Relatuhedron (PDF)

This book addresses the process of dealing with tensions between available and required in responding to the needs and Calls to Action expressed by Indigenous communities in Canada and worldwide, where the transformation of current thinking systems is signaled repeatedly as a required condition. Nevertheless, in sciences, health, and mental health research and literature there is an absence of integrative frameworks that facilitate this change. The relatuhedron (relat=relation and hedra=shape), defined as shapes of relationality, arose as a rhizomatic learning tool after six years of experiential process under the practice of the Two Eyed-Seeing perspective proposed by Elder Albert Marshall. As a method, the relatuhedron encourage participants to name the unknown and to open spaces for new tools and concepts, metaphors, and frameworks required to reimagine and produce transformative actions. This new tool emerged from the practice of community and individually based approaches, to promote recovery and mobilize social systems involved in the healing process. A "machine of possibilities," the relatuhedron is a conversation-action process to embrace the togetherness of socio-political, economic, cultural, and historically complex challenges, imagining and recreating possible worlds while avoiding simplistic solutions and dismantling social inertia. The experience and knowledge gained by constructing a relatuhedron is presented as an invitation to explore the possibilities of a self-craft of relations, mangroves, and social grammars in a co-construction of a house, Wigwam, Long-House, Maloca, or Ue. This book is the story and lessons gained from that journey from the perspective of the author.