From Lateral Kindness to Lateral Trust

By Gabby Hillis

Over the past few weeks I've been writing about lateral violence and lateral kindness. The conversations those posts opened — some public, most private — confirmed what I already knew from working in Indigenous governance: people are carrying this. They recognise it in their workplaces, their communities, their governance structures. They recognize it in themselves. And they are ready for something to build toward.

Lateral kindness has been an important part of this conversation. The work being done in BC through the First Nations Health Directors Association, through facilitators and knowledge keepers across the country, through the workshops and training programmes that are creating space for people to name what they've been carrying — all of this matters. Lateral kindness gave us permission to say: we can choose to relate to one another differently. That was a necessary starting point.

As I've gone deeper into the research and deeper into the governance work I do every day, my thinking has continued to develop. I keep coming back to a question: why does lateral violence persist in communities where people genuinely care about one another? Where leaders are committed, where employees are dedicated, where the desire for something better is real and present in the room?

The research is starting to give shape to the answer. A 2024 scoping review by Clark and colleagues, examining lateral violence and lateral empowerment among young Indigenous people across Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, found that lateral violence operates across every layer of life — self, home, family, community, institutions, and workplaces. It is woven into daily experience. Whyman and colleagues (2024), in their study with Aboriginal knowledge holders in Australia, found that every cause of lateral violence identified by participants traced back to settler-colonialism. Knowledge holders described pre-colonial society as a context where relational cohesion was essential — people depended on one another, and the governance systems that held communities together reflected that interdependence. Colonialism disrupted those systems. The relational infrastructure fractured, and lateral violence emerged in the spaces where trust and accountability had once lived.

What I keep seeing, in the research and in the governance work I do every day, is that those spaces are communications spaces. Lateral violence thrives in the gaps. It thrives where information is withheld. Where decisions are made and never explained. Where some people are included in conversations and others learn about outcomes after the fact. Where belonging feels conditional — something that can be granted, questioned, or quietly revoked. These are gaps in how governance communicates with the people it serves. When those gaps persist, trust erodes. When trust erodes, lateral violence fills the space.

Lateral trust is what I'm building toward now.

Lateral trust is the relational trust that grows when communities communicate with transparency. When every member's belonging is honoured. When we hold ourselves accountable to one another with care. Lateral trust is a practice. It is something we build together, every day, through the communications work of Indigenous governance.

Shawn Wilson, a Cree scholar, writes in Research Is Ceremony (2008) that Indigenous knowledge systems are built on relational accountability — the understanding that we are answerable to all our relations, to the people, the land, and the knowledge we carry. Before colonialism, Indigenous Peoples across this land lived within governance systems that embodied that relational accountability. Systems developed and refined over thousands of years, built on reciprocal obligation, witnessed agreements, and the understanding that every person's belonging was woven into the fabric of the whole. In Gitxsan territory, that system is called ayook — a living body of law governing how people relate to one another and to the land.

Colonialism disrupted those systems. Residential schools, the Indian Act, forced relocations, and policies designed to divide and assimilate broke the relational structures that made collective life possible. Lateral violence is one of the consequences of that disruption. Lateral trust is the practice of rebuilding what was disrupted.

The research is beginning to name the path forward. Clark et al. (2024) describe lateral empowerment as the way Indigenous peoples protect, support, and care for each other to reverse or eliminate lateral violence and promote resilience and strength. The studies they reviewed found that effective responses are culturally grounded, community-led, and centred on strengthening relationships — within families, among peers, and across governance structures. I see lateral trust as part of that movement. It is the communications dimension — the everyday practices of transparency, inclusion, and relational accountability that governance structures can cultivate intentionally.

I am developing a lateral trust framework grounded in communications practice and Indigenous relational accountability. It comes from my experience working inside Indigenous governance, from this growing body of research, and from the understanding that our Peoples held relational systems for thousands of years before colonialism arrived. The knowledge of how to be in good relationship with one another didn't disappear. It is held in the land, in the governance traditions that survived, in the communities that are still here.

This is the work I'm committed to. More is coming — more writing, more research, more of this conversation. If lateral kindness opened the door, lateral trust is what we're building through it.

Colonialism disrupted our trust. We are rebuilding it.

#LateralTrust

References

Clark, Y., Augoustinos, M., Campbell, M. A., Denton, M., Gee, G., Hart, R., Heffernan, E., & Bhathal, A. (2024). A scoping review of lateral violence and lateral

empowerment of Indigenous children and young people in CANZUS nations.

Australian Journal of Psychology, 77.

Whyman, T., Murrup-Stewart, C., Young, M., Carter, A., & Jakubec, L. (2024). Lateral

violence stems from the colonial system: Settler-colonialism and lateral violence

in Aboriginal Australians. Postcolonial Studies.

Wilson, S. (2008). Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Fernwood

Publishing.