The Journal of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America July-September 2017 - 14

conFlIcT TransFormaTIon

Colour-coded:

Decolonising Hearts, Minds and Spirits
by Lee McKenna

t was another one of those silly games, those apparently
pointless games that lie at the heart of Conflict Transformation and experiential learning. "Lifeboats" is primarily
designed to harvest information from the participants in ways
that are fun, kinaesthetic and-often-sneaky. In this case,
why don't we set up an exercise that is deliberately provocative, deliberately oriented towards a dominant white culture
narrative and experience?
In "Lifeboats," the story is that we are all in a ship-maybe
on the Mediterranean or the Nile, the Brahmaputra or the
Boac. In this case, it's on the St Lawrence-and it's going down.
The "passengers" are assured that we are well equipped with
lifeboats-no lives will be lost-but that we like to be organised
about who gets into which lifeboat.
So all those wearing blue today will get into this lifeboat
over here. All those who are pastors will come over here to get
into this lifeboat-which may include those wearing blue now
required to switch lifeboats.
A boat is reserved for those who access new media, another
for those who play a musical instrument. The latter are asked
to tell us which instruments they each play, and would they
please play us a tune. The pianos start playing, the djembes
are tapped on knees, fingers fly off the air guitars and the flute
adds its dulcet tones-to laughter. There are other lifeboats

for those born outside the country, for those who have been
taught to fear the police.
Then there is one for those born in the decade in which
"Little Boy" and "Fat Boy" were dropped (on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in the 1940s), the decade of "Bennett Buggies"1
(1930s), the "Day the Music Died"2 (1950s), the fall of the
Berlin wall (1980s), the decade in which Martin Luther King,
Jr. was assassinated (1960s), the decade in which Wilbur Howard served as the first Black Moderator of the United Church
of Canada (1970s), in which Canada's Indian Residential
Schools (first opened in 1848) finally closed-and the one that
saw Nelson Mandela elected into South Africa's highest office
(1990s). It requires talking with your neighbours. What in the
world are the "Bennet Buggies"? Who are Fat Boy and Little
Boy? Who is Wilbur Howard?
Eventually, the lifeboats are filled, distributed between the
1930s through to the 1990s. Once there, each group is asked
to sing a song from the decade in which they were born. We'll
eavesdrop on my group, that of the 1950s and the "Day the
Music Died." We are one francophone Haitian woman, a
Taiwanese migrant who served as a Member of Parliament
for a nearby riding [district], a Jamaican African-descendent
church executive, as well as three white, dominant culture
people. We can't seem to reach a decision.
Only half of us were even in this place in
the 1950s, and the pleas of the native-born
for Elvis or Sinatra or Jerry Lee Lewis or
Bill Haley or Chuck Berry or Patti Page
or the Everly Brothers or Fats Domino are
declined. We weren't here, the other three
say. Oh yeah, right. The Taiwanese man
suggests, interestingly enough, "Que será,
será... the future's not ours to see..." Doris Day.
And so we sang. Badly.
The 1960s sing "Yesterday," a Beatles
classic. Over protests that they were infants

Participants in a Conflict Transformation training
gather for a Sacred Circle ceremony at Cummer
Avenue United Church in Toronto, ON. Photo by
Laura McAlpine, an intern for Partera International.

14 Baptist Peacemaker

jul-sep 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America July-September 2017