Page 41 - Six Nations Community Plan 2019

Measuring Progress

• Community is informed, community is participating in • Greater number of participants in decision-making
decision-making processes
• Community is engaged to gauge their interests at the early
stages of potential developments

Key Challenges And Concerns

• Community members feel leaders are reflecting narrow views and making decisions based on the short term
• In past engagements community members feel they were not listened to, damages trust going forward
• “Town-hall” meetings hear only the loudest voices, members are concerned for physical and emotional safety
• Our ways of building consensus through dialogue have been damaged
• Community members do not feel they have a say in how new projects or programs are implemented, short funding cycles
prevent community organizations from taking time to do this engagement
• Organizations facilitating engagement are faced with low participation and must make decisions anyways
• The quick pace of investment decisions does not align with the time it takes to discuss them
• Many organizations have boards to empower community, but many struggle to recruit, retain and function effectively
• Community members feel disempowered, that money and power will outweigh their voice
• Forms of democratic decision making (e.g., voting in elections) can be perceived as colonial impositions

Discussion

With respect to the specific goal of Participatory Decision Making, community members voiced that we need to engage
community at early stages of developments to hear their interests, instead of asking permission after decisions are made.
Organizations need consistent and transparent ways of hearing community input that the community agrees to, and
mechanisms of follow through. Some particular recommended actions that emerged from the Community Plan conversation
that will help us move toward the goal of Participatory Decision Making are:
• Require decision makers and leaders to take Community Engagement & Conflict Resolution training
• Develop a strategy for clearly communicating the costs of projects to community members to create awareness
around why all can’t happen at once
• Move away from the large town hall settings – commit resources needed to have smaller groups, round-tables,
family meetings, etc.
• Develop a sustained community engagement initiative – ongoing discussions where positives can be discussed,
and issues can emerge organically, instead of only basing engagement around specific issues
• Explore feasibility of alternative engagement approaches and share feasibility with community (door-to-door
initiatives, online portals or apps, community mailouts)
• Develop a community-based board training and capacity building program
• Develop standards of engagement and a process through which community members can appeal decisions made
by leaders that did not meet those standards
• Create standard expectations for leadership to attend community engagement events

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