‘He Apiti Hono, He Tātai Hono’: Ancestral Leadership, Cyclical Learning and the Eternal Continuity of Leadership

This research developed out of a fascination with leadership as a personally intuitive experience growing up in Vancouver, Canada, and observing my father. I saw in him a translation of our Indigenous Stό:lō values and knowledge that he learned growing up with his grandmother (my great grandmother) on our Indian reserve lands and applied to the complexities of contemporary life that were presented to him in the city. Dad’s responsibilities have always required him to attend to our Indigenous community’s social and political relations, to negotiate personal and professional boundaries in work and to maintain balance between individual fulfilment and family obligations. What I saw beneath his contemplations around these often competing responsibilities was a point of reference that guided his decisions and actions. He draws upon our Stό:lō cultural values that he learned in his early life to guide moral and ethical behaviour and decision-making. Those values transfer through his own life, but also through ours as his children.