“Walking Together”
This theme speaks to the collective advocacy and activism that is part of social movements. Participants stressed that it is crucial to overcome the dichotomous approach of ‘we’ versus ‘us’, to seek commonalities in worldviews and find the join that will create alliances. This will not only promote cultural safety as the outcome in terms of policy, education and practice but make the process of ‘change’ culturally safe by “not placing the burden of change on the individual”. “Walking Together” draws attention to the fact that alliances are not built via policies and agreements but by people and social action. At the very beginning this might take the form of opening up the circle and inviting people into the dialogue to create “pragmatic solidarity” as the first step.
“Building Communities” is about the importance of people’s need for belonging as a basic prerequisite for social action and ‘walking together’. Participants emphasized that communities are built through mutual supports and engagement with each other. Cultural safety is not something that can be taught through words only but needs to be learned through experience, through active engagement with each other. Thus, cultural safety would mean to seek or create opportunities for people to engage with each other, such as public services and spaces, social networking etc.
Quotes From Symposium Participants:
“We must deal with these tensions in ways that bring groups into alignment, not opposition with one another.”
“Finding the join”
“Part of what has to be taken into consideration is looking at the commonalities in worldviews.”
“This has to be a collective process; the challenge is to get ego concerns, our individualism, out of the way to develop alliances with others.”
“Educating people one at a time is again individualistic, and we are looking for how to support this collectively. I heard this a.m. the need for solidarity, the need for social action, sharing a common vision that can stand up in solidarity against oppression in all its forms.”
“Collective advocacy is critical. We will have a stronger voice if it is a collective one. And we need to not focus on the oppressor, but as change agents, to look collectively at how we would like things to be and put our efforts there, to bring people into the circle with us.”
“They may know little about us, but we may be poorly informed about them. We are trying to break the divide between “us” and “them”, so rather than convincing them, we need to invite people into the conversation. Ignorant and ill-informed people exist but most try to do their best. Opening the conversation is a good first step.”
“Each group started with what will benefit me by being a partner. Each group has to see how the other will be a benefit to them. They have to value what the other group brings to the relationship. But oftentimes the group that has had the power doesn’t see the benefit of partnering, so being able to see and value what each brings to the partnership, this creates the grounds for cultural safety.”
“It is important that we don’t place the burden of change on the individual. Yes, each person has to act and react when the space is culturally unsafe, but we need to build collectives so they can be supported and people don’t have to take on the burden of change feeling isolated and alone. The opportunity of coming together like this, allows us to build these kinds of collectives and communities to support each of us in building the change that we want to create. A term came up “peopling up the room” with people who are committed to relational practice and CS, and I really like that term.”
“But the excitement part of this is important for me. And some of Paul Farmer’s work in Haiti and liberation theology and solidarity. He says it’s not enough to bear witness to suffering. That is classically what many academics have done through research, but rather, any time we engage in an activity such as this, we need to come up with practical pragmatic ways to move things forward, practical pragmatic ways to mobilize change. I would like to see pragmatic solidarity with people on the ground, people who are doing this every day – like the idea of holistic medicine, which is now mainstream, but came from indigenous philosophy and feminist work. I love the idea of collective activism. That gives me hope.”
“When I was growing up, we had a real sense of community – the Minister knew you; the doctor would visit and spend time without concern for the length of visit, everyone went to the same church, the teachers knew the whole community and would come to the house and talk to my parents – there was that opportunity to build relationships and for people to know me as an individual. As I grew older, I noticed withdrawal of public service, away from house calls and a business model imposed.”
“I began to appreciate that the life of homeless people in that part of the country resembles traditional survival, the key to which is mutual support.”
“They engage newcomers into activities, not creating a file of their problems, no personal profiles; they just take names and contact information for emergencies.”
“Social networking needs to be engaged for the latter to share this kind of information. Mind Your Mind is such a fantastic website.”
“This is citizen to citizen engagement that informs the whole. You embrace life by living it. Many people have lost that traditional way and by losing it are finding themselves increasingly dependent on someone doing it for them and this is decreasing their quality of life. The main message is to do everything we can as citizens in the interest of the whole community, and get to work. If this means engaging other systems, then this has to be done. For example, in the Commission, most of the Advisory Committee members don’t even know the Commissioners. So this is something we could do within the Commission. We could also extend the circle out to the communities.”
“We haven’t learned in our world how to be caring for the communities we are part of.”“We have to make people feel they belong, and have a voice to contribute to the dialogue and make sure they have that voice in the beginning, not at the end. Without the support, it is difficult to foster a relationship.”
More Than Just Words…
This theme is about the importance of other forms of knowledge and ways of learning. Participants persistently emphasized the importance of lived experience and the learning through experience. Learning from experience does not only include one’s own experience but also the experiences of others including survivors, elders, ancestors etc. Shared experiences can form the basis for trustful and safe relationship. One fundamental shared experience for all people is the experience of being human. From a cultural safety perspective, our common humanity can be seen as a source of knowledge that needs to be revived as a legitimate and powerful source of wisdom.
Subthemes throughout the symposium included humanity, learning by examples (what works), learning from lived experience.
To Walk the Talk
“Walking the Talk” is about leading by example and affecting change from the bottom up. To achieve cultural safety the process has to be culturally safe. Advocating for cultural safety when we do not live it is hypocritical and will lead to lip service. This requires adopting a critical lens of self-reflection and openness to make yourself vulnerable.
In this regard symposium subthemes included self-reflection, leading by example and vulnerability.
