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When Does Canada Finally Become of This Place?

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I have been thinking about Vine Deloria Jr. a lot lately. Especially God Is Red. And with all this talk about Canada becoming some kind of “associate member” of the European Union, I find myself thinking about something much bigger than the EU, Mark Carney, Donald Trump, trade wars, Russia or whoever happens to be leading which country today. When does Canada actually become of this place? I’m not anti-European. I’m not anti-American. I’m not saying America is better than Europe, Europe is better than America, or Canada is better than either one. That isn’t my point. My question is much simpler. Where does Canada believe home is? Because sometimes I wonder whether Canada has ever really left Europe. Vine Deloria Jr. wrote about something that has stayed with me. Europeans physically crossed the Atlantic, but European civilization carried Europe with it. Its religions, governments, laws, economics and ideas about progress were laid over this continent. People arrived here, but in anothe...
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Autistic People Belong at the Leadership Table

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When we talk about leadership, I think we still have a pretty narrow idea of what a leader is supposed to look like. Charismatic. Polished. Diplomatic. Good at networking. Comfortable working a room. Someone who knows what to say, when to say it and how to say it without making anyone too uncomfortable. Those things can certainly be useful. But are they leadership? Or are they just qualities we've become accustomed to rewarding? Because I think we seriously underestimate autistic people as leaders. I'm talking about leadership in workplaces, businesses, organizations, community groups, advocacy, boards, systems, government and politics. Autistic people are often misunderstood before we're ever given the opportunity to lead. We can be blunt. We don't always sugar coat things. Sometimes we say exactly what we mean and expect other people to do the same. We ask questions. We notice inconsistencies. We can become incredibly focused on something that matters to us. And many ...
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We Learned How to Build Everything Except a Better World

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I have been going down another rabbit hole lately. The further back into human history I look, the more I question this idea that ancient people were somehow primitive versions of us, slowly waiting for humanity to become intelligent. They weren't. Go back more than 7,000 years and look at the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture in what is now Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. Some of their settlements became enormous for their time. Thousands of structures. Thousands of people living together in communities that existed long before the great pyramids of Egypt and before Sumer reached the heights most of us learned about in school. Then move farther east toward Russia's Ural Mountains. Thousands of years later, Bronze Age cultures like Sintashta and Andronovo developed sophisticated communities, metallurgy, trade networks, horses and chariot technology. But there is something in the Urals that is much older than any of them. The Shigir Idol. It is roughly 11,000 years old and is considered ...
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What Is Happening to Us?

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We like to think we're the height of civilization. Look at what we've accomplished. We have computers in our pockets. Artificial intelligence. Satellites orbiting the planet. Nuclear power. Modern medicine. We can look billions of light years into space. We've walked on the moon. We can split an atom. But we still can't figure out how to stop people from sleeping on sidewalks. We haven't figured out addiction. We haven't figured out hunger. We haven't stopped killing one another. And apparently, we haven't figured out when enough is enough. That's what has been bothering me. We have become incredibly intelligent, but have we become wise? Those aren't the same thing. We Have Barely Been Here Homo sapiens has existed for roughly 300,000 years. Earth is about 4.54 billion years old. Agriculture only began around 10,000 years ago. Recorded history covers roughly the last 5,000 years. Think about how small that is. Every empire. Every war. Every king....
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Who Are Our Lepers Today?

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Anyone who knows the Bible, or has even heard some of the stories, probably knows about the lepers. People with leprosy were feared and pushed away from society. Disease and suffering were often connected to ideas about sin, punishment and being unclean. People wondered what someone had done, or what their family had done, for this to happen to them. Then we have the stories of Jesus doing something very different. He touched them. He went toward people everyone else was trying to stay away from. Today we know leprosy, also called Hansen disease, is an infection caused by bacteria. It isn't caused by sin. It isn't some moral punishment. It isn't simply caused by being dirty. Today it is treatable and curable. We understand the disease differently now. But I'm not sure we understand people all that differently. Who are our lepers today? You don't need to know what city this picture was taken in. That's part of the point. I took this picture downtown, but you can ...
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Before They Stopped Asking

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We like to believe that help is there when people need it. We tell people to reach out. Ask for help. Build a support network. Talk to somebody. Go to your church. Contact social services. Lean on your community. I've heard all of those things. I've also lived long enough to know there is an enormous difference between help existing and help actually being accessible when your life falls apart. I've been through periods when I was doing well. I've worked, run a business, supported myself, and participated in communities. I've also been homeless. One of the things you learn when your life goes badly wrong is who is actually there when you have nothing to offer them. Sometimes the answer is painful. When life changes faster than the system does I remember one period when several things in my life collapsed together. A relationship ended. My business was gone. My living situation changed. Emotionally, I wasn't handling any of it particularly well. I needed help. So...
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How Do You Rebuild a Life When Your Past Gets There First?

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Age, injury, recovery, second chances, and the strange ways we decide what a person is still capable of becoming When I was young, I needed more experience. Now that I have decades of experience, I am getting old. When exactly was I the right fucking age? I remember being in my early twenties, fresh out of trade school, working with horses and trying to build a business. I was young, and people knew it. Older people had been doing the work longer than I had. They had seen things I had not seen yet. They knew things that could not necessarily be learned in a classroom. And you know what? There was some truth in that. Experience matters. You can go to school. You can learn a trade. You can be talented, ambitious and willing to work your ass off. But there are things that only come from doing something for ten, twenty or thirty years. So that is what you do. You spend your life acquiring experience. You work. You screw things up. You learn. You get better. You encounter situations you hav...
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