It’s been a week of catching up. I’m still struggling with some brain fog and lethargy, and I’m grateful for feeling better than I did this time last week.
Writing up the notes from last week’s Truth and Reconciliation Dialogue Session on Reconcili-Action provided a good opportunity to review the rich discussion and ideas explored. What stands out to me is the analogy of language being the roots of the tree of life of a culture. Language and culture are dynamically and inextricably linked. There is power not only in how we use language, but also in which languages are given primacy. I discovered during our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion meeting, that language is explicitly listed (although it’s likely implied) as one of Protected Characteristics in the BC Human Rights Code. Yet if we don’t protect languages, we cannot protect culture. In my mind, this links
to the concept of Intersectionality, explained in the video below as a, “metaphor for understanding the ways that multiple forms of inequality or disadvantage sometimes compound themselves and they create obstacles that often are not understood within conventional ways of thinking about anti-racism or feminism or whatever social justice advocacy structures we have […] a prism for understanding certain kinds of problems.”
For my contribution to the EDI group, I’ve been asked to work on our collective definition of intersectionality as part of drafting a new college EDI policy.
This seems like a good segue into considering an intercultural vision for the College. All the seemingly disparate parts of what goes on at a college are connected, often in ways we do not consciously consider, all functioning within an intercultural landscape that encompasses the multiplicity and complexity of the humans involved. Separating a part from the whole would be like cutting a finger off a hand, or breaking off a vital root of a tree. My question to myself is: how can we embody this vision in who and what we are and do as a College?
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