February 2025 | Part I: Interview with Christopher Szecsey, Consultant, Trainer, and Facilitator for Local and International Programs.
In my view, it never works to assimilate indigenous cultures. It’s worth trying to create a more “woke” culture of mutual learning and respect.
Reading Christopher’s USA and international CVs was a little overwhelming for me, as they referenced “40 years of international development experience with teams, groups, and organizations including NGOs, INGOs, UN agencies, and government agencies, in over 50 countries” and needed eight pages to list the “CBOs/nonprofits, organizations, foundations, & local & state government agencies” he’s consulted within the US.
How do you become someone who builds the capacity of individuals, teams, community groups, organizations, and projects on every continent? In our interview, Christopher shared some of the steps that shaped him and took him there.
My mother was English and lived in Kenton, near Harrow-on-the-Hill, in northwest London, formerly Middlesex. My father was Austrian-Hungarian, raised during the Austro-Hungarian Empire with the “Szecsey’s” originally from western Romania. His father and grandfather’s family were from the Hungarian nobility and worked in the Empire’s justice court system in the Bratislava area, now Slovakia. My father’s father married into the local elite, in his case, a Jewish family.
My father was raised Jewish by his mother, and Catholic, by his father. At five years of age, in 1917, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was breaking up and the local Slovaks were revolting for independence, killing the Hungarians in the area, he fled with his mother to Vienna, where he grew up in its Jewish culture. Seven months before Hitler marched into the city, he fled again, this time to the US. Many of the Austrian / Hungarian / Viennese Jewish culture went to the States and settled in southern California. They were close family and friends to my father, mother, and me. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley.
The Woman in Gold movie tells the story of such a family. (I watched it on Christopher’s suggestion and was moved to tears during parts of it.)
When my dad was still single in the US, before he met my mom in England, he joined the 10th Mountain Division during WWII because he was a skier. They trained in the Rockies to parachute and land behind enemy lines in the Alps. He injured his knee, so was sent to London to work with Eisenhower because he spoke German. On occasion, he visited and worked in the bunkers under St. James’s. He met my mom who had worked in a bank and was then working at a club for foreign military personnel, mostly Canadian and American. All the guys would regularly propose to her, not knowing if they would return from the Continent. My father was on the front lines entering Berlin. He brought back some memorabilia from Hitler’s bunker. He married my mom and brought his war bride back to the US to settle in the San Fernando Valley.
My parents bought a house with 20 orange trees. They joined the Austrian diaspora in LA. I was raised with a heightened awareness of being Euro-American. Kids would tease me, “Your parents don’t speak proper English.” We’d visit my mom’s parents in England every five years or so, and sometimes also visit Vienna to see my Dad’s friends who had remained there.
In the 1960s, my father’s company transferred him to the Bay Area. At that time, in true European custom, I was sent to a co-ed boarding school in the 10th grade (15-and 16-year-olds). Verde Valley High School was focused on cross-cultural learning and appreciation. It was situated in the Sedona rural area among the red rocks, on a 100-acre property.
There were students from different socio-economic levels, including south-west based Native Americans, urban African Americans, and even students from other countries. There were 7 to 12 kids in a class, and tolerance and appreciation of others’ cultures were fostered. In 9th and 11th grades, we were placed in Hopi and Navajo communities, and in 10th and 12th grades, we were sent to live with families in Mexico and also had some time traveling through Mexico.
The school was founded by a British man and an American woman who were disillusioned by WWII and wanted to create a school for the next generation. It included stewardship of the land and school, working in the kitchen, cleaning, music, and the arts, etc. It watered the seeds in me of coming from parents of different cultures, keeping those connections strong, and also learning about other cultures.
I went to the University of the Pacific, Stockton, at Callison College. The focus of this new college was that in order to have a liberal arts degree you needed to know not just about the Western world, but also the non-Western one.
The first year was devoted to a review of Western culture. During sophomore year, you lived in India, studied Eastern thought, and chose a focus area to delve into. We went to Bangalore, southern India. People were not used to seeing white folks and would intensively stare at us. I chose to study Gandhi and the practice of non-violent action. In January, I went to live and study at the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad.
In the States, I was involved in the anti-Vietnam protests. I was raised in the political activism of the 60s in non-violence. My purpose at the Gandhi ashram was to gain an in-depth understanding of Gandhi’s satyagraha. There were people there in their 60’s who had worked with Gandhi and the liberation struggle who were my teachers. We got up at 4 am and learned meditation. I kept a daily journal.
When it was over, I went to Mumbai, took a boat to Goa, and then traveled overland back to Bangalore. I flew to Australia to spend my summer (their winter.) I had a deep interest in indigenous cultures and learned about some of the indigenous cultures in the US and India. I also had a 2S (2-year student deferment) from the draft and needed to figure out what I’d do if the Vietnam War hadn’t ended upon my graduation. I considered emigrating to Australia, so I wanted to check it out. My father had Austrian family in Sydney, and they got me a job at the University of Sydney in the Department of Aboriginal Adult Ed.
I was sent to the outback. There were 400 whites on one side of the river and 400 Aborigines on the other. I was working with the Aborigines to organize and prepare for a Black Consciousness event while staying in a pub on the white side of the river. I didn’t eat meat, wore sandals, and had long hair. I was a fish out of water in that community.
When I finished there, I got on a freight train from Adelaide heading to Alice Springs. Only Aborigines were traveling on it. The train broke down. They got off, gathered all this food in the outback, built fires, and ate. I was so impressed. I crossed northern Australia and hitched back to Sydney.
While in Australia, a Māori social worker showed up. She knew I was very frustrated by the racism in Australia and invited me to come to New Zealand to see what they were doing there in integrating indigenous and white cultures. So, I did, visiting her north of Auckland. It was all Māori land. I was the only white guy. I was totally amazed that they were teaching Māori culture in the local white schools, and learning to appreciate Māori culture. In my view, it never works to assimilate indigenous cultures. It’s worth trying to create a more “woke” culture of mutual learning and respect.
In my university junior year, a group of us went to Yucatan, Mexico. I lived on an island off the coast, and our student group would meet once a week in Mérida, the provincial capital.
Callison College required a senior thesis project for my senior year that integrated Western and Eastern thought. So, I worked with the movement led by Cesar Chavez and helped start the Farm Workers Union in Stockton. At that time, it was largely Filipino and Latino farm workers. I was in charge of the Department for Non-Violent Action. I was the only white guy working there. We started organizing protests and strikes in the fields, and we also worked with the supermarkets around the boycott of grapes and lettuces. The boycott began in Delano, California, and slowly moved up through the Central Valley around 1970. My thesis was titled, The Application of Gandhi’s Non-Violent Action in the American Context of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers Union. Cesar Chavez read my thesis and even sent me a personal reply. He was a very spiritual man involved in political action.
Meanwhile, my lottery number was picked for the Vietnam war draft, and they called me. I went to Oakland, passed all the tests, and was told, You’ll be drafted as soon as you graduate.
I applied for “conscientious objector” (CO) status and included letters from the Gandhi ashram in India; from my doctor, attesting to the sincerity of my beliefs and vegetarianism; and from my father, who wrote that he supported the war but respected the strength and sincerity of his son’s convictions.
I didn’t have enough courage to go to a jail in the US. David Harris, Joan Baez’s husband, burned his draft card and was sent to jail. It was a very stressful period. I applied to the Peace Corps. The Draft Board accepted my conscientious objector application but wanted to send me to Vietnam as a CO medic. I made it clear that I’m not going to support the war machine in any way. I finally convinced them to accept Peace Corps alternate service. Peace and service to others were much more compelling.
I went to Ecuador for three years and got involved with the Quechua-speaking people, descendants of the Incan Empire who live throughout the Andes in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Columbia.
Early February on the Laguna de Santa Rosa
Winter sunlight on bare branches at
sunset—elusive—like the dozen egrets
intent on hunting in the now-flooded Laguna.
The path puddle filled until drowned.
Everywhere reflections—cloud, willow,
dark leaf—unbroken stillness.
Last rays illumine oak trunks
and limbs leaning in grace. Perhaps
the oaks are always in prayer?
Raphael Block
Book Review – The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer
From the opening illustrations and large font, this beautifully produced book tells the story of berries and their natural economy of abundance, and asks how we might apply its lessons to our economy. Robin Wall Kimmerer explains the root of the word berry,” min,” in the Potawatomi language, is also the root word for “gift.” A professor of botany, she leads us to first understand this natural economy in terms of materials and energy moving through an ecosystem, and to next examine how this looks in our economies. As an indigenous person she links us to the traditions of gratitude, reciprocity, and sharing that are so central to the building of relationships, trust, and seeing the common good of “we” that both embraces and goes beyond one’s individual “I.”
The book entrances and captivates with Robin’s willingness to explore the much larger questions of how can we live in a way that does not harm the Earth’s gifts while acknowledging the reality that capitalism and the mixed economy are not going away anytime soon. She talks to economists, such as Dr. Valerie Luzadis, past president of the US Society for Ecological Economics, and quotes the work of Elinor Ostrom, whose work on how humans interact with ecosystems to maintain long-term sustainable resource yields resulted in a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
Robin Kimmerer gives the example of public libraries as a gift economy that serves the larger community providing music, tools, seeds, and more all for the price of a library ticket, which is really an “agreement to respect and take care of the common good.” She asks, “What would it be like to consume with the full awareness that we are the recipients of earthly gifts, which we have not earned? To consume with humility?” She spells out guidelines for an Honorable Harvest that invoke reverence, respect, restraint, and again, reciprocity.
Robin draws parallels between the legendary Potawatomi monster, Windigo, “who suffers from the illness of taking too much and sharing too little,” and a type of me-first thinking that is putting our survival very much at risk.
Robin returns to her neighbors, Paulie and Ed Drexler, and their farm, who first invited the neighborhood to come and pick the Serviceberries for free. She discovers the many benefits this act conferred and sees “the potential for a mosaic of economies emerging in their example.”
By examining how two ecosystems meet, Robin “highlights two mechanisms at work…” One is incremental change, and the other “disturbance, disruption of the status quo in order to let new species emerge and flower.” We are invited to do both! The book ends with an invitation to become a part of the gift economy, each in our own unique way, “on behalf of people and the planet.”
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