What is Coworking? It Can Have An Indigenous Flavor

In an earlier post, I noted the soon to open Canoe Coworking, which is designed of, by, and for indigenous workers in Winnipeg.   This is part of a larger trend of contemporary workplaces targeted for use by first peoples across Canada [1] (other examples here, here).

Coworking spaces are all about “community, community, community”, and every successful working space creates and sustains a community of workers.  Of course, this means different things to each such community, and that is one of the cool things about contemporary coworking.

So, what do these “indigenous” workplaces do that is different, and that makes them attractive to their workers and communities?

Aside from the obvious “flocking” of like-minded workers (on this point, Everett commented that it is nice not to have to ‘splain their culture to other workers), these spaces offer the cultural room for ritual and for their own comfort food [2].  These touches willprobably  mean much to their community, and little to other people.

These spaces also pay a lot of attention to multi-generational interactions.  Canoe Coworking plans a space reserved for “elders”, which is both for caring for the elders by younger workers and for counseling from the elders.

This is obviously a practice common to the heritage of many North American tribes, but it is also interesting to think about how something like this could be integrated into any coworking space.

It’s not so much that there are no such interactions in other spaces.  Its more that these communities are far more intentional about it, and have strong norms about the value of intergenerational care and counseling.

Overall, these spaces seem to fit nicely to aspects of traditions of North American First Peoples .  As Tara Everett of Canoe Coworking puts it, “before there was money in North America, we were always sharing resources or time or expertise. That’s how I see the coworking movement.” [2]

From the very beginning of the coworking movement, there has been an element of “back to the village” for many coworkers.  Kane’s home coworking space drew on her local neighbors, and the interactions were much like life in a villages in many parts of the world [1].  In Kane’s kitchen, there were many informal rituals and home-made comfort foods.

Indeed, even in large “corporate” workplaces, it is frequently reported that workers benefit from “mentoring” by older, experienced workers.  Whether planned and supported by the operator, or purely spontaneous, these intergenerational interactions are clearly valuable for everyone, not just indigenous workers.

As these indigenous coworking spaces flourish, perhaps they can spread the wisdom by helping other coworking spaces design for the intentional inclusion of elders in multigenerational communities.  That would be interesting.

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1. Lori Kane, Tabitha Borchardt, and Bas de Baar, Reimagination Stations: Creating a Game-Changing In-Home Coworking Space, Lori Kane, 2015.
2. Ruby Irene Pratka,  Empowering Canada’s Indigenous communities through coworking Sharable.November 12 2018, https://www.shareable.net/blog/empowering-canada%E2%80%99s-indigenous-communities-through-coworking