Marissa Nahanee

Managing Director @Nahanee Creative

CA

Sínulhkay and Ladders is a life-size board game that promotes the Squamish practice of Chen chen stway (holding each other up) while working through neocolonial scenarios of oppression. Its purpose is to provide a framework for developing decolonizing practices. Decolonizing practices are actions we can take, words we can say and ideas can we unlearn/learn to transform colonial impacts. The focus of the game is bettering Indigenous to non-Indigenous relations in professional settings, making sure we are holding each up - not sliding down the double-headed serpent, called Sínulhkay in the Squamish language. The game board is a rhetorical tool to emphasize neocolonialism as structures we can name and reframe. Each journey is its own, let’s make brave space for renewed understandings and decolonizing practices. We aim to address the challenge of where to start within the enormity of reconciliation. By dialoguing professional scenarios within a forgiving space where we get a chance for a do-over, we start to map out the what’s next. Each player leaves with a take-away, what they learned, and a give-away, what they commit to do. Participants develop their own scenarios with custom dialogue circles that lead to take-aways and give-aways with organizational impact. For more information, please email me at c••••••@decolonizingpractices.org

Simon Fraser University

Aboriginal Tourism Management, Indigenous Inclusion

The Art Institute of Vancouver

Events Management, Marketing and Social Media