Intentionality
In the spirit of being in ceremony, I invite you to begin engaging with all that I have wriiten with intentionality in your heart, mind and spirit. To engage with everything I share with only love and light in your 4 body system. Intentionally creating space for (un)learning, openness, mindfulness, hopefulness, gentleness, kindness, holstically and valuing what is being shared as truth and sacred.
In our Step Into the River: A Framework for Economic Reconciliation we ask you to set your intention before reading the document and engaging with it in a different way than you would typically. Allowing for than just language reaching you, but all that comes from our intention in writing the document and embracing it with a whole new way. This is what we shared in the Framework about setting you intention:
It’s important to ask yourself honestly and completely: Why am I here? Is it to rectify historical wrongs? Is it to improve the relationships between myself and the Indigenous community adjacent to me? Is it just out of curiosity to learn more about economic reconciliation? All are welcome, but the deeper you go in this work, the more you have to open yourself up to the messages here. You have to open yourself up to deeper relationships with people around you, and be more and more willing to change yourself and your surroundings through that process. It may be uncomfortable, difficult and challenging, but this is an opportunity to grow as a person, and grow in allyship with the community around you.
We also invite you to center your children and your community’s children in this work. Our Elders tell us that we are all connected, we are one family and we are committed to healing the ‘spirit of the child’, one child at a time. It is our children who will inherit the outcomes of this work. Having the children at the centre of this work commits everyone to their well-being and the requirements of all things to achieve that well-being.
In order to effectively engage with Indigenous people and communities, there are significant historical, cultural and legal considerations that every Canadian must know and understand. SFU CED wants to serve all people residing in the province with awareness, sensitivity and understanding that comes from learning culturally-appropriate knowledge. Respecting the worldviews of Indigenous peoples in B.C. requires learning and development that focuses on Indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being, Indigenous history, current realities, and aspirations. Success in working with Indigenous Peoples and First Nation communities comes through this deeper understanding.
The Framework supports growing one’s knowledge, curiosity and action towards Economic Reconciliation and putting the children at the centre of it all, as we are creating their legacy through the actions we take today. This is intergenerational work without any doubt. As Justice Murray Sinclair said, “It took 125 years to create the problem — seven generations — so it may take generations to fix.” Growing one’s knowledge is going to take time, effort and energy and will facilitate the personal and social change required to realize reconciliation in all spaces throughout our communities, in service of our children and the people yet to be.
I share this again in this story because intention is everything.
Without love and light in our hearts, for well-being beyond ourselves, without only goodness to prevail, without values guiding our way, without children at the center, without understanding that everything is interconnected, we are NOT setting the right intention of what we set out to be doing.
This is our worldview as Indigenous Peoples but is not solely just for us but for all. I mean all living things, mother earth, the four elements, the universe, etc. Setting your intention for only the well-being of everything is paramount to setting a foundation of only good work to be done. This is how we approach all of our work as Indigenous Peoples. We don’t go out onto the land without sharing our intentionality, we make an offering to the land for what we are taking and why, we are clear about our intention in relationship to all those that are providing for us. We also honour our relationship to all those that are providing to us by hosting ceremony to reciprocate our heart felt graditude for that offering to us and the relationship we have them. We go into potlatch and any ceremony with the same intentionalities and demonstrate it through our decisions, protocols, practices, knowledge sharing and tranfer, etc. We set our intentionality when sharing our teachings to the young ones, it’s in our language, how we do things, how and when we share knowledge, and the repetition of these teachings in various ways over a lifetime. We ackowledge, uderstand and uplift our responsibilities during those times that we are most powerful or have the greatest spiritual energy:
when we come into this world,
when we transition from childhood into adulthood,
when bring another life into the world and
then we leave the life.
We set our intentionalities in the transition from each of these spaces to the other through ceremony and teachings to set us up for a good life.
I share this with you so you can see how this works in our ways of being, doing and knowing. That it isn’t rocket science, or difficult to be with. More importantly, it is required by all of us all of the time. To work collectively towards well-being of all things in everything that we are. Without setting good intentions in our hearts, minds and spirit and energetically holding space for it, we get lost along the way because we don’t have the right foundation to build on. My secret sauce in every space is I intentionally hold love and light for only goodness and well-being for all things, I do my best and I let the creator do the rest (this includes my ancestors and the people yet to be to be with me), and center my great granchilderns great children in all that I am.
So what would it look life for you to practice intentionality in your spaces? Be curious about what and how this would be for you in your personal and professional spaces. How would show up a coach, a parent, manager, volunteer, etc. What is one thing that you would hold the energy for in all of your spaces? For me it’s brining only love and light into everything and everywhere. If I hold this energy, then I know I only have well-being in my heart and it will flow through my energy, my words, my physical, emotional and mental presence, and everyone will feel that, see that, know that and potentially embrace it as theirs also. Then it ripples outwards into the world and the universe. Rebounding back to us in the same way.
