What does consent look like to you as a facilitator?

“Consent is key. Relatedly, whatever you do, get consent from the local government and the local community. Involve them in the decision-making and processes. For example, in a humanitarian crisis (outbreak, environmental, or manmade), development organizations and INGOs (e.g., UN, Save the Children, IRC, MSF) aren’t allowed to enter a country to provide support until the country has invited them or accepted their offer. This is one example of tapping into existing structures, which are in place for a reason, as well as the importance of consent.” https://www.fsg.org/blog/covid-19-seven-things-philanthropy-can-do

I’ve been thinking more and more about how I have controlled and oppressed others through my well-meaning facilitation. I jokingly call it “facipulation,” and seek to be very transparent about how I approach facilitation. But that is no excuse to ignore my filtered and often biased approach.

I have been working to understand how better to work with the Tribes in my state as it relates to my work with an integrated floodplains management network. Informal conversations between the consultants and the leadership team have opened up many new and nuanced vistas about what consent means.

As I begin to glimpse the complexities of sovereign nation relationships (thank you Bobby), the relationships within and between tribes, and practices of who can or does speak for whom, it is clearer that I based most of my sense of “inviting people in” on my white, American, female and other identities, without having a clue how they were received by others different than me. More importantly, WHY they are perceived the way they are. My personal value was to ensure that “everyone speaks.” Does that, in fact, equal egalitarian engagement? Not necessarily.

In my belief in networked and multi-nodal approaches, I often dismissed existing power structures as oppressive, without even understanding HOW they worked. I lumped them into the buck of obstruction and sought to work around them.

But what happens when working around them makes matters worse? While you might not agree with me and I with you, dismissing the way we each wish to engage does nothing for moving forward together. So what does the path “between” look like? How do we flock together and hold our uniqueness and diversity intact? How does that inform consent and group process?