How Might Ancestral Voices Help Us Take Action in Uncertain Times?
Access free educational materials about resilient knowledge systems to support your co-learning and advocacy efforts
As we seek models for sustainability we can look to cultures that have stood the tests of time in the face of profound climate changes and the assaults of the modern world.
This project offers educators and community activists words and images from representatives of earth-centric cultures. These are dynamic and resilient cultures that, in the words of John Mohawk, understand “humankind’s relationship to nature (through a ) pre-colonial, pre-patriarchal, pre-modern story.”
Proven Enduring & Proven Resilient
The cultures selected for the Proven Enduring & Proven Resilient materials collection are Peoples who have lived in place for 500 years or longer, stewarding and defending their land while making no efforts to colonize distant peoples.
View each respective page of the Peoples shown by clicking the boxes below.
Khomani San
Africa
Zhongnan Hermits
Asia
Chukchi
Arctic
Kogi & Arhuaco
South America
Hadzabe
Africa
Ainu
Asia
Inuit
Arctic
Quechua
South America
Yolngu
Australia
Sámi
Europe
Haudenosaunee
North America
Hawai’ian
Oceania
Noongar
Australia
Basque
Europe
Hopi
North America
Māori
Oceania
Proven Free & Proven Resistant
Since the very first slave ship crossed the Middle Passage five hundred years ago peoples of African descent throughout the Western hemisphere have gained liberation by escaping and then defending their maroon sanctuaries.
The Proven Free/Proven Resistant materials collection consists of Peoples of African descent who have lived in place for 150 years or longer in the Caribbean and the Americas, stewarding their African roots and defending their land against white supremacy.
Saamaka Maroons
Jamaican Maroons
Quilombolas
Gullah Geechee
Vodouists
Black Seminole
We intend for the words and images on this site to be used for deepening critical consciousness and for taking effective action.
It is our hope that the pages we’ve created can become kindling sticks used to ignite a fire of curiosity that will be sustained through deeper study and resolute alliance.
The reflections and actions arising from Proven Sustainable are in service to the continued survivance of Indigenous Peoples and to the re-membering of a dismembered world in which humans live in balanced and respectful relationship to all other beings on this living earth.