Harvesting Stories with Lynne Davis

Harvesting Stories Popular Education in Social Movements of the Americas Friday, October 29 – Saturday, October 30, 2004 The Harvesting Stories conference that was held in the Native Canadian Centre was an exciting event that brought together many popular education and community arts practitioners from Central America, the United States, and Canada. Friday was focused on popular education in Canada and the United States and featured workshops with Bev Burke, Bob Henderson, Denis Nadeau, Tina Lopes, Barb Thomas, Carl James, D’Arcy Martin, Leesa Fawcett, Lynne Davis, and many more. Saturday featured workshops with many participants from Latin America and the United States and explored many of the stories generated from years of popular and community arts education. Some highlights of the conference were the opening ceremony with Edna Manatowabe, the collective timeline activity in the open plenary, the closing ceremony with Deborah Barndt and the Night of Dread celebration that took place on the night of the Saturday of the conference. The event gave the students of the Popular Education for Social Change course an opportunity to meet the ‘elders’ and share in the wealth of stories that were told during the two days of the conference. Introductions Lynne Davis began her work in popular education (community activation) in Aboriginal communities in 1975 with the objective to engage Aboriginal peoples in issues of leadership and self determination. Her early work drew upon the writings of Gramsci, Freire, other popular educators, the Highlander Folk School, as well as perspectives from postmodernism and new social movement theorists (ie Giroux, Lather, Ellsworth etc). Her work with the ‘Moment Project’ in Toronto eventually lead her to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. Lynne Davis currently teaches at Trent University in the Department of Native Studies. Her classroom work concentrates on teaching popular education techniques for mutual learning. She continues to teach community-based processes in social change and Aboriginal specific contexts. About This Website This website is intended to give you, the viewer, a small taste of the sharing that had taken place during the two workshops with Lynne Davis. Please sit in on the sessions by clicking on the photos and hearing small audio clips of the discussions that were generated from these two inspiring workshops. Workshop Themes One of the themes stemmed from the documentary the “Honour of All” in which members from the community of Alkali Lake in British Columbia re-enacted their social movement from alcoholism to sobriety. This powerful documentary generated a lot of discussion regarding the process of social change that occurred, how it began, and how it was sustained. This approach allowed space for Aboriginal people to speak for themselves because the video was made by people who lived this experience, and they prepared the video to tell their story. Another theme was generated from Lynne’s own experiences working as a community activator. The workshops were able to draw from her two dimensional experience; Lynne’s role as a facilitator in community processes and the work she does in the classroom using a popular education approach. During the workshops we were fortunate enough to have ‘harvested’ stories from both aspects of her activism. This then generated discussion and activities. More specifically we were able to engage in a practical design exercise for Amnesty International that focused on educating non-Aboriginals about their connection to Aboriginal history.

COME SIT IN ON THE DISCUSSIONS!!!

Meet the MES student facilitators and read their commentary

Links to other useful resources

Elanor Waslander

Brandon Pardy

bpardy@yorku.ca