Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, 155 College Street, Toronto, ON, M5T 3M7, Canada.
Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Can J Public Health. 2020 Dec;111(6):901-911. doi: 10.17269/s41997-020-00424-0. Epub 2020 Nov 2.
This pilot project sought to seed citizen engagement processes for sustainable futures visioning with ideas, perspectives, and processes informed by Indigenous ways of knowing.
Five circle dialogues were convened with students, faculty, and members of the public, in the spring of 2019, using Indigenous talking circle methodology and intentionally seeded with "disruptive" ideas to encourage reflexivity and open space for "out-of-the-box" thinking. These were complemented by a series of one-on-one dialogues with members of the pan-Canadian research team. Pre- and post-dialogue surveys, notes taken by participants, team members, and co-facilitators, as well as notes from one-on-one interviews, constituted the data drawn upon for this paper.
Participants were overwhelmingly positive about their experience, noting they were able to go further and deeper in their thinking and listening, and that they valued the Indigenous talking circle methodology, even if they stopped short of claiming the experience had transformed their way of seeing the world. Key points raised in the dialogues included the need for a more relational worldview, the need to repair severed relations with the land and nature, the importance of Indigenous ways of knowing, the importance of community building, and the need to question the fundamental assumptions undergirding contemporary Western societies.
While caution must be exercised in drawing conclusions and extrapolating from this modest pilot project, our experience underscores the value of processes that intentionally catalyze critical reflexivity and openness to other ways of seeing, informed by Indigenous ways of knowing and talking circle methodology.
本试点项目旨在通过受土著知识启发的想法、观点和流程，为可持续未来的愿景规划播种公民参与进程。
2019 年春季，使用土著圈谈方法召集了五轮学生、教师和公众的圈谈，其中特意引入了“颠覆性”想法，以鼓励反思和为“跳出框框”的思维留出开放空间。这些活动还辅以与全加研究团队成员的一系列一对一对话。本研究主要使用了对话前后的调查、参与者、团队成员和联合主持人的笔记，以及一对一访谈的笔记作为数据。
参与者对他们的体验给予了极高的评价，指出他们能够在思考和倾听方面更进一步、更深入，他们非常重视土著圈谈方法，即使他们没有声称这种体验改变了他们看世界的方式。对话中提出的要点包括需要建立更具关系性的世界观、需要修复与土地和自然的割裂关系、土著知识的重要性、社区建设的重要性以及需要质疑支撑当代西方社会的基本假设。
虽然必须谨慎从这个适度的试点项目中得出结论和推断，但我们的经验强调了那些有意促进批判性反思和对其他观点开放的进程的价值，这些观点受到土著知识和圈谈方法的启发。
