7GenCities Learning Report: reflections, learnings and co-building opportunities
7GenCities and partners* co-hosted a diverse group of Indigenous, municipal, and civic leaders from across Canada who joined us for collective imagination and immersive civic-Indigenous story sharing and sensemaking sessions at The Evergreen Conference and the 7GenCities Learning Gathering on October 16th and 17th, 2023.
Together, we imagined, explored, and engaged in reciprocal and immersive learning and networking of city-based visions and initiatives around inclusive social infrastructure that is fit for the long-term and embedded in the principles and actions of Truth & Reconciliation and UNDRIP. The group also explored whether and how they wished to form a community dedicated to learning and practice to support and advance this work.
A number of artifacts, including a 7GenCities Learning Report, emerged from these rich sessions an we are delighted to invite civic imagineers from across knowledge traditions, disciplines and geographies to connect with the content in ways that engage multiple ways of being, seeing and knowing:
- 7GenCities Learning Report providing a detailed synthesis of the wisdoms, reflections, learnings and possibilities for action and collaboration;
- Visualization for Preparing and Activating Our Radical Imaginations Around 7GenCities
- An interview with Reem Ali at the City of Peterborough on Municipal-Indigenous relationships and responsibilities within Truth and Reconciliation
*Key partners and co-hosts: Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre, Dark Matter Labs, Community Foundations Canada and Evergreen.
This was the second gathering of 7GenCities* and the first to focus on deepening our learning about inclusive, long-term social infrastructure planned or underway in multiple cities, and which is being developed with peers committed to embedding principles and actions of Truth & Reconciliation and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in the work. We share here some highlights from the report but encourage everyone interested in learning more about 7GenCities — and potentially joining our amazing collaborative ecosystem — to read it for a more in-depth look at the rich insights, experiences and examples that emerged over the two days of the gathering, and our plans for offerings and co-building opportunities.
*Our first 7GenCities convening was the #CiFi Gathering on the Future of Civic and Social Infrastructure Financing that Embeds Truth and Reconciliation, also at the Brick Works.
Day 1: Grounding Wisdom & Inspiration
Radical imagination is what is going to transition us into deep, lasting transformative change in our city systems, infrastructures, and bioregions for now, and for generations to come.
Preparing and Activating Our Radical Imaginations Around 7GenCities
In the spaces of the Imagining 7GenCities conference session and the Learning Gathering, we invited participants to dream expansively, and to be courageous in their thinking and reworlding the city worlds they are
working to envision and build.
The work of building 7GenCities is both of this time and ancient; it is about imagining the vital, regenerative city futures for all communities and natural beings while we remain grounded on the land and in community together — for today and for generations to come. Through a futuring visualization to prepare and activate our radical imaginations around 7GenCities led by Tanya Chung-Tiam-Fook, we entered into the realm of ancestral intelligence and wisdom to provide inspiration and guidance in our creation of artifacts of learning, growth, and building transformative futures.
We envisioned how we can work in deep collaboration, collectively holding the medicine and roles and responsibilities to repair and heal, and action ideas and pathways toward multiple futures for all of us. These provide a way of enabling peoples and conditions to root and grow these ideas to help manifest them as proofs of what is possible for 7GenCities of now and the future.
Modeling Futures & Reworlding
We had the honour of engaging in a conversation with three esteemed thought partners — Elder Catherine Tàmmaro, Fanta Condé, and Meagan
Byrne. Drawing from their different identities and intersectionalities,
ways of being, seeing and knowing, passions and work, they each shared
insightful perspectives and possible new worlds through the lenses of their
lived experiences and journeys through rupture, repair and reworlding.
Catherine, Fanta and Meagan shared affecting stories and insights from the future — year 2163 (7 generations from now), describing in rich detail the challenges facing their communities, and the future worlds they envision and are working in their communities and ecosystems to bring into being.
Byrne & Panthea Lee
Across their different cultural worlds and areas of work and movement building, are synergistic passions and energies around:
- Breaking cycles of oppression and trauma through new patterning and
intergenerational learning, repair, and healing; - Decolonial thinking and action and empowering multiple ways of
being, seeing and world building; - Collaborative work on Truth & Reconciliation, reparative and
transformative justice, and radical inclusiveness; and - Imagining emerging systems and radical futures rooted in current
initiatives and community building.
Civic-Indigenous-Municipal Conversations on the Land
Elder Catherine Tàmmaro, Fire Keeper April Nicole and Tanya Chung-
Tiam-Fook co-hosted a sharing circle in the Gitigaan (garden) at the
Brick Works for the Learning Gathering participants, complete with
forest tea and honey harvested on site. Guided by Elder Catherine’s teachings and the cultural protocols of the traditional Anishinaabe and Wendat stewards, we learned about a diversity of local Indigenous-led civic land and waterfront stewardship, Indigenous placekeeping and art projects, Indigenous reclaiming and place renaming of public spaces, Indigenous-civic infrastructures — and the role of Indigenous municipal leadership in 7GenCities city transformations, as inspired by City of Toronto partnerships with Indigenous Community.
Day 2
I’m so grateful to connect with this outstanding community of champions and visionaries and I look forward to these important and timely conversations on building more equitable futures…Special thanks to [hosts] for reminding us that we were all born at the right time to ignite change…
– Jorge Garza, Tamarack Institute
On day two of the Learning Gathering, 7GenCities hosts Jayne Engle and Tanya Chung-Tiam-Fook provided framing for the day and an introduction to 7GenCities. They presented the why, what, who and how of the work, from the inspiration and overarching scope of 7GenCities, to ways that they can be brought to life through systemic manifestations (presentation deck is here).
We brought together cohorts and civic leaders from six communities across Canada: Halifax, Toronto, Peterborough, Halton, and Saskatoon. (Edmonton is also part of the group but were not able to join us on the day.) Together with the community cohorts we were able to bring forward and explore the visions, values, commitments and pathways that we hold within and across our different contexts. We shared from a diversity of experiences, teachings, projects and contexts that breathe life into, challenge, strengthen, and nuance each others’ work.
We are creating and contributing to transformative infrastructures, placekeeping/placemaking practices, and relational and collaborative ecosystems in our cities and communities in such compelling and vibrant ways. We explored the cultural, economic and political challenges, structures and resources we need to engage to enable these shifts and possibilities for manifesting 7GenCities. We also discussed the necessity for rooting our imaginative and speculative thinking in lived experiences and wisdoms, living demonstrations, and practical collaborative work and opportunities.
We are looking to deepen, enhance and drive our respective Truth &
Reconciliation journeys and social and civic infrastructure projects in
ways that right relationships, enable collective and planetary levels of agency and wisdom, and improve the wellbeing and connectivity between
communities, ecologies, collaborative ecosystems, and cities. Through our
collective work, we are nurturing the following strands of thinking, practice and aspiration, which align beautifully with a 7GenCities ethos for how we can envision and build cities of the now and future, together:
- Social and civic infrastructures that are deeply inclusive and
community-driven - Urban Indigenous (co)leadership and community wellbeing
Learning Report for 7GenCities Learning Community
Work-in-progress and continuously evolving - Neighbourhood-level social cohesion and local circular economy
- Urban bioregional regeneration and (blue)green infrastructures
- Indigenous stewardship and Earthwork
- Actioning Truth & Reconciliation and UNDRIP in municipal and civic
structures - Land rematriation and reclamation, land self-sovereignty and self-ownership
- Recognition of the authority and agency of lands and rivers to own
themselves; and valuing and investing in lands, rivers and forests
outside of extractive capitalist structures — FreeLand, Free River and
Trees As Infrastructure (with Dark Matter Labs) - Ceremony, placekeeping and public art practices
- Tech and innovation stewardship
- Decoloniality of capital and systemic, long-term financing for civic
infrastructures - Indigenous and decolonial education and research
- Municipal-Indigenous treaty partnerships
- Integration of anti-colonial, anti-racist and anti-oppression frameworks
in municipal structures and civic infrastructures - Support for Indigenous and decolonial governance
- Local circular economies and collaborative ecosystems
Connecting and sharing across city, cultural, regional and Indigenous-municipal-civic contexts, Truth & Reconciliation journeys, and social and civic infrastructure initiatives, participants were able to learn from one another, think expansively and build on emerging ideas and synergies. City cohorts and collaborators learned reciprocally of each group’s aspirations, projects, challenges, and needs through journey boards that cohorts were invited to map and present to the larger circle for rich and inspiring conversation.
Our harvest and collective sense-making over the course of this first annual Learning Gathering generated a lot of new content around our intentions, shared challenges, how we move forward, and how we can together support each other as we build 7GenCities futures in our respective city contexts. Based on themes that emerged from cohort presentations and collective sensemaking, we voted on the deep dive breakout topics of: creating conditions for relational systems design; Indigenous governance and land rematriation; and strategic opportunities — based on the tensions,
challenges and questions we are grappling with in our work. These were
dynamic and generative dialogues and yielded important areas for deeper
exploration and application of 7GenCities lenses, including collective
wisdom and practical examples.
A resounding high note for many participants was that the Conference
sessions and Learning Gathering provided a vital and unique space for
a diverse group of Indigenous leaders working in community and from
inside municipal structures, non-Indigenous municipal and civic leaders,
foundation and innovation leaders, and Elders to come into circle and
imagine, learn and journey together. People appreciated being able to sit
in complexity and the challenges of working from within, and in collision
with, institutions built for a different era and colonial capitalist logics and
systems — while imagining and embodying regenerative and radically
inclusive futures for all communities, lands and natural beings, and for for
the next seven generations.
Lifting Up & Supporting 7GenCities Manifestations
We are committed to lifting up, building and connecting system
demonstrations of 7GenCities that show what is possible in civic contexts,
as well as change the underlying systems and infrastructures (e.g. social,
civic, finance, digital) that can foster deep inclusiveness, justice, care, regeneration and repair across communities and ecologies. They are
initiatives that are designed to be fit for complexity and long-term futures,
and work at both the levels of place/bioregion and wider systems change.
Manifestations from across the city cohorts demonstrate beautifully how social and civic infrastructure initiatives are prioritizing Indigenous co-leadership and perspectives. These pay particular attention to urban land rematriation and stewardship, placekeeping and governance, and embedding Truth & Reconciliation and decoloniality, including:
- Halifax: Transformative reconciliation and community-driven social
infrastructure, a LandBack process and new friendship centre led by
Wije’winen Friendship Centre and Every One Every Day Kjipuktuk/
Halifax, Halifax Regional Municipality and partners; - Saskatoon: national urban park designation project focused on
collaborative governance and stewardship led by Meewasin Valley
Authority with municipal and Indigenous Community partners; - Toronto: Municipal-Indigenous-civic co-led placekeeping and land
stewardship initiatives like: the revitalization of Waterfront Toronto
and the Port Lands, in partnership with Indigenous treaty partners and
design collectives; and the Waasayishkodenayosh Parklands facilitated
by the City’s Indigenous Affairs Office with Evergreen and community
partners; - Peterborough: Championing and creating conditions for an Indigenous
leadership role and Truth & Reconciliation strategy for the City of
Peterborough; and cultivating reciprocal relationships specifically with
First Nation treaty-holders and Indigenous urban community; - Halton Region: Debwewin Oakville Truth Project with Oakville
Community Foundation, Indigenous treaty partners, and municipal
partners to engage Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in
a shared Truth & Reconciliation journey focused on honouring Treaty
lands, righting relations, and diverse placemaking actions; and - Edmonton: Indigenous-led cultural gathering spaces that connect
across communities and honour land relationships in Edmonton like
the Indigenous Experience at Fort Edmonton Park in partnership with
Indigenous Community and municipal partners.
What’s next for 7GenCities?
We have been seeding the work of 7GenCities and our growing
collaborative ecosystem through our main bundles of Learning + Practice
Community, Social Finance, and Field Building. We are keen to work with
interested communities within Canada, US and the global south, exploring
into the possibilities, conditions, Indigenous and land-centric wisdoms,
structural transitions, and innovative funding instruments needed to co-build 7GenCities of the future. The following diagram presents a sample
of offerings for next steps and co-building opportunities over the next
year. We will share developments of this exciting work as it unfolds, and
urge you to get in touch if you are interested in exploring possibilities for
7GenCities in your city.
Given the tremendously painful time we are in, this work of repair is necessary for the restoration of human compassion and just futures across our globe. I was heartened to see the Truth & Reconciliation work led by Indigenous communities on the northern side of Turtle Island, and the brilliant work of 7GenCities, [Mi’kwaw Native Friendship Centre], Dark Matter Labs, and Evergreen Canada that center solidarity across identities, humanity and self-determination across spaces. I was comforted by the elevation of song and ritual to center and guide us, and I am grateful once again for the wisdom of elders and peers in that space.
– Fanta Condé, Omidyar Network
We would love to hear from you so please stay in touch!
- Pam Glode-Desrochers
pam@mymnfc.ca - Tanya Chung-Tiam-Fook
tanya@7GenCities.org - Jayne Engle
jayne@darkmatterlabs.org - Michelle Baldwin
mbaldwin@communityfoundations.ca
