Gotcha! Okay, as you say, I can see why an approach with some links into First Nations ways could be relevant, and I get the slightly hokey hippy empowerment stylie language from over the border.
Is there anyone you can talk to at the school about this - about the concerns about use of language and the indirect messages in there?
I've never heard the term "peer feuds," but I think I know what they're talking about, based on my own experience of work with girls and young women. I'd never dismiss it as bitchiness and it's not something that's "fixed" by getting girls to be "naice" to each other, either.
Girls are conditioned from birth to conform to an ideal of femininity - the pink princess whose greatest value is in being passive and attractive, through the sexualised messages in popular culture that reinforce this, adding a layer of need to be sexually attractive and available. It sets up a sort of competition based on who's the smartest, the sportiest, the most creative, but who conforms to whatever the current "feminine norm" best. That can cause conflicts. Sure, there's lots of rhetoric about BFFs and stuff, but really in our society, female solidarity, the sisterhood, isn't something that is genuinely encouraged, or even well tolerated. Think about it.
Although gender stereotypes and "norms" of femininity come from the patriarchal establishment and exist to maintain male entitlement, it's young women who seem most effective in policing each other's behaviour. They can be really brutal, not because girls are "naturally" that way or "more cruel than boys" (as the old trope goes,) but because the "rules" of the game dictate that they are supposed to do this. Girls who aren't seen to conform can be treated very harshly, and who's in and who's out can change seemingly on a whim. I think facebook and bbm have magnified this - made it easy to tease, to coerce, to bully, to publicly shame and it's not something that ends at the school gate or can be fixed just by finding a new group of friends. The social networking stuff is there 24/7, totally integrated with the "real world" for most young people. Things can kick off really easy there and leak over into real life shitstorms amongst friends and associates.
It's the old teaspoons to empty the ocean thing, but I think part of the solution is supporting girls to be able to pick apart and bust some of these "this is how you must be," messages, build up self-esteem that takes a battering every time they hear a joke about rape, see a perfect photoshopped celebrity, told their a bitch or a minger on their facebook wall.
I probably haven't explained this too well (v tired and still flu-ey!) but all thought this Circle thing may be a bit iffy, I can see what they're trying to achieve and I don't think we can afford to dismiss completely the issue of conflicts between girls, and particularly the wider patriarchal context within which these are actually very much encouraged.