Old Wisdom: Indigenous Democracy Principles as Strategies for Social Change within Organizations and Tribal Communities

Community engagement founded on Indigenous decision-making practices is essential in addressing issues during turbulent times and ever-changing political landscapes. Indigenous leaders on this continent were instrumental in practicing democracy to address issues impacting local communities with the people, not in isolation. This paper highlights the Search Conference model as a community based participatory change model with Indigenous principles embedded in the process. Specific cases are presented to demonstrate lessons learned.

The search conference as a method in planning community health promotion actions

<em>Aims</em>: The aim of this article is to describe and discuss how the search conference can be used as a method for planning health promotion actions in local communities. <br /><em>Design and methods:</em> The article draws on experiences with using the method for an innovative project in health promotion in three Norwegian municipalities. The method is described both in general and how it was specifically adopted for the project. <br /><em>Results and conclusions</em>: The search conference as a method was used to develop evidence-based health promotion action plans. With its use of both bottom-up and top-down approaches, this method is a relevant strategy for involving a community in the planning stages of health promotion actions in line with political expectations of participation, ownership, and evidence-based initiatives.

Search Conferences and Future Search Conferences

This chapter examines the potential of the Search Conference (SC) and a later version, the Future Search Conference (FS), as useful participatory methods that contribute to urban and other types of planning. An unusual feature of these approaches is that participants are expected to contribute to the implementation of any action recommended. The chapter begins with a definition and history of these conferences before outlining how traditional, face-to-face conferences are implemented. As an illustration, the Future Search Conference ‘Bendigo +25’ (carried out in a regional Australian city to determine ways forward for the next 25 years) is discussed. The same case study is then re-examined in the context of attempting to run such an exercise in a Web-based environment. Both advantages and challenges of this mode of delivery are considered.