” ~ Me

“Everyone here thinks he or she is special but to be truly

special you have to know you are nothing.” ~ Mother Meera

Patterns of Healing

The breakthrough came during an inner child meditation on First Nations land. A part of me emerged that had been waiting for the right moment—not from vulnerability, but from strength and self-preservation.

She had stayed hidden until I was ready to create the safety she needed. This wasn’t just about healing old wounds; it was about reclaiming work as a way of expressing the gifts given to me by Creator rather than as mere survival in a toxic system.

I saw this pattern everywhere once I knew what to look for. I saw it in my stepdad, a political refugee, and his friends—how meaningful work helped them reclaim their place in a new community.

Those who found purposeful employment healed faster than those who didn’t. I witnessed it among my unhoused neighbours: those who found ways to contribute—picking up trash, shoveling walks—tended to fare better than those who remained isolated.

Understanding the Pattern

The research backs this up. Drake and Wallach found that “unlike most mental health treatments, employment engenders self-reliance and leads to other valued outcomes, including self-confidence, the respect of others, personal income and community integration.” It’s not just about having a job—it’s about having meaningful work that connects us to something larger than ourselves.

My growing appreciation for Indigenous ways of knowing revealed a fundamental truth: work isn’t meant to be just about monetary exchange. All Indigenous thinking, and indeed most spiritual traditions from the Bible to the Bhagavad Gita, recognize that we need each other and that work is how we support and build our communities.

This understanding cracked me open to see how monetizing labour had hidden work’s deeper meaning. Western capitalism sold us the lie of leisure while stealing our most precious resource—not the profits from our labour, but its meaning and connection to community.

When I was assaulted at work in 2019, I knew staying on disability until retirement would trap me in a different kind of prison.

True healing required reclaiming work’s transformative power. My work has given me more than purpose—it’s provided drive, focus, and ways to create new relationships across many communities.

Part 5: The Path Forward

This is what I mean by “Work as Medicine”—not just employment, but meaningful contribution that helps both the individual and community heal. When we approach work from this perspective, we move beyond trauma-informed practices to dignity-centered work, where we create spaces for people to thrive.

This stands in stark contrast to conventional wisdom, like Gallup’s suggestion that executive leaders need to ensure “middle managers are in lock-step with the executive vision”—an approach that hearkens back to early 20th century Taylorism practices requiring command and control leadership.

New Metrics for Success

Such approaches won’t work for people who want their work to have meaning. People are increasingly understanding the connection between extraction and sustainability, and they’re voting for sustainability with increasing speed. This requires a new kind of leadership and a new vision of work.

Writing this feels bizarre sometimes, 28-year-old me would totally roll her eyes and then go have a beer—because I used to have a real ‘suck it up’ mentality. The me I carry now would have been too much for that younger version. I was still in too much pain then to create something bigger than myself.

That cynicism and focus on what I could get brought me to Ottawa, then England, and eventually here. I travelled all over the world believing the job or the paycheque would change me.

Until I arrived here, in true sovereignty about how I spend my time and who benefits from my work, after a lot of growing up and a deep desire to live a life free of self-loathing.

The Transformation Blueprint

My kids were and continue to be part of that journey—how do you create a house of love if the money comes from doing things you hate?

Finally, I saw it in myself when I could hold both my most vulnerable and strongest parts without shame or anger—only gratitude for the freedom this understanding brought. When I understood that saying “I went through it and I’m fine” was the number one indicator that I was not fine.

The transformation of work from poison to medicine isn’t just about individual healing—it’s about collective liberation. When we are free, it becomes our responsibility to help free others. This is the true medicine of meaningful work.

We can start where we are, and when enough of us begin this journey, workplaces will transform themselves. Because money isn’t power—it’s control.

And when we find ways to support each other in having more control over the things that work is buying from us, when we stop allowing basic needs to be weaponized against us, money becomes less relevant.

Collective Liberation Through Work

The path forward isn’t about destroying current systems—it’s about transforming them through conscious, intentional action.

It’s about creating workplaces where dignity isn’t just a buzzword but a foundational principle. Where success is measured not just in profits but in the wellbeing of our communities.

Because ultimately, work isn’t just what we do, it’s how we contribute to the world. And when we reclaim it as medicine, we don’t just heal ourselves, we help heal the world.

Part 6: What I’ve Learned

Here are 6 lessons I’ve learned after leaving what I truly believed would be my forever career and doing a bunch of other, hard things:

1. Some people say “Starting is the hardest part.” In my experience that is a lie: every part is the hardest part. But that’s what makes it worth it, because…

2. Life truly is remarkable when it is an adventure requiring us to meet ourselves.

3. I will live in a box on the street before I will willingly return to working for someone who disrespects their employees and their community - not because I am not afraid of the street, but because I am more afraid of the future without change now.

4. None of us live in the same world, even if we live on the same planet and in the same community, and most people have no idea.

5. Most people do want good things for their neighbours and are super confused why things keep getting worse.

6. Working to prove something about myself fails, working in service of a dream too big to be realized in my lifetime creates deep fulfillment. All of us deserve the experience of reclaiming our work to build our dreams.

REFERENCES

Battilana, J., and Casciaro, T. ( 2021) Power for All: How it really works and why it’s everyone’s business. New York: Simon&Schuster Paperbacks

Drake RE, Wallach MA (2020). Employment is a critical mental health intervention. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences 29, e178, 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S2045796020000906

Insights from the State of the Global Workplace: 2025 Report https://www.gallup.com/learning/event/4907504/EventDetails.aspx

Lundqvist J, Lindberg MS, Brattmyr M, Havnen A, Hjemdal O and Solem S (2025) Associations between employment status, type of occupation, and mental health problems in a treatment seeking sample. Front. Psychol. 16:1536914. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1536914

The other day I was asked whether, based on my expertise, Indigenous Systems Thinking, a new book from Jesse Grey Eagle, represents how Indigenous people think.

The question was “Is Indigenous Systems Thinking how all Indigenous People think? Is it fair to say that these views and ways apply to all Indigenous Peoples in North America or across the world?”

When I answered this question directly, I missed one key component - Indigenous or Western Systems Thinking is not about how each individual thinks, but rather the underlying mental models of the world in which people exist and the decisions made based upon beliefs about what the purpose of our time, and our work, here is.

Although each person’s thinking may resemble one or the other, systems thinking is more about how the community functions, how decisions are made for the collective, and the culture that results.

Systems Thinking about governance could be Indigenous in Spain just as much as they could be in Alberta, because it is about recognition of the interdependence of wakohtowin (a Michif Cree concept/word meaning all our relations, we are all related and need each other), or whatever the equivalent might be in Spain. It is a matter of reestablishing reciprocity in relationship, rather than extraction, with the people and the land the decisions impact.

So, because I suspect more people wonder the same thing when they consider Indigenous Systems Thinking, and because many people may not know what systems thinking is, this is the response I would like to give, with more thought about how the individual/community difference plays out in our experience of the world.

What is Systems Thinking?

First, we need to understand what systems thinking is, in general, without an adjective in front of it. According to a (very thorough) 2015 paper, the best definition of systems thinking is:

Which doesn’t mean a lot to me, even after having read the paper because it doesn’t tell me what it means in words that relate to the real world. (It’s linked here if you want to dive deeper into why this is a good definition, because it is - it’s just hard to understand in real life, like when you pick the store where you buy milk.)

Barry Richmond, a well-known leader in the field of systems thinking and systems dynamics, is credited with coining the term “systems thinking” in 1987. He writes (1991):

As interdependency increases, we must learn to learn in a new way. It’s not good enough simply to get smarter and smarter about our particular “piece of the rock.” We must have a common language and framework for sharing our specialized knowledge, expertise and experience with “local experts” from other parts of the web. We need a systems Esperanto. Only then will we be equipped to act responsibly. In short, interdependency demands Systems Thinking. Without it, the evolutionary trajectory that we’ve been following since we emerged from the primordial soup will become increasingly less viable.

Another definition comes from the Prevention Centre, Australia:

Systems thinking is defined as a way to make sense of a complex system that gives attention to exploring the interrelated parts, boundaries and perspectives within that system.

Rather than a systematic approach, system thinking takes a systemic approach. Research can be more effective if you use a balance of both the systematic and systemic approaches (Prevention Centre)

So (recognizing this is a simplistic breakdown) basically systems thinking examines the world and determines the way decisions are made about:

• how the milk gets to the store

• where that store is

• who owns the store

• how far it travels (also: why to a store, and not a community league)

• who you are drinking the milk with

• how you got the milk (barter, trade, cash)

• when drinking milk is acceptable

• is it cow goat or oat milk

  … and why are you drinking milk anyway?

And then it considers how these different aspects interact in creating a future that is beneficial to the group for whom the decisions are being made.

Most definitions presume that the default focus for decision-making is universal, and that worldview - demonstrated through how people engage in their activities and how decisions are made at the community and governance level - is the same for everyone, or same enough that it does not need to be questioned.

But how we understand ourselves, the world and our relationship to it changes how we view and interpret systems. It’s the water we swim in, the skin we live in. It’s how our minds understand the world as interpreted through our bodies and then transmuted into a culture.

The system we live in influences what we believe about ourselves, and what we believe about ourselves helps to create (maintain) the system we live in.

Some of this worldview is definitely influenced by our education and schooling, our own curiosity and interests, our families of origin but for many of us, our worldview is rarely questioned. And that is totally reasonable - how do you know there is something to question if you don’t know there is some sort of substructure to how our minds interpret the world?

These different ways of understanding connection (or not) shows up everyday, often in ways we don’t notice until our assumptions are challenged. Sometimes innocent questions shock us into the awareness that our worldview is not universal, even with people who appear to think the same way as us.

This sounds ridiculous - surely these are the same thing, aren’t they?

I remember a few years ago, my girlfriend and I were sitting down to dinner and she said “You know, I’ve started to wonder if maybe animals have feelings. Like, my cat snuggles with me because he loves me.”

She was silent for a moment. “What do you think?”

She had been reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass” and we’d talked about it several times, how it had influenced some of her daily decisions, so this question shocked me.

I got really still for a moment, thinking I misheard the question “I’m sorry, what? Can you repeat that?”.

“Weellll, do you think, like - do animals maybe have feelings?”

She was nervous asking this question. Her vulnerability made it clear this was not lightly asked, it had been sitting on her heart for a while. And so our dinner conversation was one I never even knew was needed.

It started with me saying “Absolutely. I absolutely believe animals have feelings, you sound nervous. Let’s talk about this.”

Reflecting later, I began to understand I did not see the world the same way other people did. It had never occurred to me that animals did not have feelings and preferences. The idea that a living creature didn’t experience the world through their body and interpret that, influencing their actions in the exact same way I do, was incomprehensible to me.

I started asking other people whether they thought animals were sentient. And more than I expected either didn’t know, or thought they weren’t.

A Quick Word on Why this Matters

Any sort of systems thinking is not about individuals and how they think about the world, although it does influence them.

Rather, systems thinking - regardless of adjective - is the worldview that is supported and maintained by the decisions that are made at the governance level, and then enacted through the daily implementation.

Going back to the definition above, systems thinking is the understanding of and lens for interpreting the world as it is experienced in the community you live in and the dominant culture it creates. Most people are completely unaware of how their daily actions either contribute to or challenge the system they live in.

This is reasonable. If we were all constantly evaluating the systems we live in, we wouldn’t be doing a lot of living.

It is, however, reasonable to reflect on whether our actions are creating the world we want, and if not - what might need to change to achieve a different outcome? Part of that is being introduced to the idea of different systems for making decisions.

Returning to the original question:

Does Indigenous Systems Thinking represent all how all Indigenous People think?

My answer: yes and no.

First, the No

Just like Western Systems Thinking both does and does not represent how all white people experience the world - there are a lot of Canadians and Americans who believe that governance should be located on and for the land and people it is making decisions about - Indigenous Systems Thinking is not how all Indigenous people experience the world - there are some who believe that profit matters more than people and it’s better to make decisions based on separation from land.

Whatever is the dominant thinking, regardless of who is making the decisions, will drive understanding of impacts and what matters in the process.

The challenge in trying to generalize anything enough for broader discussion and application is that it erases the stories and the memories that create the context for how we interpret the world. Which is what Jesse Grey Eagle is naming in his book.

Indigenous Systems Thinking is about how decisions are made for the people, land, and communities where the decisions are implemented: The collective. It takes into consideration the lived reality of the moment, is focused on the long-term wellbeing, and the sustainability of the decisions over time for the environment and the people.

The foundation is reciprocity to ensure long-term success rather than ‘how much can we take?’, there a balance between benefit and accountability asking ‘how can we work together?’

And now the Yes

The above said, IST does represent the teachings I’ve studied as Metis woman, as a mixed-culture kid raised by an Indigenous political refugee from Chile, and as an Irish woman raised among people who still follow the old ways. IST aligns with what I know through prayer, meditation, and ceremony to be a good life in a good way - miyo pimatisiwin - because it is what feels right.

The ‘yes’ is how our systems are internalized and create our own view of the world. An Indigenous worldview starts from a fundamentally different perspective on the nature of people.

When I live this way, I don’t question if I am a good person because I have evidence. What is the evidence? Shifting from a western worldview to a Flow, or Indigenous worldview required some tools and those, for me, are the values in the Red River Cart Wheel Teachings of the Metis Nation as what makes a good life.

These values inform how I think explicitly as well as how I interpret the world. In part, I believe, because I have made a conscious decision and a consistent effort to change how I understood my relationship to the world during my personal healing. To stay well these values, from a worldview of people being fundamentally good, are how I make decisions.

So, my decisions inform the community I am a part of and how that community makes decisions. Collective (System) values guide community decisions by ensuring we take concrete action that embody these values.

• Are resources stewarded?

• Is community stronger?

• Is there balance between all parties involved?

• Can this be sustained?

These community values can only be held in place by people who have these same values and the integrity to uphold them.

Putting this into Context for Decision-Making

Thus, leadership needs a framework for decisions that ensures our values remain concrete, rather than becoming abstract principles and this framework is grounded in the land and in time. The framework has to be both internal - a commitment to personal values, and external - making public decisions that align with those values.

Shifting from a Force, or Western worldview to a Flow, or Indigenous worldview required some tools that create ways of assessing progress that goes outside of the transactional (profit-oriented) nature of Western Systems Thinking. Above I referenced the Cartwheel teachings. These are twelve values that I use for all of my decisions and that I reflect on every week.

(Ben Franklin did this too.)

NOTE: The Red River Cart was invented by the Metis to endure long, tough travels carrying belongings and goods for sale. It was the engine of our Nation, so it makes sense that the teachings that guide us were built into what kept us moving forward. This is another example of how culture is reinforced.

As I practiced liking myself, I used the values in the Cart Wheel teachings to assess my behaviours each week and determine whether I was acting in ways that aligned with the values I say matter to me.

Through this work the voice in my head went from shaming to loving, and how I understood work transformed. I began to understand that to do good works is why we are here, the only guarantee we have is there is work to do to care for others so that we in turn may be cared for. That for me, healing was part of that work.

This is, of course, not the only way to see the world so anyone who says they believe differently just sees the world in a way that is different from me. While I believe long-term results speak for themselves, both in my personal and my professional experience, this observation is not a judgement. We all live in the world we want to live in.

The reason I choose to see the world as an interconnected whole is because when I live in the world this way, I experience moments of true and overwhelming joy that were not available to me when I believed the delusion that I was separate from the world. At that time, I felt deeply alone and unsure of how to handle the pressure of being all-the-things to myself.

When I returned to what is, for me, correct thinking to have a good life, that anxiety and fear began to dissipate. Slowly at first as I remembered how to trust the world but the more I leaned into this worldview, the quicker my anxiety resolved into a desire to work toward something greater than where we are right now.

Why This Matters:

If the results we experience do not align with our expectations, failure and then disappointment of at least one group is the usual result. In Western Systems Thinking people often blame themselves for systemic failures. This is by design: if your worldview is that humans are evil, any failures you experience are a result of your lack.

In a system that sees aggression as courage, and you are not aggressive, this is a failure on your part and your perspective will not be considered in discussions or decisions. Similarly, if community wellbeing is less important that personal gain, decisions will reward people motivated by personal reward even if it is at the expense of community well-being.

However, the reverse is also true. If you believe people are fundamentally good, just needing guidance, then decisions are made to support community and create safe environments where everyone can flourish.

This worldview requires that nature be included because wellbeing is directly related to the health of our planet: clean air, clear water, healthy animals and plants and all other beings.

Final Thoughts

Systems thinking is about the fundamental worldview that shapes how communities and organizations make decisions which in turn shapes how people think. Whether Indigenous or Western in approach, these mental models determine how we understand our relationship with the world around us and, consequently, how we make decisions and what we expect from outcomes.

Indigenous Systems Thinking creates a framework for discussing our collective future, as well as what kind of life we want for ourselves.

1. Community: Leaders and decision-makers see themselves embedded in the system instead of separate from it and understand they are responsible for the impacts of their decisions. Regularly assessing how actions align with core values creates deeper integrity of action.

2. Harmonious Relationships: relationships are reciprocal and relational, not transactional. This shift ensures we are thinking about the impacts on the broader web of relationships and interdependencies, not just the immediate stakeholders.

3. Long-term Stewardship: True systems leadership means moving beyond short-term metrics to consider regenerative outcomes. This involves asking not just ‘What will this achieve?’ but ‘What kind of world will this create?’ People, their families,

   and their communities benefit from the work being done, ensuring long term sustainability and abundance.

As individuals, we can only control what we do. The more of us who begin to trust the world, rather than fear it, shifting from a WST to an IST world view, means we also need to spend time

1. Reflecting on how our actions align with our values, and whether our actions had the intended consequences.

2. Developing an awareness of how everything is interconnected in our daily life helps us develop our decision-making capacity. Asking questions like ‘what community do I want to be a part of?’ is a great start.

3. Accepting that we can change our worldview and thus our relationship with our with thought conscious effort and regular practice.

Until I began the personal process of decolonizing my worldview and how I understand myself in the culture we live in, I did not understand how much I questioned my own perspective in a world that consistently seemed to reward bad behaviours.

We need to understand ourselves not only as impacted by the world we live in but active agents of change to create the world we want. Indigenous Systems Thinking then becomes a framework for implementation.

Eventually I understood: In our current culture most people don’t have an internalized belief system about how the world operates that supports them in their wellbeing.

In fact, it often does the opposite: Western Systems Thinking extracts from people and the environment in the maintenance of a far-away amorphous Them (empire?). It does this by providing promises that fail to appear and framing our neighbours as the problem.

The model that recenters community wellness, sustainability, and a culture of dignity for everyone is grounded in Indigenous Systems Thinking. This model supports a personal worldview of people being fundamentally good and our work is an active contributor to building the long-term wellbeing of our communities in sustainable, regenerative ways.

It is our work that builds the world we live in and determines the services we receive, I believe we should benefit from our efforts. Nature, organizations, communities, families, and people are healthier which makes our future sustainable.

I never expected work to be both my saviour and my nemesis and yet that is what I got.

I love work - being a part of something, contributing to building a better, sustainable community for all of us.

And work almost killed me because my workplaces, through “he’s a good guy” leadership tactics when reporting an assault and colleagues protecting their promotions, were toxic - designed to force obedience to extractive practices and policies.

We all need to eat, and entrepreneurship is likely not the answer for everyone (I’m still unsure if it’s the answer for me, even 4 years in) so what do we do?

Our workplaces are only safe if we make them that way so how do we do that? In this episode Virginia and I talk about lessons learned, actions we now take regularly, and what comes next.

Three lessons:

1. integration takes time

2. you cannot be collaborative and competitive at the same time

3. taking risks requires some safety

Three actions:

1. conduct a personal safety audit

2. practice setting boundaries when you feel comfortable

3. be intentional about who you collaborate with

For example - steer clear of bad faith actors, you can’t change them. Remember your worth is who you are, not what you produce.

And the more of us who speak up about what good, healthy work looks like and provides, the more people will be able to imagine something different, something better.

Let me know below, what do you do to feel safe at work?

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Workplaces are not the havens of productivity and camaraderie that we wish they were. Leadership doesn’t always know what their role is in creating safety and in fact, may not be all that interested in safety if it means their KPIs are threatened.

What’s a person to do? Today Virginia and I talk about

• How middle management impacts feelings of safety

• The strange experience of being told that change is coming and then watching 30 years of nothing happen

• How we can create safety for ourselves and people we care about, even in toxic workplaces

• The need for an exit strategy, the value of support

One of the distinctions Virginia and I explore is middle management - stuck in the middle with you - and executive leadership which seems to sail blithely above the fray, even though their decision-making authority is far more impactful than that of middle managers.

I also talk about how we can create a sense of personal integrity and safety that will serve us in even the most toxic environments because sometimes leaving is just not available to us.

I know I have had that experience of feeling empty. Today I talk about how I remember my value is not determined by someone else, but by my actions.

Let us know below: what experiences of safe leadership or safe work colleagues made a difference in your workplaces. Or what you think needs to change

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Detachment and the Hero’s Journey end with triumph, but what happens after the hero has arrived home? or the detached enlightened being comes down from the mountain?

Today Virginia and I are breaking down common assumptions. We consider the role detachment plays in healing and personal growth

Is the Hero’s Journey better than staying? And the people who stay behind to keep the bills paid and the lawn mowed while the hero is out journeying - why aren’t we talking about them?

We’re a bit more philosophical today, and a bit more personal asking ourselves who we are becoming and how these ideas got us to where we are, and what they mean for where we want to go in our lives and our work.

I know, after doing this podcast with Virginia, that life isn’t something we can control, the best we can do is navigate what gets thrown at us.

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood: https://www.audreys.ca/item/5Z0NmApghbwPm8K9H3ybSQ

(this is my favourite bookstore in the world right now, not an affiliate link. I just think more people should know about Audrey’s Books)

Link to the astrologer mentioned in the episode: Rob Brezsny https://freewillastrology.com/

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Today Virginia and I talk about creating healthy tools to maintain a sense of safety in turbulent times when we feel overwhelmed but still have to get up and go to work.

We talk about control - often thought of as how do we manipulate or arrange external events to turn out the way we want. In this episode, we flip that question to how do we create internal safety so we are in control of our decisions regardless of how external events unfold.

When we are confronted with the unknown, what guides our decision making and how do we ensure we are choosing character over comfort? What check-ins do we have in place to ensure we make decisions that align with who we aspire to be, not what others want us to be for their convenience?

And then we have to heal both from the hurts we have experienced and the hurts we have caused (sidenote: in recovery this is often referred to as making amends), it can feel really overwhelming, particularly in a culture that prizes isolation as the path to self-knowing.

We end this episode talking about what we can do as we navigate this unfolding and uncertain future, while also taking care of ourselves.

I know that as we talk about what it means to be building a business and the questions we face, I am learning to discern needs and wants which is giving me a lot more control.

I’d love to know how you create a sense of personal control in these times. Who is your support system and what might be missing?

(image courtesy of iStockphoto.com)

Life is like that. Sometimes we are so busy chasing dreams, we forget that we grow and change in the process

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Being ok with who we were is how we become who we want to be, it is how we trust ourselves enough to take risks. Otherwise we are too busy trying to pretend that everything is just fine. We are fitting in.

Art can be a gateway to the next step on our journey - which was never meant to be linear, but a meandering investigation of what catches our interest in the moment.

Art can’t be rushed, just like a cake, it takes the time it takes. There is a lot of things about that fact that are hard for me cause sometimes I do not have the patience for the oven to preheat, let alone bake the cake.

The big lessons for me:

• Success does not look the way we think it looks - the responsible platform may be the launching pad for your dreams

• Art shows up in many different ways, and it can be a part of our lives whenever we are ready to welcome it

• Transforming systems requires vulnerability and safety. If safety cannot be found in our culture we need to learn to create it within ourselves.

What dreams do you harbour that are waiting for you to breathe life into them again?

Who do you want to be in this next moment? Let me know below

Bad workplaces can linger long after we've left.

Today Virginia and Trisha talk about toxic behaviours they carried with them after they had left unhealthy workplaces.

From people pleasing and performativity, to how needing external validation enforces the status quo, there are all sorts of cultural norms that do not serve us well regardless of whether we are entrepreneurs or employees.

Knowing what you can control helps you create good boundaries - if the job you have is the only option and it is unhealthy, then the goal is to set focus on maintaining your boundaries and creating an exit strategy. Sometimes a job is just a job.

Three takeaways from our combined ten years experience helping others navigate changes in their lives:

1. Focus on your strengths and what you are doing well, rather than worrying about your weaknesses. Knowing what you have done well creates a sense of internal safety rather than relying on external validation.

2. Non-negotiable No’s and Enthusiastic Yeses. By knowing what is off-limits, what we will not do, decisions can make themselves. We will not question our integrity because we know where our no-go zones are.

   This also creates more time to embrace enthusiastic yeses for the relationships and projects that make excited you.

3. Know your zone of control and focus your efforts there. By focusing your efforts on what you can control, your energy is directed at what needs to be done. This zone of control can and will expand as you develop a sense of safety and empowerment.

   If you spend your energy focusing on what you cannot control but want to - your zone of interest - you will burnout and get nothing done.