Let It Breathe

Happy Teachings Tuesday, everyone.

Today's message is shared with us by our dear friend and Mentor, Wholwholet'za, and is centered around time. In the context of modern agenda's, and contrasted against how cultural time unfolds. We hope you find it helpful.

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Since the early years of Culturally Committed, we have been asked the same question time and time again: How do you work with Indigenous People in a good way? And every single time I hear it, I feel the weight and the beauty of that question all at once. It is loaded, yes, but it is also asked with a genuine and open heart, and that matters deeply to me. I want to honour that question today by focusing on one particular thread that runs through so much of our work together. It is something that sounds simple but carries profound meaning: the gift of time.

When our Elders and Knowledge Keepers are invited into spaces, it is almost always done with good intentions. People want to honour Indigenous voices. They want to open their events in a respectful way. That desire is real, and it is appreciated. But somewhere between the invitation and the execution, something often gets lost. Our people are welcomed in, and then handed a clock.

Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen if we are lucky.

We are asked to do the land acknowledgment, to welcome people to our territories, to offer a prayer, to represent generations of knowledge and relationship, and then we are given a handshake and shown the door. Your part is done. I want to sit with that phrase for a moment, because I think it reveals something important: the idea that an Elder or Knowledge Keeper has a "part," a role to perform within a tightly managed schedule, treats our ways of being as a line item rather than a living practice.

I experienced this firsthand not long ago. Kim and I had been invited to speak about Culturally Committed, and Kim graciously asked if I would be the one to share a few words about our community and the work we are doing. I gladly accepted. What I was not expecting was what came next.

Kim had warned me we only had a short time. But I was not fully prepared for what I walked into, something I had not felt since I was playing basketball in high school: a one-minute countdown timer. A shot clock.

Everyone before us had rushed through their pitch. You could hear the anxiety in their voices, the words tumbling out faster and faster as the clock ticked down. As Kim and I edged closer to our turn, I felt that same anxiety building in my chest. How am I going to do this in one minute? How do I represent my family, my community, my people in sixty seconds?

Then they called on Kim and Culturally Committed, and Kim introduced me as the one who would be speaking. And in that moment, something shifted. What I had planned to say fell away, and my cultural instincts took over. I looked at the group and I told them that I had to follow the teachings passed down to me by my family, that when I enter a space, I must first share who I am and where I come from. I told them that we work every day to represent our families and our communities with integrity, and that it would be a disservice to my people if I did not follow our traditions, no matter the setting.

And then both Kim and I noticed something: the shot clock was turned off.

I was so grateful for that. The timer had felt like a set of walls closing in around me, shrinking the space until there was no room left for anything real. Turning it off opened the room back up. It allowed me to slow things down, to be intentional with my time and, more importantly, with my words. That intentionality is not a luxury for us. It is how the work is supposed to happen.

I think about another moment that has stayed with me. We were in a dedicated learning circle here at Culturally Committed, working with an organization on this very topic, how to work with Indigenous People in a good way. We were nearing the end of our call, and I noticed that Jenn was starting to rush through her talking points because time was running short. I was up next, and I knew my fellow mentor Qwustenuxun (Jared) still had something to share after me, so I followed Jenn's lead and started rushing too, trying to leave him enough time on the clock.

Then Qwustenuxun paused and gently pointed something out to the group. He said that what we were doing, this rushing, this watching the clock, was itself going against our traditions. It was, in fact, the very opposite of working with Indigenous People in a good way. Right there, in the middle of a session about that exact topic, we had drifted away from it.

I am so grateful to brother Qwustenuxun for that moment of clarity. He brought us back to ourselves. He reminded us that we need to slow down and smell the roses. This work happens on its own time. You cannot schedule a ceremony. You cannot rush a teaching. And you cannot build genuine relationships with a countdown timer running in the background.

There is a saying that lives quietly at the heart of Indigenous gathering: the work ends when the work ends.

I think about our longhouse event. We had shared with people that things would begin around noon, with lunch at 12:30 and our work starting around 1:30, with a closing around 4:00. Brother Len Pierre and his team did a beautiful job leading the day, and we were approaching that time. But Kim had something in her heart, she wanted to blanket myself, Rebecca, Katy, and Denisse.

After the blanketing, brother Len invited anyone who held a relationship with us to come and share a kind word, a hug. And then brother Patrick Leon began to sing traditional songs to honour us while our friends came forward. Then he opened it to everyone in the room. What happened next is something I will carry with me for a long time: over 200 people came down to share words of appreciation, of encouragement, of love. Keep going. That is what we heard, over and over.

We went past 4:00 pm. Not by accident, but by design of the moment. If we had cut it off on time, that ending would never have happened. The most beautiful part of the day would have been left on the table. Huy ch q'u to Kim for honouring us in that way, huy ch q'u to brother Len for helping guide her through the process, and a deep and heartfelt huy ch q’u to brother Patrick for honouring us with his songs and for having it in his heart to call everyone down to share their words with us.

I carry a similar memory from a workshop I did with my chosen sqe'eq Katy Carson. We had a few hours set aside for a discussion, and because we wanted to do the work in a good way, we began with introductions. We had planned for one hour. Introductions took an hour and thirty minutes, because the people in the room were engaged, alive, sharing pieces of themselves with us. That is not a problem. That is the work working.

We had to make adjustments as we moved through the rest of the session, and we still finished a little later than planned. I found the person who was presenting after us and apologized for running over into their time. Their response filled my heart: "No need to apologize. That was amazing." That kind of grace is what is possible when people understand that what we are building together is more important than what time it ends.

A few years back, my dear friend Alexis Stuart invited me to welcome people to my territory at an event she was hosting. She did not give me a time limit. When the person facilitating the day welcomed me in, I asked him how much time I had. He said, "Take all the time you need."

Those six words felt like a gift.

I got to offer a full introduction. I invited everyone in the room to share who they were and where they came from. I was invited to share a meal with them, and when my "part" was done, they asked me to stay, not to leave. I could not stay for the full day, but I was invited back at the end to close the learning circle in a good way.

When I returned, I asked people to share a little more of themselves. I shared my traditional name and my English name and asked them how they got theirs, whether it was a family name, something their parents simply loved, something that carried a story. I had started the day with three friends in the room. I ended it with a dozen more, because I had been given the time and the space to do what our people have been doing for thousands of years: invite strangers to become relatives through the act of sharing who we are.

There is a guideline that lives inside the Culturally Committed framework, and I want to share it here because I think it says something important: "Upholding Traditional Protocols: We strive to honour Coast Salish Protocols in our gatherings, which may sometimes extend the length of our meeting. If you have another commitment and need to leave before we close, we kindly ask that you send a message to your Facilitator and exit quietly, so the circle can conclude in a good way."

We had a community call not long ago, and those calls are always something special, full of great questions and even better dialogue. As we moved through the call, our team realized we were not going to finish on time. So we said to everyone: if you need to leave at the hour, you are free to go. But we are going to stay until the work is done. Our mentors kept sharing their stories and their teachings. Not many people left. Those who did quietly dropped a note in the chat and signed off with care. We carried on for thirty minutes past our "scheduled" end time. And it was right that we did.

In our traditional homes, the way gatherings work is simple and profound. Families will let guests know: the table is set for noon, and the work begins at three. That is all. There is no announced end time. The work ends when the work ends. There is no countdown. Just presence. Just the work, unfolding the way it needs to.

I find that beautiful. It keeps people present. It removes the anxiety of the clock and replaces it with attention to what is actually happening in the room. It says, quietly but clearly: it is far more important that the work be done right than that it be done quickly.

So I want to offer this to anyone who has the privilege of hosting one of our Elders or Knowledge Keepers: please do not rush them.

It is perfectly fine to offer a suggested timeframe. But please do not treat it as a hard cutoff. This is not the Oscars. You do not need to play the music and cut the mic. What you need to do is trust, trust that when you give our people the space to work the way we were always meant to work, something unexpected and beautiful is likely to happen in that room. You will feel it. Your guests will feel it. And long after the event is over, those are the moments people remember.

Slow down. Make room. Let the work breathe.

You might be surprised by what grows when you do.

Huy ch q'u | Thank you

Wholwolet'za | George Harris Jr

Huy ch q'u, George, for this teaching and for the reminder it carries.

I think about that shot clock often. How close we came to letting it shrink us down to sixty seconds. And I think about everything that has grown in the years since, community calls that ran long because the questions mattered, a longhouse gathering that went past four o'clock because 200 people needed to say what was in their hearts, a workshop where introductions alone took ninety minutes because people were finally being seen.

None of that would have happened on a schedule. It happened because we made room for it.

If you take one thing from George's words this week, let it be this: the work ends when the work ends. Wherever you're hosting, gathering, or simply making space for someone else's story, try turning off the clock. See what grows.

Until next Tuesday.

🧡 Kim