It all began, for NewStories, with an email in late 2017 from someone who would become a dear colleague and friend. Salote Soqo, a native of Fiji, was working with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) on First People’s issues, including Climate Forced Displacement. She’d heard about NewStories and was reaching out to talk about help with a major new convening.
When Salote and NewStories’ founder Bob Stilger first connected, their conversation moved swiftly into profound territory. Salote recounted the story of a meeting several years earlier between an Alaskan Tribal Elder and a passionate South Pacific Activist. As they listened to each other’s stories one said, “I now see that the ocean currents taking away our sand and sinking our islands are the same as the currents destroying the ice and taking away your lands by swallowing your permafrost. It is one story. Someday your peoples and my peoples should meet.”
Years later, that initial spark grew into a larger movement, as the urgency of climate impacts deepened. With UUSC stepping forward as a committed partner, Salote asked NewStories to support in designing and facilitating a convening that would bring these communities together.
She and Bob talked about NewStories work with dialogue around the world to help people build healthy and resilient communities. Bob introduced NewStories’ Principles which help to create spaces in which transformative dialogue and action can happen. Not long after their first conversations, NewStories was invited to respond to a Request for Proposal from the UUSC. Salote convened a review process with people who didn’t yet know each other from the South Pacific and Alaska to read the proposals they received and make a selection. NewStories was asked to step in.
In October 2018, around 60 First Peoples from over 40 communities, spanning the South Pacific, Alaska, Bangladesh, and coastal regions of the U.S., gathered in Alaska for three days. They came to share their stories and explore collective responses to the existential threat of climate displacement.
Illustrations by NewStories’ graphic artist Zulma Patarroyo
Frankly, NewStories approached the convening with a certain reservation. One partner, the Alaska Institute for Justice, insisted that each community should be given 20 minutes to share their stories. We hesitated—believing it would take too long, that attention would wane, and that time was too limited. But we were wrong.
What we underestimated was the extraordinary capacity for listening among Indigenous peoples. The room was transformed into a place of deep presence, as each story was met with open hearts. NewStories’ graphic artist, Zulma Patarroyo from Columbia listened just as deeply and created graphic recordings with words and images. Soon the walls of our space were covered with her drawings. As people walked around the room viewing the graphics, a frequent comment was that’s me – I said that! Strangers became friends and companions as they heard their own experiences – hopes, fears, grief and yearnings – voiced in the stories of others.
This rapidly generated trust and connection led into the work of finding common ground and defining common obstacles. People defined issues they wanted to work on together. They created a declaration from the Convening which pointed to the rights and needs of First Peoples. Plans started to be formed for a second convening, this time in Fiji, in 2020.
In the last session of the Convening, one of the Alaskan Tribal Elders spoke: “We have heard many stories in these days, AND THEY ARE ALL ONE STORY.” It was so true. Though the details and landscapes differed, the essence remained the same—climate change was erasing their lands, homes, and ways of life, and the world had yet to fully notice.
Less than a year and a half later, COVID closed the world and the 2020 convening was postponed. The South Pacific is still recovering from the ravages of COVID and the lockdown. Perhaps another convening will happen in 2025. The stories, connections, and shared sense of purpose remain a powerful thread that continues to connect them together.
The report, created by UUSC and the participants is masterful: One Story: A Report of the
First Peoples Convening on Climate-Forced Displacement
At NewStories, we’re proud of the role we played in shaping, designing and facilitating this convening. Our principles provided the foundation for creating safe, generative spaces where deep listening and dialogue could flourish, eventually leading to shared action. The process was challenging—so many languages, cultures, and experiences—yet it all wove together into one collective narrative.
Bob recalls running into one of the Alaskan participants in the coffee shop the morning after the Convening closed. She had been silent for almost three days. With an excited smile she talked almost nonstop: I know what to do with the camera they gave me earlier in the year. I’m supposed to take pictures of everything that is happening, everything that is disappearing, so that we can tell our story and others can begin to see what is happening in our backyards. I am supposed to tell the stories of our past, our present and our future.
One story. Many voices. Still unfolding.