Narratives

When you change the narrative, you change the system. 

Breaking this down:

• • Systems are made up of people, relationships, and materials—organized around a shared purpose.
• • Narratives are interpretive social structures that we use to make sense of the world.  They shape our beliefs, guide our actions and decisions, and bring meaning to everyday reality. For example, the narratives about nature that we find in Western culture are different to those we find in Indigenous cultures.
• • Narrative-led Systems Change: By shifting narratives—our shared cognitive maps, beliefs, and values that sustain a system — we can redefine what is possible, ultimately reshaping the system itself.

Let’s dive deeper into how narratives function to create reality! Narratives are likemaps— they help us navigate the territory of reality more effectively.

The territory is the world we see in front of us —everything we can observe or experience. The map is our symbolic interpretation of that world — so we may orient ourselves and guide our understanding and movement within it.

Narratives function like these maps: they simplify, highlight, and frame certain aspects of reality while obscuring others.Through this, narratives provide the justification and basis for our actions in the world. Much of this happens on an unconscious level.

For example, the narrative “nature is a resource” acts as a map that frames the network of life (the “territory”) as something primarily for human use, reducing forests and ecosystems to commodities like timber. This framing justifies actions like deforestation.

NEXT STEP: Understand CHL’s approach to Narrative-led Systems change