Impact Benefits Agreement Conference – Second Day

... the morning sun reflects off of a building across the street ...

I had a second wonderful day at this conference.

I was reading through my notes, remembering both what I wrote to keep in my notebook, and then what I leaned over and wrote on the conference materials that Rebecca had.

My materials were all online.

She had the print out copy of all of the slides of the presentations.

Occasionally I would move into her space with my highlighter on her papers since a single circle around a word, giving it colour, is a faster way to remember than at that point in the talk some connections were falling down for me.

Rebecca presented on a panel of three in the afternoon.

I am curious about these three houses in the middle of the street.

One woman talked about Impact Benefit Agreements in the mining sector of the Yukon. Another team talked about Impact Benefit Agreements and surface water in northern British Columbia.

2.Rebecca gave a 20-minute description of a handout called Indigenous Law 101 and produced by the Indigenous Law Research Unit.

As well, in the past few years, she explained, Indigenous law has existed from “time immemorial” and then she told the story of “The War with the Sky People”.

When she tells stories I am reminded again of why we tell stories, what is captured in the telling, and what shifts for us when the words and phrases are coloured with someone else’s meaning.

I watched her hands as they swing up to the sky as if she was building the ladder to the sky and I watched how her hands lingered there as the ladder grew from a single arrow to a sturdy pathway to another world.

I notice that one is a law firm.
I also notice that the moss is thick on the roof of 1 out of 4.

Rebecca reminded me again how bear’s pride and wolverine’s taunts had devastating impact on an already failing partnership between the birds and the fish. She left me with the questions of who among us is vulnerable and could we act otherwise to protect them.

What I also wanted my words to capture is the following point about stories.

When they are in black and white, we have to trust that our own minds can do all of the work of bringing colour to a phrase about the indiscrete nature of pointing out to bear that we all know the story of how he lost his tail and how it would have been better to have shown bear respect for all of the other brave qualities he has and to not linger on the foolish one that lost him his tail.

Anyway, with one well coloured turn of phrase, a good story-teller can do that for me.

... the circular window give a panoramic effect to the view ...

I had wondered how Rebecca would do all of that in 20 minutes.

She is mid-career now and she can that skill in her pocket, the one of starting when the minute hand begins to move around the clock and stopping at that same moment when the time has passed and the only thing left is for new minutes to begin moving through my life.

Arta