Our underlying images of ourself and the world have a profound effect on our mental health and our behaviour. Messages that come to us in all kinds of ways can change those images. When those images change, our behaviour changes.

I am grateful for all of the experiences I have had that have shown me how this works, and made it possible for me to be aware of my own underlying images and the messages that affect them. This is one that was very powerful for me.

A number of years ago, I was working with a First Nation in the far north who wanted to do strategic planning. 

We started with a Journey Wall (also called Historical Scan) to establish a historical context for their vision and strategic plan.  They advised me that the timeline for the exercise needed to be at least a hundred years.   The “wall” to work on was a number of flipchart pages, turned horizontally and taped together, suspended from a clothesline across one wall of the dining tent at the retreat. The participants were a cross section of the community, including young and old.  The oldest elders were fluent in their own language, but the younger ones were not because of residential schools, so we worked in English. One of the younger leaders was one of the first young ones to be educated in the community and was fluent in the language as well as English.  She was dealing with historical trauma of colonialism and the intergenerational effect of residential schools, which she was very angry about.

First the group individually brainstormed events from the last hundred or so years until the date of the planning retreat, then worked in pairs to write the different events on cards.  These cards, written in both languages, included the massive number of deaths in the community from smallpox and the Spanish flu epidemic brought in from outside at the beginning of the last century, the residential schools, the effects of these events and others as well as later the development of self-government and business ventures. They taped the event cards on the timeline, watching the journey evolve through the years.  Then they marked high points and low points on the journey, named the turning points and sections of their journey as chapters of their story, and finally named the whole journey. 

When the Journey Wall was completed, the young leader began to read out loud, translating the entire timeline into the traditional language.

She got about halfway through, and suddenly her face changed. She blurted out, “We’ve been through all of this and we’re still here?!  We’re one helluva people!”

The articulation of the journey with its high and low points had led to a powerful underlying image of the community of its strength, wisdom, and commitment. This generated new energy to make a positive strategic plan for the community.

At the end of the translation, the elders said to the group, “Now you know where we have come from, and who we are.  We will now leave it to you younger ones to plan the future.”  

The Journey Wall was documented and later made into a large poster that was hung in the community centre to educate and inspire the whole community.