FUTURE ANCESTORS SERVICES INC.
WE SUPPORT CLIENTS AND COMMUNITY IN ADVANCING EQUITY AND CLIMATE JUSTICE.
Future Ancestors Services is an Indigenous and Black-owned, youth-led professional services social enterprise that advances climate justice and systemic barrier removal with lenses of restorative anti-racism and ancestral accountability.
While centring decolonized and Indigenized practices, we support our clients and community in restoring relationships and addressing systemic issues that disadvantage groups of people, our connections to land and others, and the well-being of Earth.
OUR THEORY OF CHANGE
By prioritizing equity and climate justice in our work and lives, we are striving for the just futures our communities have defined and continue to defend.
We leverage Indigenous teachings of future ancestry to frame our ways of being because it provides a narrative by which we can all understand ourselves as being accountable to the actions, inactions, faults, and resiliency of our ancestors, while also finding collective power in our agency to act with impact as future ancestors.
OUR ACCOUNTABILITY
When your accountability lies with community, you are afforded a freedom to assert a position grounded in what is best for people, kin, and Earth.
We understand that our client-facing services are one way that we can serve community and Earth: by supporting our clients through our services, we are improving their capacity to create better spaces and work outputs that honour people, kin, and environment in the past, present, and future. This is one way we serve community.
FROM OUR FOUNDER
FUTURE ANCESTORS SERVICES WAS PATIENTLY AND COLLECTIVELY CREATED.
We were incorporated on January 31st, 2020, and launched on April 8th, 2020. Our Founder and Managing Director, Larissa Crawford, shares some insight in the article Meet Larissa Crawford, Founder and Managing Director of Future Ancestors Services published by Women of Influence (2020).
"The best thing I’ve done as an entrepreneur so far was not prioritizing Western business education, and trusting in the direction I receive from my cultural communities and self. While facing ageism, racism, sexism, and ableism in most of my previous employment experiences, I got through that time by always taking note of what I appreciated and did not appreciate about how I was managed, how our teams were structured, and how the organization operated."
23K
Donation dollars mobilized for community initiatives
140
Diverse clients served, supported, and partnered with
47K
People reached directly though our services
9
Youth contractors leading Future Ancestors Services
OUR APPROACH TO SERVICES
WE'RE QUITE INTENTIONAL ABOUT HOW WE 'DO BUSINESS'.
How we 'do business' largely stems from undesirable workplace environments our team have experienced in the past. For example, we prioritize a decolonized experience of time, where we are encouraged to set clear boundaries about our available time and capacity to meet aggressive deadlines. Like many of the ways we operate, we trusted in ourselves to formulate a new way of doing business that we haven’t necessarily seen or experienced before.
You can read more about what these approaches look like in practice through service delivery on the Our Services page.
INTERNAL TEAM MEMBERS
MEET THE PEOPLE WHO LEAD FUTURE ANCESTORS SERVICES.
OUR LOGO AND NAME
A LOGO ADAPTED AND DESIGNED BY TSISTA KENNEDY, ANISHINAABE AND ONYOTA'AKA NATIONS.
Afro-Indigenous Future Ancestor
A face full of life, a representation of us as future ancestors; our diversity
Past and Future Generations
A face yet to be filled, our future generations; or a face watching over us, our own ancestors
Green Leaves
A representation of the future of our Earth thriving as a result of our actions
Grey Leaves
A representation of our Earth in need of replenishment as Her resources are depleting
Hair Connected in Circle
Hair connects us to the land, and so the hair of both subjects connect and trail forward
Tsista (Tehatsistahawi) Kennedy, Logo Designer, a 19 year-old Woodland-Style Artist belonging to the Anishnaabe and Onyota'aka nations:
"What I wanted to communicate through this design are the concepts that the previous logo had taken into account. The grey leaves behind the left face symbolize ourselves detaching from the current ways of thinking and carrying ourselves. We face away from these grey and faded leaves, and instead look towards the ones that flourish and thrive in the betterment of our future selves.
I was always taught that our hair connects us to the land, and so the hair of both subjects connect and trail forward. As the hair/stem trails back towards the left side of the design, it then becomes a representation of the state of thinking we are leaving behind. The tips of a person's hair represents the past self, and the parts of the hair that are closer to the scalp serve as a representation of a current self.
We have yet to see who our future selves become, let alone the coming generations; this leaves the right-side face opaque looking and colorless. Despite this, both faces look forward towards the east, which represents new life, new changes, and a better future for everyone."
FEEDBACK
HERE ARE SOME CLIENT AND PARTICIPANT VOICES.
"Can’t help but think about how life changing my session with Larissa was in the way I think about decolonizing spaces."
Training Participant, October 2020