All resources in this section are copyleft. We invite you to use and share them freely, whilst crediting the source.
Coalition of Community Health and Resource Centres (CHRC) and City for All Women Initiative (CAWI) have joined together in a three year project to increase voter turnout in low-income neighbourhoods and among people living in poverty, in both urban and rural areas of Ottawa. Making Votes Count Where We Live seeks to engage residents, community partners and governments in putting into place strategies to increase voter turnout and long-term civic engagement.
CAWI has worked with Safe People, at Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre to lead the creation of this guide for the Community Development Framework (CDF). Creating the Change We Want provides exercises and workshops for strengthening the capacity of neighbourhood residents to create positive change.
Since 2004, City for All Women Initiative has provided Women’s Civic Participation Training where a total of 150 women have learned how city government works and how to bring their views forward. And of those, about 80% shared their views for the first time. This 9 month training program consists of 4 – 5 full day workshops and working in Action Teams to apply their learning in the municipal election, city budget process and on issues of concern arising at City Hall.Women listen to the concerns of their communities, and bring those concerns forward to their Councillor through e-mails, phone calls, meeting with Councillors and presenting deputations. Currently, CAWI provides this training to women in selected neighbourhoods, who form Neighbourhood Action Teams, so as to engage their neighbours in city issues.
Currently being implemented in the city of Ottawa, this comprehensive handbook helps staff and management in any organization view their planning and program development and delivery activities to ensure they are inclusive of the full diversity of men and women
The Mi’kmaw Community Engagement Toolkit on Sexual Violence is a workbook to address sexual violence, created specifically for Mi’kmaq communities and community members to use in strengthening their response to and prevention of sexual violence, drawing from the many learnings of the Responding to and Preventing Sexual Violence Project in Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation, a collaborative project between the Paqtnkek Health Centre and the Antigonish Women’s Resource Centre & Sexual Assault Services Association from 2014 to 2016, funded by Status of Women Canada.
Mobilizing Ideas publishes interdisciplinary perspectives on social movements, social change, and the public sphere. To enhance dialogue between scholars and activists, Mobilizing Ideas hosts exchanges between leading scholars from the social sciences and humanities and the activists they study, featuring original essays responding to a wide variety of problems related to social movements and social change.
From protests around climate change and immigrant rights, to Occupy, the Arab Spring, and #BlackLivesMatter, a new generation is unleashing strategic nonviolent action to shape public debate and force political change. When mass movements erupt onto our television screens, the media consistently portrays them as being spontaneous and unpredictable. Yet, in this book, Mark and Paul Engler look at the hidden art behind such outbursts of protest, examining core principles that have been used to spark and guide moments of transformative unrest.
Beautiful Trouble is a book, web toolbox and international network of artist-activist trainers whose mission is to make grassroots movements more creative and more effective.
by Rehana Tejpar, capturing the learnings emerging from the Righting Relations Network
As we make the road by walking on this journey of building a women-led network of adult educators for social change across Turtle Island, in the spirit of Righting Relations, we are constantly learning and unlearning. We have captured and shared some of our learnings to date and will continue to evolve these ideas and practices as we continue to journey on this path.
Kerry Prosper is a passionate fisher and Mi’kmaq elder, who is teaching his grandchildren how to exercise their treaty rights by fishing eels. But those rights come with sacred responsibilities to care for the land and waters of Mi’kma’ki. Seeking Netukulimk is a lyrical exploration of the traditional laws that govern fishing in the Mi’kmaq world, and some of the political battles that have been fought to defend them.
Directed by Martha Stiegman and Co-Produced by Martha Stiegman & Sherry Pictou
In Defense of our Treaties (2008) follows members of Bear River First Nation as they stand up to Canada’s Department of Fisheries (DFO), who is pressuring them to sell out their treaty rights for a ticket into the commercial fisheries. For the Mi’kmaq, fishing is a right that comes from the Creator, and is protected by the Treaties. In 1999, the Supreme Court recognized those rights, and DFO has since signed agreements with 32 of the 34 First Nations in the region. The deals offer money to buy into the commercial fisheries, as long as the Mi’kmaq fish under DFO’s jurisdiction. That’s not good enough for Bear River, one of two communities refusing to sign.
by Harsha Walia
Undoing Border Imperialism combines academic discourse, lived experiences of displacement, and movement-based practices into an exciting new book. By reformulating immigrant rights movements within a transnational analysis of capitalism, labor exploitation, settler colonialism, state building, and racialized empire, it provides the alternative conceptual frameworks of border imperialism and decolonization. Drawing on the author’s experiences in No One Is Illegal, this work offers relevant insights for all social movement organizers on effective strategies to overcome the barriers and borders within movements in order to cultivate fierce, loving, and sustainable communities of resistance striving toward liberation. The author grounds the book in collective vision, with short contributions from over twenty organizers and writers from across North America.
This page provides you with links to various documents that you can explore to gain a deeper understanding of Indigenous issues, and to perhaps answer some of the questions you have.
This is not a quick process you embark upon, if you wish to truly understand what is going on in First Nations communities. It is not a matter of a few hours of research or even a few days. However, you can start digging with the time and interest you do have.
This list will always be a work in progress.
Unsettling Canada is built on a unique collaboration between two First Nations leaders, Arthur Manuel and Grand Chief Ron Derrickson.
Together the Secwepemc activist intellectual and the Syilx (Okanagan) businessman bring a fresh perspective and new ideas to Canada’s most glaring piece of unfinished business: the place of Indigenous peoples within the country’s political and economic space. The story is told through Arthur’s voice but he traces both of their individual struggles against the colonialist and often racist structures that have been erected to keep Indigenous peoples in their place in Canada.
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, provides a framework for recognizing and respecting the inherent rights of Indigenous peoples. As a signatory, Canada is held accountable by international law to uphold its commitments to the Indigenous peoples of this land.
In order to redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission makes the following calls to action.
Originally published in Native News Online
GUEST ESSAY – WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH
This guest essay was originally delivered on March 16, 2017 as the Women’s History Month keynote speech at the University of Maine by Sherri Mitchell.
Uprooting Racism explores the manifestations of racism in politics, work, community, and family life. It moves beyond the definition and unlearning of racism to address the many areas of privilege for white people and suggests ways for individuals and groups to challenge the structures of racism.
This is a practical, do-it-yourself guide for leaders and facilitators wanting to help organisations to function and to develop in more healthy, human and effective ways as they strive to make their contributions to a more humane society. It has been developed by the Barefoot Collective.
by Rehana Tejpar, capturing the learnings emerging from the Righting Relations Network
As we make the road by walking on this journey of building a women-led network of adult educators for social change across Turtle Island, in the spirit of Righting Relations, we are constantly learning and unlearning. We have captured and shared some of our learnings to date and will continue to evolve these ideas and practices as we continue to journey on this path.
An activities manual from yesworld.org focusing on co-learning, community building and healing.
Download at: www.yesworld.org
A video by Organization Unbound, a website that attempts to re-imagine the way we think about and engage in social change.
View Video: organizationunbound.org
PYE’s mission is to unleash the power, purpose, and potential of young people worldwide.
Visit Website: pyeglobal.org
The Art of Hosting is an approach to leadership that scales up from the personal to the systemic using personal practice, dialogue, facilitation and the co-creation of innovation to address complex challenges.
Visit Website: www.artofhosting.org
Theatre for Living approaches the community as a living organism and recognizes when plays are created, they are made to help us investigate ways to change the behaviors that create the structure, not only the structure itself.
A Guide for Artists, Emergency Management Agencies, Funders, Policy-Makers,
and Communities Responding to Natural and Civil Emergencies
As natural disasters and social emergencies multiply, the need has grown for ethical, creative, and effective artistic response—arts-based work responding to disaster or other community-wide emergency, much of it created in collaboration with community members directly affected. Art Became The Oxygen was created to engage three categories of readers who share the intention of offering care and compassion and helping to create possibility in the midst or wake of crisis
To download the guide here
Games for Actors and Non-Actors is the classic and best selling book by the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, Augusto Boal. It sets out the principles and practice of Boal’s revolutionary Method, showing how theatre can be used to transform and liberate everyone – actors and non-actors alike!
With examples from community arts projects in five countries, this collection will inform and inspire students, artists, and activists. ¡VIVA! is the product of a five-year transnational research project that integrates place, politics, passion, and praxis.
Learn from Central America: Kuna children’s art workshops, a community television station in Nicaragua, a cultural marketplace in Guadalajara, Mexico, community mural production in Chiapas; and from North America: arts education in Los Angeles inner-city schools, theatre probing ancestral memory, community plays with over one hundred participants, and training programs for young artists in Canada. These practices offer critical hope for movements hungry for new ways of knowing and expressing histories, identities, and aspirations, as well as mobilizing communities for social transformation. Beautifully illustrated with more than one hundred color photographs, the book also includes a DVD with videos that bring the projects to life.
by Rehana Tejpar, capturing the learnings emerging from the Righting Relations Network
As we make the road by walking on this journey of building a women-led network of adult educators for social change across Turtle Island, in the spirit of Righting Relations, we are constantly learning and unlearning. We have captured and shared some of our learnings to date and will continue to evolve these ideas and practices as we continue to journey on this path.
Theatre for Living approaches the community as a living organism and recognizes when plays are created, they are made to help us investigate ways to change the behaviors that create the structure, not only the structure itself.
This book proposes a pedagogy with a new relationship between teacher, student, and society. Dedicated to the oppressed and based on Paulo Freire’s own experience helping Brazilian adults to read and write, It is considered one of the foundational texts of critical pedagogy and includes a detailed analysis of the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized.
Produced by CASA of Maryland, this workbook discusses the importance of employment organization and workers’ rights. It follows the steps of immigrants from coming into the US, looking for work and ends with the advocation for social change.
Jim Stanford’s Economics for Everyone has quickly become a standard reference for economics literacy and popular education. Now published in 6 languages, the book is used in higher education, trade unions, and community education initiatives around the world.
Games for Actors and Non-Actors is the classic and best selling book by the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, Augusto Boal. It sets out the principles and practice of Boal’s revolutionary Method, showing how theatre can be used to transform and liberate everyone – actors and non-actors alike!
With examples from community arts projects in five countries, this collection will inform and inspire students, artists, and activists. ¡VIVA! is the product of a five-year transnational research project that integrates place, politics, passion, and praxis.
Learn from Central America: Kuna children’s art workshops, a community television station in Nicaragua, a cultural marketplace in Guadalajara, Mexico, community mural production in Chiapas; and from North America: arts education in Los Angeles inner-city schools, theatre probing ancestral memory, community plays with over one hundred participants, and training programs for young artists in Canada. These practices offer critical hope for movements hungry for new ways of knowing and expressing histories, identities, and aspirations, as well as mobilizing communities for social transformation. Beautifully illustrated with more than one hundred color photographs, the book also includes a DVD with videos that bring the projects to life.
This is a practical, do-it-yourself guide for leaders and facilitators wanting to help organisations to function and to develop in more healthy, human and effective ways as they strive to make their contributions to a more humane society. It has been developed by the Barefoot Collective.
by Rehana Tejpar, capturing the learnings emerging from the Righting Relations Network
As we make the road by walking on this journey of building a women-led network of adult educators for social change across Turtle Island, in the spirit of Righting Relations, we are constantly learning and unlearning. We have captured and shared some of our learnings to date and will continue to evolve these ideas and practices as we continue to journey on this path.
Popular education in North America today largely operates “under the radar”; even so it is a powerful and dynamic social movement that is resisting oppression, fighting injustice, and bringing hope to people in communities large and small.
Download: UndertheRadar.pdf (PDF)
This excerpt was written in order to support the work of community workers in Africa and provides a good background and framework for the philosophy of popular education in doing community organizing.
Download: Principles _of_Freire.doc (MS Word)
Kerry Prosper is a passionate fisher and Mi’kmaq elder, who is teaching his grandchildren how to exercise their treaty rights by fishing eels. But those rights come with sacred responsibilities to care for the land and waters of Mi’kma’ki. Seeking Netukulimk is a lyrical exploration of the traditional laws that govern fishing in the Mi’kmaq world, and some of the political battles that have been fought to defend them.
Directed by Martha Stiegman and Co-Produced by Martha Stiegman & Sherry Pictou
In Defense of our Treaties (2008) follows members of Bear River First Nation as they stand up to Canada’s Department of Fisheries (DFO), who is pressuring them to sell out their treaty rights for a ticket into the commercial fisheries. For the Mi’kmaq, fishing is a right that comes from the Creator, and is protected by the Treaties. In 1999, the Supreme Court recognized those rights, and DFO has since signed agreements with 32 of the 34 First Nations in the region. The deals offer money to buy into the commercial fisheries, as long as the Mi’kmaq fish under DFO’s jurisdiction. That’s not good enough for Bear River, one of two communities refusing to sign.
Jane Meader, Elder, BACS & MEd, discusses the Mi’kmaq creation story and how this relates to the venerated place of women in their culture.
This episode of Love (and revolution) Radio with Sherri Mitchell and Rivera Sun explores the concept of the divine feminine as a force for change. Our very own Righting Relations Eastern Hub member Miigam’agan along with Nickie Sekera each bring a unique perspective and deep insight to understanding the role of the feminine in transforming our world.
I am white turtle woman. I would like to take this opportunity to offer some reflections based on my observations and experiences as a native woman living and working in the dominant society of what is called “Canada” that doesn’t always understand or appreciate my nativeness.
Download: Native_Protocol.docx (MS Word)