Kimberly Weichel's News

1. Leading Conversations Radio: The Frontline of Peace: Feminine Leadership - A radio interview with Kim Weichel, by Cheryl Esposito

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2. Peace Building and Leadership: An interview with Kimberly Weichel, by Rose Diamond, co-director of A Whole New World

Rose: Hello Kim! I’m excited to be interviewing you today. I know you’ve been working for peace for many years and in many different contexts, and you have a great deal of experience and wisdom to share with us. What are you working on now?

Kim: I’ve just been creating a leadership curriculum for middle schools in a pilot region in Senegal, in collaboration with a Senegalese consultant. It is in an area where there’s been conflict for some decades, which is probably why it’s been selected. It’s very exciting since there’s a dearth of leadership training in Africa. If this curriculum is successful, it will expand to other middle schools in Senegal and hopefully other regions in Africa.

Rose: It sounds very fulfilling as well as challenging.

Kim: It is. It’s under the auspices of an organization called Leadership Africa and funded by the US Agency for International Development, the foreign aid arm of our government. Leadership Africa’s mission is to expand leadership capabilities in the continent of Africa. I think it’s very important to provide some positive role models of leadership in Africa.

Rose: So this is for bringing peace building skills into schools in Senegal?

Kim: Yes, while it’s called leadership training, it includes core peace building skills, such as how we communicate effectively; key listening skills, how we understand and value differences, how to work with others, and how we reduce conflict. These are core skills for everyone to understand, particularly those in a conflict area. It’s a fifteen week course and I’ve drawn on some of my own material but also utilized some existing curriculum from my son’s former middle school, to see what is appropriate in that age range. Middle school is the ideal time to start these courses.

Rose: I would say the skill of dealing with differences is central to a peace building curriculum, wouldn’t you?

Kim: Absolutely. It’s important to understand that we all see things differently, so we need to know how to really listen, so we really hear what the other person has to say. Part of it is listening skills; part of it is to develop understanding of differences and learn how to work with them. I had to redefine leadership because leadership is not just the old model of the person in charge; rather it’s about everyone exercising their own initiative and responsibility in their own way. We can each be a leader when we do so. And it was interesting in an African context to ensure that it’s inclusive of their cultural norms.

Rose: Middle school is what age?

Kim: In the U.S. it’s sixth, seventh and eighth grade, approximately ten to thirteen years old.

Rose: Do you think that’s the age when children are most receptive to these initiatives?

Kim: I think so. Certainly some skills could be offered before then, but by the age of middle school they’re developing cognitive abilities and have an aptitude for learning these kinds of principles and concepts - like dealing with the other, going beyond self, how to really listen. These skills also help develop self confidence, so important at this age. Some of these skills could be offered earlier but I’m not sure how well they’d be understood. I also feel it’s important that it begin in middle school because once they hit those teenage years in high school, it’s harder to reach students with skills such as listening, team building, etc.

Rose: They’re becoming real social beings at that age as well. I think for all of us, in all the work I do as well, listening is a central skill, which most of us, even as adults haven’t developed very well.

Kim: That’s right, many of this think we listen, yet sometimes we listen for what we want to hear, making judgments and assumptions, ready to respond quickly with our view without really understanding what the person is saying. There is so much miscommunication and it’s the basis of conflict. Effective communication goes beyond listening, but listening is certainly a first phase. Then we look at how we can communicate in a way so that both people feel heard and understood. Understanding differences and sensitivities is especially important in a conflict area such as this region in Senegal.

Rose: I’m very interested to hear about your current project, but maybe we could go back a little and put this in the wider context of your work?

Kim: Of course. But first tell me a little bit about what you’re doing and how it ties in with peace building.

Rose: I’m launching a new project called A Whole New World. Our purpose is to network with people locally, nationally and globally to provide mutual support for making a transition to a more peaceful, sustainable world. Part of what I’m doing as a lifelong educator is offering a monthly package, we’re calling it New Moon Magic, because it’s going to be coming out every new moon, with the idea of planting seeds at the New Moon. I have a year’s themes on different aspects of social change and consciousness raising and this first one is on Being Peace in Action, a subject and practice I’ve been actively involved in for a while.

What we’re aiming to do is to provide food for thought and inspiration, spreading the word about projects that are happening locally, nationally and globally, with the hope readers will be encouraged and be more confident to get more actively involved themselves, both in terms of changing from the inside and participating with others in community building. It’s about inspiration, skills, mutual support, food for thought, in a nutshell.

Kim: Excellent! Especially at this time when there is little hope in the economic sphere, offering seeds of hope and new ways of thinking is really important.

Rose: Absolutely, I think this is a very challenging time for most people right now but at the same time I see it as a very fertile opportunity for change to happen, so that’s why it’s a good time to plant some of these seeds. I think many people would like to be more active in creating a better world but they don’t know how. I’m learning myself and passing on what I learn as I go.

Kim: That’s great. When things are going well we can continue life as usual but when things shift as dramatically as they are and probably will continue to do, we can no longer rely on more of the same - it requires us to rethink what we’re doing and what’s important to us. When people lose their jobs they have no choice but to rethink what they’re doing and I think that’s actually a healthy thing. Every year I re-evaluate what I’m doing and I reduce commitments that drain energy. Then I have space to take on what is new and more important at this time. It’s a matter of trying to be totally present with what’s important and I think this particular time is an opportunity to do that.

Rose: I agree, I think there’s really a shift in identity for many people as well. As things get more challenging we have to shed our old ideas of who we are and as you say, be willing to experiment with new ways of being, doing and being together. This involves new skills for all of us and a lot of those are in the personal area of communication.

Kim: Also re-evaluating what’s important; in this society we often think what’s most important is the high paying job, since we have a mortgage, health care, car payments, etc and we get caught up in a vicious circle. I know many people who dislike their jobs yet feel stuck to maintain their expensive life style. As life starts to unravel we have to ask ourselves how much is enough, what’s truly important, how can I downsize in order to accommodate the new economy? Just look at what’s really important. As tough as the times are, it gives us this opportunity to reframe and re-evaluate.

Rose: I was looking at your website again before this call and there’s so much we could talk about. You’ve been involved in peace work for thirty years could you give me a brief summary of how you first got involved?

Kim: That’s a big question! I think ever since I was a young girl I’ve had a fascination with what is out there beyond my immediate environment. I studied other cultures, I poured over maps, I used to dress up for Halloween in costumes from different countries when I was a young girl; there was something calling me about other countries and other cultures. I befriended the exchange students at my high school and invited them over for dinner and I knew I wanted to become one, knew I wanted to be involved. I wrote off to different programs, such as Vista, at fifteen or sixteen and was told I was too young. I had this deep yearning at an early age. I became an exchange student to Germany and had a fabulous year – I’m still close with my German family after 38 years!

But I think what really prompted the work into peace building was when we lived in South Africa. My husband and I met and married in Sydney, Australia and then we moved to South Africa - I was just twenty-two when we got there. This was in 1974 under apartheid and it was extraordinarily difficult and extraordinarily awful for the majority of the population. As a white American I just couldn’t possibly consider living there unless I did everything I could to work for change under apartheid. So I immediately got involved. I finished my under-graduate degree and then completed my masters at the University of Cape Town and simultaneously directed a program that was part of the Institute of Race Relations. We worked to integrate facilities at the workplaces, provided cross cultural training so whites and blacks could work together, spoke out against government policy, protected the people living in the large squatter communities near Cape Town, and sent realistic information out to the world via consulates so the world could put pressure on the South African government.

The intensity, immediacy and importance of this work really launched me into peace building. I became a change agent within the country and I think change happened both from those of us within the system, putting pressure on the government in ways only insiders could, as well as from outside the country. Both are needed to affect change. I got very involved in a large squatter community called “Crossroads” that the government threatened to bulldoze. It was home to 20,000 African people in living in meager overcrowded conditions, yet they didn’t want to be sent back to the rural areas where they had no work. So a committed group of us, including a lawyer, journalists and community leaders, worked diligently together to stave off demolition, and indeed it was never bulldozed. In fact it still exists. My family and I visited South Africa a year ago and we visited Crossroads, and it’s huge - unfortunately people still live in shanty towns despite the fact apartheid’s long gone. It was upsetting to see the government hadn’t provided more homes for its people.

Rose: So you went straight into an extremely challenging situation.

Kim: I did. I got involved because of how strongly I felt about apartheid and because I could see how it affected so many people. We went to South Africa with the idea of staying a year, but ended up staying for five years because of the commitment to this work. It was a very powerful time, having a clear purpose, real dedication, and a team of caring experts with whom we collaborated to make a difference. I had a deep yearning to do what I could to affect change and bring justice. This was a seminal experience and has stayed with me as I have continued to do peace building work in other parts of the world.

Rose: As I listen to you describing how that longing started in you at an early age, it seems to me that was the work you came here to do, your soul work. Is that how it feels to you?

Kim: Yes. I wouldn’t have called it that then because it was something I just did: you’re there, you don’t analyze, you just get involved. It was something that needed to be done and I cared deeply and wanted to be involved with my whole being. It was instructive for all the work I’ve done subsequently. I began at the grass roots level which is a great place to begin. You are connected with people and their needs. I have kept with me that spirit, and the spirit of the people there, and their resilience despite the tough living conditions. And then to see the transformation in that country and the process of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and what that country went through, it’s such a model. I use it as an example in a lot of the teaching I do on forgiveness and peace building.

Rose: What would you say were the main skills you were developing through that work?

Kim: Because I was quite young I was naïve but very open to learning. I was learning skills of collaboration and how you work in a team, how you set goals, how you affect change. In this case we’re talking about saving a home for 20,000 people and fighting an oppressive government. In my case the question was how do I do this and yet not be banned and sent out of South Africa? What is that line? How much can I speak up, how much can I write, research and do without being banned? I was careful yet also needed to be forthright. I was learning a lot of grassroots organizing skills, cross cultural skills, working with an African population that had very different cultural norms than we did. I was learning so much in a really short time. And then shortly after I graduated I was asked to become director of the program for the Institute for Race Relations. So I had to learn management skills quickly. I was not trained per se but because the mission was so strong, I’d just learn on the job and I was directing projects, working with employers, with consulates, with journalists and learning to speak confidently because it was a subject matter I was passionate about. Then US sanctions to South Africa became a political hot potato in the US Congress, and a number of Congressional Representatives, journalists and others came down to see for themselves. Because I knew the areas I ended up briefing them and taking them around, so I met a lot of people from Washington who encouraged me to go to DC and work from the policy side. I decided that at some point I would do that, and I did. The fact I had begun working in the grassroots community was very helpful.

Rose: I imagine having such a big and inspiring goal, something really vital and important to people’s lives, would help in dropping the personality limitations which are so often a barrier to peace. On the other hand I know many social activists have a tendency to lose themselves. Part of maintaining inner peace is getting that balance between keeping the personality out of the way yet not running oneself ragged in one’s devotion to the cause.

Kim: That’s always the balance isn’t it, especially with something of this magnitude? You’re living it every day; it’s not like a nine to five job - there was no leaving it behind. There was no time for personality conflicts, and the mission was so important that we each had to rise to our highest good. It’s about taking action on what you can do; we knew we couldn’t change the government overnight, yet we had to keep going. It really showed me the power of working together; you need people with the right skill sets, who have clout, and you need a plan of action so that you’re effective. One of the team members was a South African journalist, and we realized the whole Crossroads story needed to be told, so we co-authored a book called, Inside Crossroads, a documentary book published by McGraw Hill, about this community and how it survived.

Rose: It sounds very exciting as well as challenging and possibly even dangerous?

Kim: Yes, all of those mixed together, but at the time we were young and it didn’t occur to me that I shouldn’t be doing what I was doing. Our families were contacting us from America because there were riots in South Africa in different cities, but I never felt afraid.

Rose: It was a passion.

Kim: Yes.

Rose: I’d like to leap forward to the present now because I want to ask you about the Great Law of Peace. I’m particularly interested in what’s happening here in the US at the moment; how people in this country can create a more peaceful society from the grassroots, and how that connects with global peace.

Kim: I’ll first talk a little bit about the Great Law of Peace. The Great Law was the Iroquois Confederacy Constitution for the six Iroquois nations – spanning some of the upper northeast U.S. and southern Canada. The Great Law of Peace was crafted about 600 years ago by a Native American “prophet” called the Peacemaker and has been passed down through oral tradition. The Great Law of Peace greatly influenced our US Constitution as well as being a model for the United Nations, as the only union that had existed collaboratively for many years. The Peacemaker brought peace to the warring Iroquois Confederacy teaching core principles of righteousness and justice, and they learned to live in peace, using the Great Law of Peace as their constitution and guiding principles. One of the many reasons it was so effective was the role of Clan Mothers. The Clan Mothers were elders in their communities, and they were the ones who would select a chief who carried out the policies but they could also depose the chief if he wasn’t doing it properly. And that’s the part that got lost in our society. We travelled with a Native American chief, Chief Jake Thomas, for ten days to learn about the Great Law firsthand, and he kept saying, “The Women have to get strong again. The Women have to get strong again.” He felt, and we agreed, that a main reason for the decline of Native society was that women were disempowered, and taken out of their roles as Clan Mothers through which they provided a check on the power of chiefs to avoid abuse of power. Unfortunately this power was not included in our Constitution.

I believe this is also a main reason for the challenges in our own society. Our society is so focused on competition which is the win/lose mode, and has evolved over generations into a strong patriarchal society characterized by masculine values. And we have become deeply individualistic, with the common phrase of “me first” and “I’m number one”, which are counterproductive to the essential ingredient of democracy, which is collaboration and to think beyond self for what’s good for the whole.

What’s needed for a healthy society is to re-establish the role of the Clan Mothers – to value the feminine principles and qualities and have them in equal partnership with the masculine. They have been undervalued for too long, causing us to get way off track. We need to value the principles of partnership, collaboration, caring for others, sharing power rather than hording it, etc. Feminine qualities are not just in women, but rather are qualities that need to be nurtured and valued in government, business and society at large. This means valuing teachers, valuing education, valuing the process of how we work together. The reason I do trainings in feminine wisdom and leadership is because it’s important those principles are nurtured. The Great Law taught us that when we work together, we all win.

Another feminine value is long term thinking. Native Americans plan for seven generations to come. The way our society is structured with quarterly profits doesn’t give us the opportunity to plan ahead. These core principles that come from the Great Law are so important yet are not as valued in our society, resulting in huge problems we see today. I do think Barack Obama embodies the Feminine and is a remarkable man, and while he can’t do everything, he is the right person at this time for our society and our world.

Rose: I agree with you, and at the same time I think we can’t just leave it to the politicians. Change has to come through changing consciousness, and it has to come through each one of us. You call your work peace building rather than peacemaking?

Kim: Unfortunately the word peace has become so politicized and misunderstood, so I often use the word: peacebuilding – which means literally building the peace.

Rose: What advice would you give to someone who wants to start to contribute to a more peaceful society or a more peaceful life?

Kim: We always start with ourselves and practice embodying peace in our daily life. We all know from the work of social intelligence and other fields that we affect other people through our own emotions and the way we live our lives. If we model being peaceful and working collaboratively, if we model partnership, if we model the very principles that we’ve been describing, that’s a big step forward. If each person could do this we’d have a very different environment. At the same time I think we each have our own piece of the peace. So we need to know what it is that interests us. We all have an important part to play, we can’t do it all, so we have to select the important issues that call us, and once we know what those are we get involved with others. We don’t have to start an organization by ourselves. In fact the principle of collaboration is: we work with others, so we can find other organizations doing the kind of work that interests us. If we can’t find such an organization in our area, we can get together with a group of people and form one. Bringing our values into action is really important. It’s one thing to have our values and say what we think should be done; it’s another to step into action. To me an important principle of service is giving back and being involved in a way that is positive. I want to take a stand for something. I am for peace, rather than against war. Being for, rather than against, is a very different and much more empowering stance.

Rose: Absolutely, that’s wonderful. So you’re saying: follow your passion, follow your interest, join with others, and take positive action for something you really believe in and want to create.

Kim: Yes, we can even write our own personal statements: what is it we’re standing for?

Rose: Most of us have been so busy surviving in the world as it exists, we don’t even stop for a moment to envision how the world can be better. Visioning is an important part of building a whole new world for me.

Kim: Yes a clear vision is the place to start, followed by effective action. We’re all good at complaining about what we don’t like, yet the harder part is to stay with what it is we want – what we’re standing for. What do we do about it? What is it we’re actually proposing? It’s much more powerful and effective when we look at what we’d like to see and what we can do as opposed to what we can’t do.

Rose: Thank you Kim for what you’ve shared.

Kim: And thank you for following your passion and taking this initiative.

This interview was conducted by Rose Diamond, co-director of A Whole New World, a local, national, global transformational learning community supporting a successful transition from the world as we have known it, to a new world based on the values of peace, interconnectedness and respect for all life. The interview and the following article first appeared in the first edition of New Moon Magic: Being Peace in Action, in January 2009. To learn more go to: http://livingyourpassion.info/nmm/ and www.TheGrowingEdge.net

 The Great Law of Peace

The following is an extract from: The Great Law of Peace
New World Roots of American Democracy , by David Yarrow, http://www.kahonwes.com/iroquois/document1.html

The Confederacy arose centuries ago among separate, warring communities as a way to create harmony, unity and respect among human beings. Implicit in Iroquois political philosophy is commitment to the highest principles of human liberty. Iroquois Law’s recognition of individual liberty and justice surpasses any European parallel. Faithkeeper, Oren Lyons, an Onondaga, states The Great Law of Peace includes “freedom of speech, freedom of religion, [and] the right of women to participate in government. Separation of power in government and checks and balances within government are traceable to our Iroquois constitution — ideas learned by colonists.”

The central idea underlying Iroquois political philosophy is that peace is the will of the Creator, and the ultimate spiritual goal and natural order among humans. The principles of Iroquois government embodied in The Great Law of Peace were transmitted by a historical figure called the Peacemaker. His teachings emphasize the power of Reason to assure Righteousness, Justice and Health among humans. Peace came to the Iroquois, not through war and conquest, but through the exercise of Reason guided by the spiritual mind. The Iroquois League is based not on force of arms or rule of law, but spiritual concepts of natural law applied to human society.

At the planting of a Tree of Peace in Philadelphia in 1986, Mohawk Chief Jake Swamp explained, “In the beginning, when our Creator made humans, everything needed to survive was provided. Our Creator asked only one thing: Never forget to appreciate the gifts of Mother Earth. Our people were instructed how to be grateful and how to survive.

“But during a dark age in our history 1000 years ago, humans no longer listened to the original instructions. Our Creator became sad, because there was so much crime, dishonesty, injustice and war.

“So Creator sent a Peacemaker with a message to be righteous and just, and make a good future for our children seven generations to come. He called all warring people together and told them as long as there was killing there would be no peace of mind. There must be a concerted effort by humans for peace to prevail. Through logic, reasoning and spiritual means, he inspired the warriors to bury their weapons and planted atop a sacred Tree of Peace.”

The White Roots of Peace

The Peacemaker legend is a central tale of Iroquois history, constituting an Iroquois Bible, Declaration of Independence and Constitution. This inspiring story describes a people mired in violent bloody feuds who, guided by a spiritual teacher, set aside war to adopt a Path of Peace. It’s a mythic tale of struggle between good and evil, order and chaos, and the triumph of Reason. It’s a morality play depicting the transformation of humans rising above suffering and tragedy to establish a higher order of human relations. It’s also a practical guide to establishing unity and balance amongst diverse human communities. It’s a successful model of how to distribute power in a democratic society to assure individual liberty.

To portray the spirit of democracy, the Peacemaker gave The Tree of Peace as a symbol of the Great Law of Peace. This is a great white pine tree whose branches spread out to shelter all nations who commit themselves to Peace. Beneath the tree the Five Nations buried their weapons of war; atop the tree is the Eagle-that-sees-far; and four long roots stretch out in the four sacred directions — the “white roots of peace.”

The Peacemaker proclaimed, “If any man or nation shows a desire to obey the Law of the Great Peace, they may trace the roots to their source, and be welcomed to take shelter beneath the Tree.”

Upon hearing the Peacemaker legend, Dr. Robert Muller, former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, remarked, “This profound action stands as perhaps the oldest effort for disarmament in world history.”

Several versions of the legend have been transcribed from oral traditions. The most complete and authentic is The White Roots of Peace by Dr. Paul Wallace, respected ethnohistorian. In his words, “The Iroquois excelled in the arts of statesmanship and diplomacy. After the white man came, during a century of intercolonial strife, [the Iroquois] loyally protected the infant English colonies, showed them the way to union, and helped prepare American people for nationhood.”

Iroquois and the U.S. Constitution

By the time the Declaration of Independence was signed, the Iroquois had practiced their own egalitarian government for hundreds of years. The Iroquois reputation for diplomacy and eloquence reveals they had securely evolved a sophisticated political system founded on reason, not on mere power. Accounts of the “noble savage” living in “natural freedom” had inspired European theorists John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau to expound ideas that had ignited the American Revolution and helped shape the new direction of government.

But the Founding Fathers found their best working model for their new government, not in the writings of Europeans, but through their direct contact with the Iroquois League; for the Great Law of Peace provided both model and incentive to transform thirteen separate colonies into the United States.

The Great Law of Peace laid out a government “of the people, by the people and for the people”.