Why Tell the Story of the March?

My new awareness of how knowledge is transferred has me wondering if I should be writing more about the First Nation-Farmer Climate Unity March. Knowledge cannot be transferred from reading text.

But, the March is an example of how knowledge begins to be transferred. It was designed for this very purpose, to provide the extended time required for a channel to begin to open between Native and non-native people. For the critical relationships to develop.

But you cannot walk ninety-four miles with Native and non-native people. This is the paradox. “Why write about something no one can replicate?”

What a story can do

Open a door

A story can reveal something that you were not aware of that you did not know. It cannot transfer knowledge about that, though.

For that, you need an evolving connection with those who have that knowledge. Evolving meaning building a deepening relationship over time with the knowledge keepers.

Carry desire, not data

Stories make people want the encounter that changes them. Desire is portable; experience is not.

Transmit the pattern

The content can’t be copied, but the method can. Find your local silence, show up in your body, and let the story follow. Because it will.

When someone hears these stories and feels the pull to see for themselves, the first impulse is usually the wrong one — to arrange a visit, to go and look, to treat the work and the people as something to be toured. That impulse is not a fault; it is simply the only model of learning most of us were ever given.

But the March replaced that question with a better one, and it is the question I want to leave you with:

Not “may I see it?” but “what is being asked of me, now that I know?”

Build your first step

Click on this graphic to open the web app about this. It includes an exercise that helps you build your own first steps in creating a channel to this knowledge.