I'm back

Sharing trail food at Clo-oose, BC

"Community is the unit of change.The only way we get through difficult times is together." 
~  Margaret Wheatley

My journey from BA Communications to MA Community Development began on the West Coast Trail in Clo-oose, a small village of the Ditidaht people near the west end of Nitinat Lake. A family of three children, father, and grandfather lived close to the trail, and were offering meals to hikers of home-smoked salmon. Tired and hungry, we stopped to rest and enjoy a meal of actual not dried food. The children were particularly curious about the various equipment we had, and I was anxious to talk to them about their home in such a spectacular part of the world. I don't remember all of the father's story but it included being taken away from his land to a residential school, and his anger with his father for letting him go. Father and son had worked hard on forgiveness, and their return to the land included a commitment to raise their children and grandchildren on their land forever. The children were delightful and I was happy to share the Smarties from my trail mix in exchange for some tips for finding leaves to use as toilet paper and their eager laughs and smiles.

I have pulled out the photo of me and the children at Clo-oose several times over the years as a way of grounding myself in who I am as a person and as a professional. I believe strongly in community development done at a micro scale, and I do my best communications work when it involves, respects, and includes the history and the culture of the people I am working with and for. I believe in sitting down with children to understand what is best and delightful and simple about a place, as well as listening to their parents and grandparents about what is historical, complicated, and tragic. 

Communications for development has layers and paradigms and theories for understanding and framing my work as a communications professional. But all that I need to know about participatory communications I learned from a Ditidaht family at Clo-oose on a hot day in the middle of an exhausting hike.