Community Care: Putting the Kinship Worldview into Practice
Thursday, May 16th, 2024 | 11 AM - 12 PM PT | Live Zoom Mtg
Does it feel like we’ve gone off track somehow? Why do so many of us feel burned out, anxious, or depressed? Why are so many of us fleeing toxic jobs? Why do so many of us fear we’re not making a true impact with our work?
What we noticed here at Tend Collective is that this fundamental thing feels missing in so many of our systems: care. This is why we formed this consultancy: to see if we could bring more care of each other into workplaces and communities.
We hope you’ll consider joining us for the first Creating Caring Communities Guest Speaker Event with Dr. Darcia Narvaez. Her book, Restoring the Kinship World View: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth, is the perfect template for what we seek to create with our work.
Here are the precepts:
Recognition of Spiritual Energies in Nature
Nonhierarchical Society
Courage and Fearless Trust in the Universe
Understanding/Embracing Death and Dying
Emphasis on Community Welfare
High Respect for the Sacred Feminine
Respect for Gender Role Fluidity
Nonmaterialistic Barter, Gift, and Kinship Economics
All Earth Entities are Sentient
The Sacred Nature of Competition and Games
Nonanthropocentrism
Words are Sacred (Truthfulness)
Mutual Dependence
Complementary Duality
Generosity as Way of Life
Ceremony as Life-Sustaining
Humor as Essential
Conflict Resolution as Return to Community
Laws of Nature as Highest Rules for Living
Becoming Fully Human
Nature Seen as Benevolent
Responsibility Emphasis
Connection to the Land
Centrality of Gratitude
Noninterference
Circular Time and Knowledge
Self-Initiated Relational Healing
An Emphasis on Heart Wisdom
Restoring the Kinship Worldview is chalk-full of wisdom that feels intuitive, yet that our systems mostly do not practice.
She talks about how human beings have evolved to nurture our young—she calls it “the evolved nest” (which I interviewed her about in this podcast episode)—but that we have stopped nurturing as a whole, instead raising children in home environments of mostly fear.
“I think deception in civilized countries starts with poor baby care, where the baby is told ‘I love you’ by a parent and then left alone, left to cry, or forced into an adult schedule. That doesn’t feel like love. It’s a lie.”
“The amount of lying that has gone on in the USA recently is astounding. In his book Fantasyland, Kurt Andersen argued that Europeans were lured to the Americas with false advertising, and he think that has made Americans susceptible to fantasy ever since. In the USA, people are constantly manipulated, smothered in propaganda from corporations primarily, and now significantly so by politicians funded by oligarchs.”
Dr. Darcia Narvaez also says:
“We have forgotten what children need to thrive, what normal child and adult behavior are, what a healthy society looks like. We are now into generations of disorder, disorder that starts from the ground up neurobiological, leading to dysregulated, suboptimal human functioning. For example, coercion like spanking is one of the worst things to do to a young child—it disorders the mind wounding the spirit/soul/psyche, and makes the child susceptible to wétiko and other psychic viruses. Then the impaired adults, from the top down, make poor judgments about how to run society to keep the same cycle of undercare and disorder going (or going worse), because they have not experienced better, and because the cultural stories that those with power tell are that this is the best it can be and that we must “eliminate” the problematic elements (humans or viruses).”
Many of us are experiencing profound grief and a sense of helplessness that we are destroying our only home: Planet Earth.
In Restoring the Kinship Worldview, there’s a chapter on mutual dependence (ch13) that starts with an essay by Jack Forbes (Powhatan-Lenape, Delaware-Lenape; 1934-2011) and says:
“I can lose my hands, and still live. I can lose my legs and still live, I can lose my eyes and still live. I can lose my hair, eyebrows, nose, arms and many other things and still live. But if I lose the air I die. If I lose the sun I die. If I lose the earth I die. If I lose the water I die. If I lose the plants and animals I die. All of these things are more a part of me, more essential to my every breath, than is my so-called body. What is my real body?”
“It is hard to care for the community of life if you do not feel cared for,” Dr. Narvaez shares.
How can we make this change? How can we put care into practice? We all would like to see:
Workplaces that don’t burn out employees
Companies that don’t maximize profits for those at the top at the expense of employee fair pay and wellbeing
Walkable cities and communities with thriving natural life
The end of poverty and injustice—or at least some tangible progress
More time in our days to relate to other people, to listen, and to share; this is care
More time at home with our families and loved ones
More economic stability so more of us can be less stressed and more present with our loved ones
Access to reliable, affordable healthcare
All of these things come together to create communities of care—relational communities.
Dr. Narvaez’s co-author, Four Arrows, writes, “Your invitation to the reader to not spend so much time thinking about things is also an invitation to focus more on relationships.”
We may have a long way to go to transform our workplaces, systems, and communities but we can start this work by coming together to discuss these ideas. A mindset shift in each of us will eventually create a movement.
At Tend Collective, we help workplaces assess which systems, programs, and policies may block care while increasing stress and burnout. We help organizations, agencies, and companies instill psychological safety and trauma-informed care for happier, healthier employees. Happy, healthy employees then create happy, healthy homes. Care ripples out into homes and communities and back into workplaces.
We hope you’ll join us for this event to learn how we can put these ideas into practice.
Alison Cebulla will facilitate a discussion with Dr. Darcia Narvaez. Questions from attendees are welcome.
