I agree with Lisa that Brendan should trust both his and his client's intuition. . . and his client's intuition appears to be that a non-Aboriginal male is not the optimal person to open the space.
I have a few thoughts of my own to share, which might come out a bit jumbled. I was a battered wife (in what now seems like a past life but which was about twenty years ago). In the early years of my recovery, I never quite felt safe with any males. If this refuge/hostel for indigenous women will be embracing female victims of male violence, it seems res ipsa loquitur that a male should not be in charge of anything. Yes, I know an open space facilitator is not 'in charge' but the cultural paradigm of having a male up front doing the talking is what most of the women will see, a WHITE male at that. I have a knee jerk reaction any time I find myself sitting listening to a man talking in front of a group. My knee jerk reaction is to tune them out. . . then, if I 'know' the male speaker is a good guy or if I think the male speaker has a special expertise to share that I want to know about, I try to shift away from my autopilot reaction and I try to listen. But I have been living in a dominator culture for over fifty years and I am weary of it. I have this little fantasy that if the whole world experimented with only allowing women to be the experts and professionals, just, maybe (and remember this is fantasy) for a few years. . . just to see what it would be like. . . I'd like to see that. We have all of us lived with the dominator paradigm that grants more rank and privilege to males, esp. white ones. Males can't really know what it is like to walk through the world with a women's reality. Is anyone familiar with Anne Wilson Schaaf's book "Women's Reality"? In it she posits the theory that women have to understand male reality in order to survive but men don't have to understand women's reality in order to survive so they don't? Teasing out this theory, non-whites have to understand white reality to survive/thrive in most cultures but whites don't have to understand non-white reality so they often don't. Harrison stated that he does not think it is necessary for a white male to acknowledge his rank and privilege. I have been doing a fair bit of studying on the topic of rank and privilege since the Seattle Practice of Peace week, during which John L. Johnson convened a session entitled "rank and privilege". As a black male, John L. speaks with an expertise no white person can hold. John L. posited his theory that there are ALWAYS disparities of rank in human interactions. ALWAYS. He further posited the idea that unless and until the person with higher rank and privilege acknowledges the rank disparity, there can be no conversations between equals. And finally, if I recall John L.'s lesson well, ONLY the person of higher rank can do this acknowledgement. Any males, especially white ones, that think disparity in rank and privilege can remain unexamined and yet still we can achieve a shift in plentary consciousness, is clinging to illusions rooted in out-of-date paradigms. We can't shift chronic disparities in rank and privilege as long as we have to go around pretending it does not matter. Harrison, I have now had the great privilege of being at several events with you. I have seen you speak powerfully, with great wisdom and love. And every single time I have heard women grumbling to find themselves in a circle full of mostly women sitting around listening to a male. These women, and I count myself amongst the grumblers, acknowledge you have a lot of good stuff to say but they are all tired, including me, of listening to men. Period. I challenge any male reading this and finding themselves resenting my words to try and re-imagine their childhood: try to begin to imagine what it might have been like to have grown up reading only textbooks written by women, seeing only women reporting the news, seeing only women in elected office. Heck, don't go back to your childhood: try to imagine that all books published today are written by women, that all news if written by women, that all politicians are women, that all multi-millionaire business people are female. . . . Men cannot, usually, even begin to imagine women's reality and I do not offer this as a criticism. Men are mired by these cultural norms just as much as women. It is long past time for a shift. We need to have visionary, brilliant men like you, Harrison, really get that male rank and privilege has to be acknowledged by the men. If a client comes right out and voices her intuition that a white male might not be the way to go, I think that intuition needs to be honored. It is not about rejecting males. It is about collective consciousness. We need for all males to get on board with a shift in consciousness and this shift is going to strip away the usually unacknowledged rank and privilege of males, white and all. We can't get where we need to go by maintaining the status quo and creating new culture at the same time. We have to shed the consciousness that strokes the male privilege. On 10/1/05, Lisa Heft <lisah...@openingspace.net> wrote: > > The two other things come to my mind: > > -- Ask. Often we make well-intentioned errors by assuming what people > want or need, and we don't ask the people themselves. > > -- Trust your intuition, and ask your host team to trust their intuition > – and to listen for the answer inside. > > This, plus trusting in the process and the people, have helped me in > great measure. > > Lisa > > ___________________________ > > *L i s a H e f t* > > Consultant, Facilitator, Educator > > O p e n i n g S p a c e > > 2325 Oregon > > Berkeley, California > > 94705-1106 USA > > +01 510 548-8449 > > lisah...@openingspace.net > > www.openingspace.net <http://www.openingspace.net> > > * * ========================================================== > osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To > subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of > osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: > http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about > OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist* * > ========================================================== > osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To > subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of > osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: > http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about > OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist* * > ========================================================== > osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To > subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of > osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: > http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about > OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist -- Warmly, Tree Fitzpatrick "It is never too late to be what you might have been." George Elliot