Indigenous Commons & Kinship Currency
We are a growing planetary collective of Kinship with a shared aim:
ReImagine wealth through the collective care and enjoyment of an Indigenous Commons.
80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity is stewarded or protected by indigenous peoples, who make up just 6% of the population.
The Indigenous Paradox
We are raising $2 million in 2024 to design an Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab and Regenerative Kinship Fund, governed according to Indigenous wisdom and principles.
Why Indigenous? What does it even mean?
Advisor and co-creator, Tyson Yunkaporta tells us the notion of a defined indigenous “self” has been designed by outsiders to enroll Indigenous peoples in the systems of exploitation and extraction.
This word enables development agencies to render programs of self-determination safe to Western institutions. It makes it possible to organize people into discrete nations to achieve collective goals for the current system, such as the negotiations to facilitate mineral extraction.
None of this reflects the complexity of indigenous identities or knowledge...
“[Indigenous] knowledge endures because everybody carries a part of it, no matter how fragmentary. If you want to see the pattern of creation you talk to everybody and listen carefully. Authentic knowledge processes are easy to verify if you are familiar with the pattern: each part reflects the design of the whole system. If the pattern is present the knowledge is true, whether the speaker is wearing a grass skirt or a business suit, or a school uniform.” (Yunkaporta, Sand Talk, 2019)
We are forging an historic partnership between land stewards and wealth stewards, to bypass the systems of stagnation and despair and launch us into a new epoch of life affirming innovation and development.
Here is our approach and logic.
46% of the world’s money is controlled by just 1% of the population.
Kinship Currency
We are all indigenous to somewhere. And none of us will escape the coming changes on planet Earth. We are about to face a time of great uncertainty. The way of navigating uncertainty is found in each of our Indigenous traditions.
Alive in themselves, all cultures adapt with the landscape and the lives that pass through them. For folks of Western ancestry, connecting with one’s own indigeneity is a critical step to repairing self and community.
Re-member-ing indigenous ways of relating can short-circuit patterns that are no longer viable for our lives, our families, our earth. This process of fixing fragmentation is both intimate and civilizational.
We revitalize important bio-cultural technologies such as dance, song, medicine and story as part of global Indigenous networking and ritual mapping. We are tracking biodiversity flows across intercontinental and trans-oceanic systems, for collective care and enjoyment of a global Indigenous Commons.
These Commons will consist of shared relationships, technologies, knowledges, ceremonies, embassies, lore, built environments and new classes of assets and investment.
These future-proofing mechanisms are hoped to become part of the system that will replace much of the current financial marketplace, as real estate becomes increasingly difficult to insure, turning 2/3 of the world's capital into compost. A soft landing for those with a stake in that capital could therefore mean a soft landing for all others as well, human and non-human.
Kinship allies join us in all of this and more. And Connectivity Catalysts are the emerging network of practitioners who embody the principles of Indigenous Commons and float our inquiries.
Meet the Guardians
Join in Kinship
Support Catalysts
“Indigenous Commons is a circle for healing; for power. We can identify medicine of consequence in our local context and initiate it to the world.”
— Emem Okon, Indigenous Commons Guardian, Kebetkache Women of the Niger Delta