Teiotirihwaienawà:kon

As part of Beads, Bones, and Rotinonsionni:ton Archaeological findings and an Indigenous Paradigm, we invite the public to engage in Teiotirihwaienawà:kon, Large group methods: Exploring collaborative approaches with Oskenontona Philip Deering.

In the Rotinonsionni/Haudenosaunee address to creation,

We give thanks to many categories within creation, including insects.

We say iotirihwaienawa:kon, they work together.

We say iotiianerastonhatie', they keep it clean, tsi iohontsa:te, the earth.

We think that if today,

We as natural-world people noticed that insects work together to keep the earth clean.

That our ancestors, 70 to 150 thousand years, also noticed the same thing.

And, learning from the insects, they developed working-together approaches.

In the 20th century, the West developed small-group theory.

This is a linear-hierarchic approach to group-work that follows several stages.

One of them is called “storming,”

The members fight to identify their place in the hierarchy.

The 21st century has seen the evolution of large-group methods,

W/holistic, sha’tetionkwatte’, we-all-become-the-same-height, approaches.

See, The Handbook of Large-Group Methods, B.B. Bunker & B.T. Alban, 2005.

This exploration is not individual-repressing “group-work”

It is a way of working together that supports the individual.

It is also a prelude to the Strawberry-beading exercise on May 27th.

                                                                                Oskenontona Philip Deering