My friend Rosemary Cairns, who’s worked in communities all over the world, tells of a meeting in the remote city of Yellowknife, in Canada’s Northwest Territories. In the room was a mix of aboriginal and non-aboriginal people.

“Many of the aboriginal people weren’t speaking,” Rosemary says. “The tone of many of the non-aboriginal people was that sort of ‘realistic’ approach: Let’s look at ‘how things really are’ — non-achievement, wasted resources, an unspoken agreement that it will take a long time before things change.”

“In my earlier years, I would have probably said that out loud and alienated three-quarters of the room,” she continues. “But one of the great things about aging is that—like aboriginal elders—I’ve taken to telling stories instead.”

Feeling nervous, she says, Rosemary told the group about what had happened during World War II in Old Crow, a remote aboriginal community in the neighboring northern Yukon territory.

The people of the village had heard on the radio about the children who were orphaned as a result of the bombing of London. They valued children and family, so they wanted to do something. Despite their comparative poverty, the few hundred people living in Old Crow collected about 700 dollars, a very large sum for them. They sent the money to the British High Commissioner in Ottawa, who sent it on to London.

The commissioner actually came to visit Old Crow to thank them for this contribution. They passed the hat and raised another 70 or 80 dollars.

“There was dead silence after I finished telling this story that I believed described the kind of people who were in the room with me,” Rosemary says. “I wondered whether I’d made a mistake and thought that I must have sounded naive.”

But in telling the story, Rosemary had challenged the unspoken assumptions. The story proved the power of native communities.

That created a new ground—a new social agreement—about who could speak and what they could talk about. And soon a young aboriginal man raised his hand and began to tell of his work in a small community on the other side of the lake.

That he spoke and how he spoke was even more important than what he said. He opened up the meeting to participation by many of the aboriginal people who had been silent up until then, and to a different level of discussion about development.

Yes, one person can interrupt the status quo and create new possibilities, even while ignoring “the elephant in the room.”

Do we want to give up our righteous indignation? Read on.

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17