Everything we do is guided by our commitment to "wayfinding new pathways" at Future Ancestors Services. Wayfinding new pathways means stepping away from systems and practices that no longer serve us (or never did) and creating thoughtful approaches that prioritize decolonization, susatinability, and connection across space and time.
These principles weren't something we arrived at overnight. It’s been shaped by our own trials, errors, and growth, deeply informed by our creation story. We are learning through experience and practice what works, what doesn’t, and how we can do better for the communities and clients we serve.
We Work Relationally
At our core, we operate relationally, defining success through the strength of our connections. We center our relationship with Earth, recognizing this relationship as foundational to all endeavors. Embracing intergenerational collaboration, we honor the wisdom of past and future generations. Reciprocity guides our work, fostering mutual benefit and sustainable partnerships.
Ancestral Accountability
There are many visions of ancestral accountability, and there is no single definition. It requires us to localize our understanding through our own cultures and teachings while acknowledging the wisdom of the original caregivers of the lands we occupy. Recognizing ancestral responsibility offers a theoretical framework for situating ourselves within space and time, helping us reflect on how we might:
Restore harmed relationships caused by our ancestors
Use our privileges to benefit those who do not have them
Recognize that we are the ancestors of future generations, and we are the legacy of our ancestors
We engage in this by actively seeking to understand the actions and inactions of our ancestors and linking those to our current realities: the systems, environments, ideologies, and beliefs we’ve inherited. This work will, in turn, deepen our conscious worldview.
Relational Success Criteria
Framing success criteria relationally supports us in breaking free from the constraints that colonial and capitalist influences have placed on our worldviews and truths. This can be applied in our personal and organizational lives. By first imagining success as relational qualities, we can determine indicators of success and outline pathways forward. In our personal or organizational contexts, we can begin by asking: “What do healthy and ethical relationships look like with regard to my:”
Relationship with mental, physical, and spiritual health?
Relationship with money?
Relationship with time?
Relationship with work?
The outputs of these reflections and associated dialogues can be positioned as your success criteria.
Relationship With Earth
Our collective understanding of Earth encompasses humans, non-human kin, the environment, climate, the spiritual realms, and all that is made of the stars. We can have both personal and organizational relationships with Earth. A relationship with Earth can be explored through the following questions:
How do you relate to the natural world?
What experiences and identities have informed the way you relate to the Earth? How has the Earth informed your experiences and identities?
How does your current relationship with Earth serve your well-being and the well-being of those around you?
Often, non-Indigenous approaches to sustainability and environmentalism fail to acknowledge the relational connection between us and Earth. Consciously reflecting on and acting in accordance with our relationships to Earth helps fill that gap.
We Prioritize Transformative Approaches
We are rooted in transformative approaches, prioritizing decolonization and Indigenization as essential to systemic change-making. Our understanding of innovation is grounded in the idea that our practices, actions, and relationships must fundamentally deviate from the causes of harm we are addressing.
Systemic Change-Making
We understand systemic transformation in the context of anti-racism and decolonization as involving intentional efforts to transform the underlying structures, policies, and practices that perpetuate racial discrimination and colonial legacies within society. It encompasses strategies aimed at addressing systemic injustices embedded in institutions, laws, and cultural norms.
This approach seeks to create lasting and equitable change by challenging power dynamics, centering marginalized voices and experiences, and promoting policies and practices that uphold human rights, justice, and dignity for all communities affected by racism and other forms of discrimination symptomatic of colonialism.
Innovation
Innovation that remains aligned with the principles of colonialism and capitalism, such as viewing labor productivity as the most significant reflection of someone's value, cannot effectively address the root causes of the harm we’ve discussed.
Decolonization supports us in acknowledging the harm caused by colonialism and capitalism, creating space for us to innovate and Indigenize using teachings from pre-colonial contact, where practices and ways of being were, in many cases, more accessible and sacred.
“Innovation is not only borne from technological advancements. When we hold space and apply our ancestors’ traditional knowledge to our contemporary realities, we have the opportunity to learn from their actions and inactions and find innovation in justice and accountability across past, present, and future generations.” - Larissa Crawford, Founder
Climate Justice
Climate action cannot be equitable or sustainable without climate justice; the physical consequences of environmental change cannot be separated from the social and political implications and causes. When we refer to ‘climate justice,’ we mean the fair and equitable treatment of all people and communities, particularly those most affected by climate change and its environmental, social, and economic impacts. This includes acknowledging and addressing the root causes of climate change, such as colonialism and capitalism.
Climate justice necessitates that any climate action taken on Indigenous lands must center Indigenous Peoples, knowledge systems, and sovereignty, as well as the lived experiences of and barriers faced by equity-seeking groups.
Moreover, climate justice is intrinsically tied to the decolonization of Indigenous identities and the recognition of African indigeneity. The strength of our ability to connect with ancestors, land, and our inherent Indigenous rights is a determinant of environmental sustainability.
We Centre Restorative Practice
We centre restorative practices, recognizing anti-racism and other justice lenses as inherently restorative frameworks that reconcile our personal and collective relationships with human experiences. Drawing wisdom from Indigenous teachings of restorative practices, we guide our approach to reconciling how we exist in business and our roles beyond mere laborers.
Restorative Practice
First and foremost, it should be recognized that mainstream teachings of restorative justice and practices come from and are informed by Indigenous knowledge; Indigenous Peoples around the world have, for time immemorial, used restorative practices to govern themselves. Restorative justice and practice have largely been co-opted, leading to the intentional erasure of the Indigenous roots of this knowledge.
Restorative practice offers a lens through which we view the restoration of relationships. Restorative resolutions engage those who are harmed, wrongdoers, and their affected communities in search of solutions that promote reconciliation and the rebuilding of relationships. These practices seek to build partnerships that re-establish mutual responsibility for constructive and sustainable pathways forward.
The principles that guide our work in restorative practice are:
Acknowledge Harm
Take Accountability
Commit to Restorative Actions
Centre Relationships
We align our understanding of anti-racism with restorative practice as a way to center Indigenous knowledge teachings in our mindsets and operations.
Anti-Racism
We understand anti-racism as an active and intentional stance against racism in all its forms, including structural, systemic, and interpersonal. It involves identifying and challenging racial prejudice, discrimination, and inequalities embedded within institutions, policies, and societal norms. It emphasizes ongoing education, advocacy, and policy change.
Anti-racism aims to dismantle these barriers and promote the removal of systemic injustices. Equality, equity, diversity, and inclusion are all tools that should be viewed as means to achieve this end. Anti-racism acknowledges the existence of systemic racism, undertakes racial disparity analyses, and actively confronts, based on evidence, the unequal power dynamics between groups and the structures that sustain them, aiming for equitable outcomes.
Disability Justice
Disability justice acknowledges that "ableism helps make racism, Christian supremacy, sexism, and queer and transphobia possible," and that these systems of oppression are intertwined. Our disability justice framework understands that:
All bodies are unique and essential.
All bodies have strengths and needs that must be met.
We are powerful, not despite the complexities of our bodies, but because of them.
All bodies are constrained by ability, race, gender, sexuality, class, nation-state, religion, and more; these intersecting identities cannot be separated.
Disability justice aims to challenge ableism and create a society that embraces and supports the full inclusion, accessibility, and rights of all individuals while addressing systemic barriers and promoting collective liberation and equity for disabled people. The disability justice framework we operate within was developed starting in 2005 by the Disability Justice Collective, a group of "Black, brown, queer, and trans" individuals, including Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, Stacey Milbern, Leroy F. Moore Jr., Eli Clare, and Sebastian Margaret. Sins Invalid is the group through which the founders were connected.
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