Restoring Right Relationships in Vancouver’s Inner City

In June 2018, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement hosted the orientation workshop for the Restoring Right Relationship Collective. Read the following Q&A with the collective’s director, Christine Spinder, to find out more about the project.

What does Restoring Right Relationships do?

Well, first, we give thanks to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) , səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples and the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Sníchim-speaking Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) peoples on whose ancestral, traditional and unceded territories we work, live and learn on. And, I let myself be known as a woman who is 1st generation for my family on this continent, from a lineage of Slavic activists and mountain people.

The Circles Project, as the Restoring Collective calls it, trains and activates front line workers and volunteers with skills to coach Indigenous restorative and transformative relationship practices with community members in inner city Vancouver. We then activate the skills in collective Indigenous cultural activities and community talking circles that will start to address community and family conflicts and violence. It’s a long-term approach to shifting out of a colonizing culture of ‘power over’ in to a collective, inclusive, gift-based, embodied consciousness and reciprocal culture of ‘Power With.’ The impacts are immediate, they ripple across community networks, and we’re in a constant process of discovery and creation. Right now it’s a three-year pilot, and we’re aiming for several years of community process.

How are the workshops redefining settler-ally relationships with Indigenous communities?

We’re discovering what that relationship could be and testing it in action right away. In a time of such massive social and structural change, we’re creating it as we go. Its fluid. As an accomplice I am always questioning myself and learning and improvising.

"I’ve found that working with Indigenous principles releases what colonizing culture uses to control: layers of industrial-categorical-comparative-victimizing- violating-judging-projecting-think-we’re-on-the-planet-to-control-and-consume bondage."

It’s such a relief, so much lighter and more grounded. This is what the workshops teach. The entire project and how the Restoring Collective works is based in simple principles of action of all my relations: all is alive, moving, and in constant creation; awaken to self & full system witnessing, self-actualization and accountability; reciprocity in collectivity; kindness and compassion first; spiritual & creative expression, and deep relationship. As a collaborator and non-Indigenous guest on these lands, I want to operate with love, and I have a lot of unlearning to do. We’re friends and collaborators, co-creators first. The action of settler-ally relationships is personal, and asks, ‘Who are you in relationship? What knowledge, history, talents and spirit do you bring with you? What can we do together that creates good?’

Working as an accomplice not only satisfies me more as a human, these principles enabled the Collective to create this project that some in the past have said isn’t possible. Its enables functioning at a high level. As an accomplice Director, I use my privileges to ‘make it happen’ in the best way possible, to open up space in the dominant culture and learn and witness Indigenous process in action, and invite other accomplices in. To the cynicism of those who say, “Oh, you want to save the world,” I say that in my choice as an accomplice, I feel vitally alive every single day. I feel connected to joy every day. I get to help create the peace than enables awe and beauty every day. I struggle and know that I’m alive. I love what I get to do. I am so thankful I get to work with this arena of people who push the boundaries of living in a good way, every day. It’s an invitation to fully engage your senses, sensibility, relationships and skills – to be the highest version of yourself – in a way that is held and creates energy.

What does relationship-based organizing look like?

How do we grow any relationship? What structures grow from the relationships of our lives? This is the reciprocity of how relationships and structure develop one another. Its shared values put into action in shared experience, the celebration and struggle and joy of just doing it – that’s where, in my experience, the richest personal relationships come from, where we create and move in the world both independently and supporting each other. To me, relationship-based organizing is always active and reflective and is always impacts based. Every move creates impacts and affects the current norms and structures. The Restoring Collective started in 2013 with community circle workshops asking, ‘How do we change the culture of violence?’ and while we mobilized Indigenous knowledge in the inner city, we slowly built relationships of trust because we actually listened and accepted what we were told, and kept coming back with something to give, our next steps. Guess what? People actually know what they need. We had no pre-determined goal, except that we were willing to do something very different, and were in it for the long run. Now there’s over 14 inner city agencies partnering in a multi-year restorative justice & reconciliation project that’s being requested for delivery across the country.

"That’s relationship-based organizing, where what you create is shaped, processed and responded to by your community."

It’s responsibility to the community that makes it possible. There’s no space for ego heroes in this, no pre-vision of utopian perfection. Rather than the old narcissistic model that’s hopefully well on its way out, of thinking that ‘I am the sole source of my identity and know the future’, relationship-based organizing gathers shared principles, puts them into action, and immediately reflects on what impacts that action had in open systems, always asking, ‘what is now?’ and taking next steps accordingly. The Collective knew we wanted to affect fundamental cultural practices. Indigenous relationship-based organizing is critical consciousness in praxis – simultaneous action and reflection – to affect systems change.

(For text-based primers, read Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance; Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants; and Taiaiake Alfred’s Wasase: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom.) Better yet, get involved in any of the weaving, beading, song and healing plant workshops that happen all over the city, and turn your senses on to receive. Notice what you notice.

What tools are taught to help restore relationships?

So many tools are needed, and every geographic place has its own complexity. Our project is one small piece of a whole series of processes that are emerging across Turtle Island… and the world. Coming out of the Coast Salish lands, people are doing incredible work with somatics and trauma such as the Aboriginal Focusing Oriented Therapy program affiliated with the Justice Institute of BC, and land-based, spiritual and collective healing across the province, like what’s unfolding on Burnaby Mountain right now.

The Restoring Project is a primer for inner city Vancouver, opening the door for future growth. The tools are about transforming identity and cultural frameworks of separation, isolation, competition and ‘othering’ into behaviours and relationships that recognize that conflict is natural and can be navigated with respect and creativity, that emotions are tools like hands that we have to learn how to work with, that we are deeply empathic, sensing and communicative creatures, that healing from trauma is lifelong and we can become partners in transformation and belonging with the people in our lives.

"At the core, the tools are about intervening on violence in relationships and in community."

Colonizing culture is violent by nature… and our response, Circle practice, is transformative by nature: each member faces themselves and the collective with compassion. That’s our foundation.

All of the models identified by our workshop participants are well-recognized therapeutic and community transformation models – Non-Violent Communication, Narrative Therapy, Appreciate Inquiry, Asset-Based Community Development, Mindfulness, Somatic-informed Trauma practice, and Coaching, that all cite their original source as Indigenous practice. We’re re-Indigenizing them, and bringing them into operating cross-culturally and in today’s urban contexts. Participants become coaches and circle facilitators. Building up 5 new Talking Circles each year was at the insistence of the inner city community, to facilitate healing conversations and actions when changes in relationship are needed. Land-based cultural and spiritual practices are integrated throughout, collaborating right now with xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) nation and exploring the meeting place with the teachings that people bring with them from other communities. Cultural practices of food gathering, weaving, song and ceremony echo and reciprocate with the land that we are on, confirming our relationship with it. They have a physical/collective/spiritual effect – hands on is key to integrating this learning.

Where did the idea come from?

A small group of us who were working for different Indigenous social justice organizations asked, ‘How do we stop the violence? What’s the missing piece?’ The inner city Indigenous community told us what to do. The founding group was Ruth Alfred, Kwakwakalala Elder and Vancouver Coastal Health Indigenous Knowledge Keeper, Jackson Dionne, Mohawk substance abuse counsellor, Dawna Silver, Metis counsellor with the Aboriginal Branch of the BC Responsible and Problem Gambling Program, and Carol Martin, who’s Nisga’a, and a 25-year circle facilitator and advocate with the Down Town Eastside Women’s Centre. The Restoring Collective now also includes Vancouver Aboriginal Transformative Justice Services Society, the Network of Inner City Community Services Society, Musqueam artist Christie Lee Charles, our Project Coordinator who is also Vancouver’s Poet Laureate, and Sandra Green, who’s Namgis, and also a Vancouver Coastal Health Indigenous Knowledge Keeper.

Who can attend the workshops and what is the cost?

The workshops are offered as a 10-month series for a committed cohort of front-line staff and lead volunteers with Indigenous-facing front line organizations in the inner city, such as neighbourhood houses, housing organizations, victim service programs, Saa-ust Centre and Britannia Community Centre, even two K-12 schools. In our first pilot years, we will focus the teaching and development to build up the toolkit and network , and see what impact is possible. We’ve secured funding from the City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Foundation so its free of cost, and agencies and participants can commit to it.

What’s next for Restoring Right Relationships?

Starting our first cohort in September! There’s a lot of preparation still to do, and we’re confirming our recruitment and partners.

Once we’re started, we will offer seasonal public workshops as well and are working on that with a partner we’re excited about. There was a taste of that this past June with 3 workshops on Transformative Justice, Accomplices/Allyship, and Weaving Protocols that SFU helped to host (many thanks!), and we were almost overwhelmed by the response. People are ready for this.

The entire Collective wants to open and raise the conversation of how we talk about and activate the changes that many people want to see.

The time is now. Let’s do it. H’ey c:ep qa!

For more info about the Restoring Right Relationship Collective, check out their website.