The art of consultation

Since 1991, the Design et culture matérielle (DCM) project has been pursuing an active and successful collaboration with all Indigenous Nations of Quebec. Its entire team is committed to designing and testing innovative individual and collective development strategies that respect the diversity of First Peoples. Since 1999, La Boite Rouge VIF (La BRV) has joined DCM's mission to pursue this collaboration.

In 2016, following the leadership of Élisabeth Kaine with Denis Bellemare, Olivier Bergeron-Martel and Pierre De Coninck, La Boite Rouge VIF published Le petit guide de la grande concertation : création et transmission culturelle par et avec les communautés (The Little Guidebook on the Extensive Consultation. Cultural Creation and Transmission by and with Communities). As a comprehensive toolkit, this work is designed to facilitate the coherence of community’s driving forces within a common approach. It demonstrates that consultation is a think tank of shared knowledge. The Indigenous participants are, in a way, the active co-authors of this book because many methodologies have been developed and validated through extensive fieldwork. All of which are intended to enable culture-holders to express themselves and to shape the heritage they wish to transmit and the message they wish to convey.

The following section presents certain teachings from this valuable guidebook. Teachings which may help implement projects which can:

• promote autonomy through cultural transmission;
• reach out to others.

To obtain this guidebook, visit the following website:
Presses de l'Université Laval