Virtual Session

Ruby opened by sharing her Cree name with us. It is Kihew Pihesiew Iskwew, which means Eagle Thunderblood woman

Ruby gave an honest and informative presentation, referencing events and patterns of our past to understand the focus for healing and growth in our present. She spoke of her desire to instill empathy, not sympathy, quoting Dr. Anne Anderson, “You don’t know where you are going if you don’t know where you came from.”

Ruby spoke from her own experience of the many barriers faced by Indigenous peoples, including:

• Lack of literacy and education

• Cultural differences/identities

• Racism, Discrimination, Stereotypes, Stigmas

• Lack of Self-Awareness, Self-Confidence, Self Esteem (Not sure how to heal)

• Poverty, poor housing, transportation

• Lack of adequate child care

She spoke with vulnerability and honesty about oppression and the harm that comes from victimization that becomes part of our identity. She spoke of internalized oppression, the process by which a member of an oppressed group comes to accept and live out the inaccurate myths and stereotypes applied to the group. Quoting Michael Denneny, “We hate ourselves because we grew up and live in a society that hates us”.

Part of addressing Truth and Reconciliation is over-turning myths and misconceptions that continue to distort perspectives of Indigenous peoples in Canada. See resources for a video on stereotypes of Indigenous people.

Ruby talked specifically on a number of topics relevant to First Nations and intergenerational trauma:

• The profound impact of Residential Schools on a spiritual people who weren’t allowed to pray, to sing, to dance, creating a craving for spirituality and the place that people are hungry for healing. This emptiness is what addictions are trying to fill.

• Intergenerational Trauma is known by losses, loss of meaning, family, childhood, feeling desensitised, loss of culture, identity and ceremonies.

• Truth & Reconciliation – Ruby shared a link to a video on What is Reconciliation to support us to understand the context of what coming from these past patterns means.

• Health & Wellness – In speaking to health, wellness and balance, Ruby spoke about resilience, the ability to bounce back and grow and thrive during stress, challenge and change. She shared the Medicine Wheel with four aspects to our nature – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual as a way to participate in something greater than yourself to develop yourself as a healthy, well-balanced individual through the development and use of volition.

• Decolonization – She also described Decolonization as a movement towards spirituality, wholeness, wellness, serenity, balance, equality, respect, empowerment, and communication. Decolonization is a process to re-evaluate what we have internalized and the systemic change in our society.

Making a Difference

How can workplaces support Indigenous employees in a positive way who have been traumatized and how can Indigenous employees find that support?

1. For Indigenous employees, if you develop self-awareness, to know who you are you are no longer the person who is bullied – this takes away the power of lateral violence in the workplace, takes away its power over you.

2. Provide flexible work hours, work at home policies to help when things come up from trauma history/recovery.

3. Find champions/allies – stay close to them.

To be a change agent as a Cree woman, Ruby learned to find champions, walk with them, learn and grow. To question different approaches to leadership.

Resources

Ruby shared a variety of resources with us throughout her presentation including:

CBC video on the 60s Scoop – https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1261820995891.

What is Reconciliation – https://vimeo.com/25389165

Wab Kinew on stereotypes of Indigenous peoples. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlkuRCXdu5A

Virtual Session

Cheryl opened by posing the question: Why do we still face resistance to Diversity and Inclusion?

She offered one lens to look at resistance and how we as Diversity and Inclusion practitioners can approach people who resist.

This presentation comes out of an acknowledgement that people are rarely changed when someone tells them they need to change. Cheryl acknowledged the vulnerability of looking at the place where what we are doing as D & I practitioners isn’t working.

Look At/Look As lens

We can “Look AT” them – viewing people who resist D & I from our own lenses. Looking at people who resist brings in a structural distance Me over here and them over there. A form of othering.

We can “Look As” them – this is taking their perspective, bringing curiosity, imagination, empathy.

People who resist D and I have different perspectives than we tend to have as supporters of D & I.

And they are also responding to what they feel from us.

This kind of perspective taking is a known skill for D and I practitioners. So why don’t we do it with people who resist?

Cheryl shared a couple of possibilities which could explain this:

1. Looking at this topic is also looking at the space where what we do in our D and I work doesn’t work. This could change our state – how we feel (e.g. shame, desire to blame others for resisting).

2. It is harder to use our abilities for empathy, for curiosity when we encounter opposition. Harder to use the power we have in the face of opposition.

3. We can feel outrage – outrage is good for spreading a message on social media, to energize, galvanize action, social movements, political change. The limits of outrage – create space where the people we want to influence tune us out. What conversations are we not having while we are outraged?

Relationships move at the speed of trust. Social change moves at the speed of relationships. (An Invitation to Brave Space, Jennifer Bailey and Lemon Flowers).

Cheryl also provided a strategy to deal with this – shifting from Calling Out to Calling In. While there are contexts that Calling Out is appropriate, Calling In offers an opportunity to stay in relationship with the person while discussing the issue, the behavior, the situation in question. What is key in having Calling In work is self-composure, knowing your why, assessing when you can have this conversation.

Resources on Calling In are included in the resource list below.

Cheryl closed with a video using Aikido, a Japanese martial art, to illustrate the kind of power, centeredness, groundedness quality that is helpful to maintain connection with your own values, beliefs and perspectives while in conflict with someone who opposes you.

Senshin Center

https://youtu.be/6SHs1Ct73EY

In watching the first 4 minutes of the video, watch the person with a black top. Does he look grounded? Strong? Who is controlling this interaction? Who is the attacker?

It is this quality of internal strength, power and integrity that is needed to humanize interactions with people who resist D&I.

Resistance to Diversity and Inclusion – Resources

Befriending Radical Disagreement

• Podcast: Derek Black and Matthew Stevenson – an heir to American white supremacy and a Jewish man talk about creating a friendship across radical disagreement.

• Podcast: An Invitation to Brave Space – Jennifer Bailey and Lennon Flowers

Outrage

• Podcast: Shankar Vedantam and Molly Crockett – Screaming into the Void: How Outrage is Hijacking Our Culture, And Our Minds.

• Article: Moral Outrage in the Digital Age, Molly Crockett 2017 (Yale Psychologist)

• Academic Study: “The Value of Vengeance and the Demand for Deterrence,” by Molly Crocket, Yagiz Özdemir, and Ernst Fehr, 2014.

• “Attentional capture helps explain why moral and emotional content go viral,” by William Brady, Ana Gantman & Jay Van Bavel, 2019.

Calling In

• A Practical Guide to Calling In

• https://theconsentcrew.org/2016/05/29/calling-in/

• https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/03/calling-in-and-calling-out/

Looking at people who resist diversity and inclusion

• B Corp Handbook (2019): How you Can Use Business as a Force for Good by Ryan Honeyman and Tiffany Jana.

• Editorial by Elise Stole – Treating the Tunnel Vision that Causes Hate and Violence

• Article: Why Angry White Men are so Angry

Why Unconscious Bias Training Doesn’t Work

• https://www.tidalequality.com/blog/dont-do-unconscious-bias-training-2

Inclusion Continuum

• https://indigenousworks.ca/en/products/item/inclusion-continuum

Hot/Cold Empathy Gap

• https://www.learning-mind.com/hot-cold-empathy-gap-misunderstandings/

Sponsored by MacEwan University

Thank you to everyone who braved the cold and joined EBDN to kick off our 2020 series of workshops, on January 8. A special thanks to our event sponsors, Patricia Pasemko, On Site Placement and Aaron Spink, TD Wealth.

Dr. Wanda Costen, Dean of the MacEwan School of Business energetically shared insightful and practical strategies to help reduce procrastination when engaging with difficult conversations.

Dr. Costen’s proposed a Difficult Conversation self – checklist to help you define the purpose of the conversation before you begin:

• • Is it about me, my emotional response, my ego?

  • What is the best and the worst thing that can happen? If the worst thing that can happen seriously outweighs the best thing, it is probably not a conversation that you need to have.

  • What is my role in the situation?

  • Which of my buttons is being pushed?

  • Am I calling someone out because I need them to know they are wrong? Or am I helping them be more self-aware about their impact on others?

Reasons for holding a difficult conversation

Good reasons to have a difficult conversation include asking someone to change behavior or sharing bad news. Procrastinating on difficult conversations often makes things worse, situations can escalate, behavior can worsen and relationships become more emotionally charged over time.

Tips & Tricks for Managing Difficult Conversations:

• Focus on solving the problem to achieve a win-win relationship.

  • Be specific about what the issue is.

• Acknowledge the emotional content of the conversation.

  • Allow for timeouts for both parties as and when needed.

• Be aware of your verbal and body language.

  • Both contribute to how we are perceived. For example – if your arms are crossed, the other party may perceive that you aren’t invested in the discussion and may result in unnecessary escalation.

• Be an Active Listener – Hear and acknowledge the other person’s perspective.

  • If you can move from certainty (I know I’m right) to curiosity, you will create an environment in which others feel safe to openly share differing views.

• Seek to Understand

  • The different interpretations individuals have means you will be able to check your assumptions and adapt to the other parties perspective.

The most important lesson to remember of Dr. Costen’s presentation is that mastering the art of difficult conversation is a skill that comes with time, and that we will always have more learning to do in order to be competent.

Dr. Costen ended the presentation with a review of how the Dimensions of Diversity will impact all the difficult conversations that you have. You need to understand and recognize how others view the world in the context of the conversations you need to have.

Many thanks to Dr. Wanda Costen for her generosity in supporting the EBDN community!

Thank you to the City of Edmonton, TD Bank and Argus Machine Co. Ltd. for sponsoring this event.

On September 11, 2019 the group met together after a summer break. The room vibrated with chatter and energy as members filtered in and mingled with connections new and old. September often feels like a new start and a new year – and our event was no different. The focus was on taking action.

“The word ally is a verb – saying you’re an ally is not enough, you have to do the work.”

Our very own Erin Davis and Jill Chesley, Current and Past Chairs of EBDN, shared learnings and led a very practical conversation on how to be an ally.

We started with looking inward – it starts with “me”. How do we experience the world? What privileges or benefits do I get as a result of who I am that I never asked for? They expertly closed the table discussions and sharing noting that we don’t need to apologize for having privilege – it’s about what we do or don’t do with it.

So what is an ally? An ally is someone who is not a member of an underrepresented or marginalized group but takes action to support that group. What that action might look like, will be different for each of us.

How can we show up as allies?

• Do no harm – get to know people, listen and learn, jump in with respectful curiosity

• Advocate in small ways – intervene, hold space for others to speak, amplify

• Create a big change – take action + jump all in

Below are links to both the videos that were shared with tips on how to be an ally. Where will you be sharing them?

• Melinda Epler: 3 ways to advocate for a more inclusive workplace.

• Chescaleigh: 5 tips for being an Ally.