Story shared by Patti Derbyshire
Photo caption: The Ledra Palace Hotel has played host to many high-level meetings between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders, as well as hundreds of structured conflict resolution workshops. It is also used as the venue for cultural events aiming at bringing the two communities closer together. Since 2004, it has been the site of a designated crossing point of the Green Line separating the Republic of Cyprus-controlled areas from the de facto Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
In June, I spent five days in Nicosia, Cyprus, the world’s last divided capital, at the International Association for Reconciliation Studies (IARS) conference [1]. Across presentations on genocide education, women and Reconciliation, deliberative dialogue, and civic-led innovation, people from very different geographies and disciplines kept circling the same questions:
Who defines harm and determines the remedy? What institutions, practices and relationships can genuinely reverse harm and sustain repair over time?
These questions belong to every values-driven organization serious about Reconciliation, justice, and long-term stability. Across the week, one principle kept reasserting itself: those closest to harm must shape the repair. In Rwanda, Reconciliation models took root only when youth led them through local universities, theatre and agriculture. In Cyprus and Greece, women’s coalitions surfaced forms of harm that political and legal frameworks failed to capture. In Ireland, deliberative cafes showed that ordinary citizens can chart shared futures across deep divides.
With that principle as the anchor, there are four lessons I want to share:
Reconciliation is dynamic and interconnected, not an event or activity
Several contributors challenged the idea of Reconciliation as fixed, arguing instead for dynamic, interconnected, evolving practices of accountability, repair and transformation, often very different from the neat timelines preferred by institutions and organizations. When Reconciliation is framed as “moving on” without robust accountability, it entrenches existing systems rather than disrupting them.
This framing directly challenges how most organizations structure the work: with hierarchy and silos. Reconciliation delegated to a single ministry, portfolio, or functional area — one office, one Indigenous relations lead, one line item — cannot be dynamic or interconnected, because the organization has already decided where Reconciliation lives and where it does not. Meaningful Reconciliation work moves across governance, operations, procurement, and culture rather than residing in one corner of an org chart.
The connection between public health and corporate culture
One of the most compelling workshops I attended was with Doctors Against Genocide, which introduced a framework for treating genocide as a public health condition. They note that we can see identifiable early warning signs, for example, dehumanizing rhetoric, systemic exclusion, deprivation of essential services, and cultural erasure. Each stage normalizes the next. In public health, frontline workers often notice these patterns first.
What struck me is that this is also a precise description of how biased systems operate in workplace culture. The same patterns run through organizations: dehumanizing rhetoric arrives as the “joke,” the deficit language, the “diversity hire” aside; systemic exclusion as who is inside the informal networks where decisions happen; deprivation as who receives sponsorship, development budgets, and information; cultural erasure as standards of “professionalism” that structure sameness. Each stage normalizes the next. And the failure mode is identical: waiting for a formal grievance or human rights complaint before acting. Prevention lives in cultures of inclusion and belonging. Are people managers equipped to be the frontline actors positioned to see the patterns first?
Education is necessary for right relations and repair
Education can challenge violence, erasure and inequity, but it can also reinforce them when taught through a narrow frame. In genocide education, the Holocaust often serves as the dominant reference point. That can be helpful, but it can also limit our understanding by sidelining other forms of insidious, race-based harm and trauma, reinforcing the assumption that in modern life we are ethically incapable of similar erosion and harm. Repair requires both unlearning and relearning: engaging histories that have been made visible, confronting harms that remain difficult to imagine, sitting in discomfort, becoming next-level allies, as Rose LeMay says, and learning through lived experience, marginalized voices, and the capacity to name and resist contemporary forms of exclusion and harm.
Women’s leadership surfaces truths others avoid
The conversations on women and peacebuilding made clear that when women — particularly Indigenous, racialized, and otherwise marginalized women lead, they do more than add perspectives to existing processes. They change what counts as harm, what repair requires, and who gets to define each. In Cyprus, women’s dialogues led to island-wide coalitions, surfacing shared experiences of gendered violence and structural inequality that conventional political and legal processes had sidelined.
I was honoured to share recent work authored with Dr. Alannah Young [2] on Indigenous Matriarchal governance models, which frame long-practiced care models that centre relationship, community, consent and holistic approaches. These are key to Truth and Reconciliation systems.
Walking with Call to Action 92 and the Calls for Justice
What does this mean in corporate Canada for a people manager, for example, who genuinely wants to attract more Indigenous colleagues? Adopt UNDRIP as a Reconciliation framework in policy that ensures equitable access to jobs, training and advancement. Continue engaging in education on colonial history, Treaties and Indigenous Rights. Read through the lens of the conference, this work is not a recruitment campaign; it is a complete redesign. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable about what this means. Begin.
If those closest to harm must shape the repair, then Indigenous peers need real authority in how roles are designed, how qualifications are defined, and how hiring decisions are made. Advisory circles should not be asked to react to a strategy already finished. Indigenous HR leaders and community advisors should be paid to reconceptualize credential requirements, surface community-based experience, and help functional areas be honest about the cultures they are asking people to enter, being willing to revise them with guidance.
If education is necessary for repair, unlearning and readiness must come before talent attraction initiatives. It asks managers and teams to examine how “culture fit” becomes assimilation, and what the workplace expects Indigenous employees to leave at the door: language, kinship obligations, ceremony and community responsibilities. Can we find new places, spaces, and times for kinship teachings to walk alongside career pathways?
Recruitment cannot outperform the workplace. We often measure success by positions filled. We know Indigenous peers are more likely to ask whether it is safe to stay. A manager who hires into an unchanged environment builds a revolving door. Retention, advancement and pride in working with your organization are the more meaningful impact metrics.
And, if early warning signs matter, they matter at the scale of a team. Recent Canadian workplace research shows the logic outlined above at work in organizational patterns. For example, roughly 38 percent of Indigenous workers report discrimination tied to their Indigenous identity, rising to 45 percent among the youngest workers. Indigenous employees remain less likely to hold managerial roles, less likely to be offered training, and are shorter-tenured than their non-Indigenous colleagues [3][4].
But the research is equally clear about inclusion and belonging. Indigenous peers value and stay for the opportunity to make a difference for their communities, because of a network of Indigenous colleagues, mentorship and genuine development and managers who understand and respect who they are. A 2026 review of 127 studies of Indigenous workers’ experiences found that managers are regularly the “make or break” factor. Indigenous employees thrive when Indigenous values shape the whole organization, including hiring and governance [5][6].
Are you building the conditions Indigenous professionals are telling us they are looking for? And if an Indigenous candidate calls a friend who already works there, would they hear that it is a good place to be?
References
[1] International Association for Reconciliation Studies. IARS Cyprus 2026 Conference, Nicosia, Cyprus, June 2026. https://www.iars-world.de/
[2] Young, A., & May-Derbyshire, P. (2026). Interweaving Relationality – Inawendiwin (Connection): Women Revitalizing Resurgence and Reciprocity. Fourth World Journal, 26(1), 16–46. https://doi.org/10.63428/ve5ght50
[3] Diversity Institute, Toronto Metropolitan University. Indigenous Peoples in the Workplace: Examining Training, Employment, AI, and Discrimination. Survey on Employment and Skills, Wave 8 (2025). https://www.torontomu.ca/diversity/reports/indigenous-peoples-in-the-workplace/
[4] Statistics Canada. Quality of Employment among First Nations People Living off Reserve and Métis, 2022. Catalogue no. 41-20-0002 (April 2024). https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/41-20-0002/412000022024002-eng.htm
[5] Walker, B. W., Staniland, N. A., Haar, J., Turner, P., Ryburn, G., & Meachen, R. (2026). Indigenous employees’ experiences of work: An interdisciplinary review. Human Relations. https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267251394567. A review of 127 empirical studies of Indigenous workers’ experiences, including 22 studies of First Nations Peoples in Canada, alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Māori, Native American, and other Indigenous groups.
[6] Knowledge Circle for Indigenous Inclusion, Government of Canada. Many Voices One Mind: A Pathway to Reconciliation — Indigenous Workforce Retention Survey findings on recruitment, development, and retention. https://www.canada.ca/en/government/publicservice/wellness-inclusion-diversity-public-service/diversity-inclusion-public-service/knowledge-circle/many-voices.html
