The Stick

An old idea. A very human problem. A new place to practice it.

Long before smartphones, comment sections, group texts and the irresistible human urge to begin a sentence with “Well, actually…”, people had to figure out something surprisingly difficult:

How do we sit together and actually listen to one another?

Across cultures and throughout history, communities have developed practices for council, storytelling and shared conversation. Among some Indigenous peoples of North America, staffs, feathers and other objects have been used in particular ceremonial and council traditions to signify a speaker's role or responsibility. Those traditions belong to the peoples and cultures from which they come, and we don't claim them as our own.

What we do recognize in them is something deeply human:

One person speaks. The others listen. Then somebody else gets the chance to be heard.

Revolutionary stuff, apparently.

FAST FORWARD A FEW HUNDRED YEARS...

Human beings became exceptionally good at science, medicine, technology and figuring out how to have an argument with a complete stranger from another continent before breakfast.

What we haven't necessarily mastered is listening.

We interrupt. We prepare our rebuttal while somebody else is talking. We retreat into tribes. We make assumptions based on politics, gender, age, religion, culture or whatever other box we've decided somebody belongs in.

And somewhere along the way, a lot of us stopped having conversations with people who aren't already like us.

That's where our stick comes in.

BRANDON FOUND THE STICK. OR MAYBE THE STICK FOUND BRANDON.

Talking Stick Utah began with a fascination with human beings: mind, body, spirit, identity, culture, masculinity, belonging and the strange ways all of those things collide.

Brandon became interested in what happens when people are given enough room to explore those things without immediately being diagnosed, corrected, rescued or told who they're supposed to become.

And then came the talking stick.

As Brandon puts it, with approximately the appropriate amount of academic rigor:

“Blah blah blah… A.D.D. diagnosis… resurrection of the Talking Stick tradition… and suddenly my monologue turned into an actual conversation with the most incredible people.”

That part mattered.

Because the stick wasn't really about the stick.

It was about what happened when it got passed.

THE STICK IS AN INVITATION

At Talking Stick Utah, the stick isn't a costume, a claim to someone else's culture, or a magical object.

It's a symbol.

Hold it: You have room to speak.

Pass it: Somebody else gets room.

Don't take it: That's okay too. You can simply be here.

That last one might matter most.

Because Talking Stick isn't being built around the idea that everybody needs fixing.

Sometimes you need a conversation.

Sometimes you need a workshop.

Sometimes you need to move your body, make something, sit around a fire or challenge somebody to ping pong.

And sometimes you need a couch, a cup of coffee and absolutely no desire whatsoever to discuss your childhood.

All are acceptable.

PASS THE DAMN STICK.

We want to resurrect something that modern life seems remarkably good at killing:

Curiosity about one another.

Men talking to men.

Men listening to women.

Women listening to men.

Different generations learning from each other.

People crossing cultural and social boundaries without needing to agree about everything first.

People being allowed to say, “I don't know.”

People changing their minds.

People discovering that the person sitting across the fire isn't quite who they assumed they were.

The stick doesn't tell you what to believe.

It just asks you to make enough room for another human being to exist beside you.

Then, when you're done?

Pass it to the left-hand side. 😉