Our mission is to harness the wisdom of Indigenous knowledge to address the most pressing global issues of our era. We empower both Indigenous Nation building and non-Indigenous communities worldwide with innovative solutions that honor and integrate the diverse gifts of global Indigenous knowledge with experts from the four directions.
The first step in every project is to determine who the people of the land are, access existing relationships or form new ones if required, ask permission to do the work, seek guidance about the best way to do the work, and invite them into partnerships that give primacy to the custodians of that land at every stage in the process of the work.
Fundamental to this is protecting the “Va”, the sacred space between people, communities, Spirit, and the natural world. Va is both a physical and a spiritual bond that requires constant nurturing, as it sustains harmony and balance in relationships. This is not just an ethical consideration but is a fundamental Indigenous law.
Every Indigenous nation has a history of intimate and loving intergenerational connection to the land on which they dwell. Because of this intimacy, it gives them a privileged understanding of what will benefit or harm all living things on their land. Therefore, their laws are vital to learn, understand, and follow. Their love animates those laws, understanding, and connection; therefore, they should guide all involved in each project.
Additionally, in some Indigenous communities, the accuracy of oral tradition and intergenerational knowledge is preserved by the principle of ensuring that the highest Indigenous Tohunga/master/authority for each type of knowledge should be consulted for decisions related to the knowledge they carry. This is also why it is important to always acknowledge the whakapapa/genealogy of the origins of knowledge. This prevents the dilution, distortion, and potentially dangerous misapplication of that knowledge.
All intellectual property shared by communities will remain their own and a model of IP has been developed to protect that.
Every Indigenous nation has Spiritual Technologies for connecting with the ancestral Realm. These include dreaming dialogue with ancestors, praying and fasting, sweat Lodge, Vision quest, and many others. The consultancy will access the various traditions of its members and partner communities and engage those Technologies to ensure the wisdom of intergenerational guidance forms an important part of decisions made.
Just as every Indigenous nation has unique protocols, we recognize that each partnership begins with understanding and following the specific cultural traditions of the land and its custodians. Each Indigenous people in the world have cultural protocols for how two different groups meet and form new relationships.
For Australian Aboriginal, it is traditional for visitors to sit and wait at the boundary of their land until the traditional owners approach them. At that point, there will be an exchange of gifts and the giving of skin names which identify the newcomer's position as family in specific ways and give an understanding of how those newcomers are to relate to others of the differing tribes.
For Maori in Aotearoa, visitors also wait outside the Marae and there are a complex series of protocols of challenges for the ‘powhiri’ which honour the ancestral realm, the history between the peoples and culminate in the exchange of each other’s breath and the weaving together of the two peoples as one.
Partners wishing to engage with the consultancy can expect a process of building relationships based on these principles. Exploring the challenges and blessings of intergenerational history is part of that initial exchange. This gives the capacity for justice and healing for all concerned and means that the ‘visitors’ can stand in their place of being woven into the ‘dreaming’ of the land they live on with integrity and good relations with the custodians of that land.
Contracts for services with the consultancy will be guided by Indigenous spiritual principles of economics. Rather than focusing on the value of “time”, “products”, “outcomes”, or “transactional services”, the prime value is instead on ‘relationships’ and ‘reciprocity’.
This is not a closed system but an open and infinite spiral of reciprocity that can grow, like a symphony of music, with each exchange increasing and growing the relationship and capacity of partners through the exchange of gifts. It also acknowledges the relationships, contributions, and history of the ancestral dimension for all.
On a practical level, this can mean things like recognizing that the value of the knowledge for a service is not held by one individual, but has been collectively developed over, sometimes, many generations. An equivalent is how a pharmaceutical company may sell a pill that at face value may have a production cost that is quite low, but whose value is in the many years of development and sacrifice that went into the ability to make that pill.