Sunday, March 18 through Thursday, March 22, 2007
Seminar begins at 6:00 pm Sunday evening and ends at 1:00 pm on Thursday.

Faculty: Jeannette Armstrong and En’owkin Centre colleagues Henry Michel, Inez Pierre, and Marlowe Sam

Location: IONS Retreat Center, Sonoma County, California
Registration is limited; we encourage early enrollment.

"To the Okanagan people, as to all peoples practicing bioregional self-sufficient economies, the realization that the total community must be engaged in order to attain sustainability comes as a result of surviving together for thousands of years."
— Jeannette Armstrong

This seminar is a quest for understanding and education adequate to the challenges of coming decades. Today's students will be living in a very different world from the one in which their teachers were educated. The potential for unprecedented crises — catastrophic climate change, the loss of biodiversity, wars over scarce resources — creates dramatic challenges to our ways of thinking and making decisions. Short-term thinking, "what's in it for me?" economics, and a fragmented education system have all contributed to our problems.

The seminar immerses participants in a process developed over thousands of years by Native communities to ensure that decisions are cooperative, grounded in relationships, and take into account the needs of all members of the community — a long-term living network whose life process depends on the land. Historically, the Okanagan people of what is now British Columbia convened a council and invoked this process when an important choice confronted their community. According to Okanagan wisdom keeper Jeannette Armstrong, this idea of community, which leads to sustainability, encompasses "a complex holistic view of interconnectedness that demands our responsibility to everything we are connected to."

Experienced Indigenous teachers will lead participants through a council process in which they will practice cooperative problem solving, consensus building, letting go of assumptions, conflict resolution, and public discourse based on principles and practices that have sustained Native peoples over millennia. Participants will develop a shared language and collaboratively imagine a design for education for our times.

The Center has discovered that this process and the insights behind it are powerful catalysts in the emergence of leadership and tools for understanding and improving decision-making. They are bases for collective commitments that can lead to extraordinary engagement and effectiveness in communities seeking to practice sustainable living.

In order to understand the theoretical foundations of this seminar, potential applicants are urged to download and read Jeannette Armstrong's essay, "Let Us Begin with Courage" (448k pdf)

Faculty:

Jeannette Armstrong, a member of the Okanagan Nation, is executive director of the En'owkin Centre on the Penticton Indian Reserve in British Columbia. She is a frequent speaker at conferences around the world. She was appointed as one of seven Indigenous judges to the First Nations Court of Justice called by the Chiefs of Ontario. serves on the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, and recently served as a representative to the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto. She is the author of numerous books, including novels, poetry, The Native Creative Process (in collaboration with architect Douglas Cardinal), and coeditor of We Get Our Living Like Milk from the Land. She received the Buffett Award for Indigenous Leadership from Ecotrust in 2003 in recognition of her work as an educator, community leader, and Indigenous rights activist.

Henry Michel is Secwepemc (Shuswap) and a member of the Williams Lake Indian Band. His experience includes aboriginal education development, cross-cultural and race relations education, and conflict resolution facilitation. He is currently the director of education for the Penticton Indian Band.

Inez Pierre is a member of the Okanagan Nation. She currently sits on the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Keepers Council of the South Okanagan and is an elected council member of the Chief and Council of the Penticton Indian Band. Inez is a certified natural health practitioner, qualified in both nonaboriginal methods and her own cultural medicinal plants and herbs knowledge.

Marlowe Sam is a member of Colville Confederated Tribe, State of Washington. Marlowe is a traditional advisor in community conflict resolution and intercultural relations. He is experienced in the Four Societies facilitation method and has co-facilitated in a wide variety of social change organizations.

Accommodations:

The seminar will be held at a beautiful retreat center on 200 acres of rolling hills, 30 minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Meals are prepared from organic, seasonal ingredients, with chicken, fish, and vegetarian options provided.

Fees include:

• Meals Sunday supper through Thursday lunch, lodging at IONS Retreat Center Sunday through Wednesday nights
• All seminar materials
• Sierra Club book about the work of CEL: Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World, Michael K. Stone and Zenobia Barlow, eds.

Fees: $500 for tuition, $650 for meals and accommodations, $1,150 total fees