Expanding the Circle

From 13 to 52. We’re called to widen the circle of wisdom. To strengthen the leadership of Original Peoples in shared responsibility for Mother Earth.

The First Earth Mandate calls us to establish Councils for Earth Stewardship, guided by wisdom, reciprocity, guardianship, and service to the whole. In 2013, more than one hundred Indigenous Elders gathered in ceremony to seek guidance for humanity amid the growing crises threatening life on Earth. Through prayer, vision, and unity, the time of the Eagle and the Condor Prophecy was revealed: the reunion of the Peoples of the North and South to help restore balance to Mother Earth. From these ceremonies came the Five Earth Mandates, living instructions for how we may walk once again in right relationship with all life. Mother Earth is speaking, and we have to listen. This is our responsibility.

The expansion of the Council of The Earth Elders from 13 to 52 members is part of this living mandate. Original Peoples and trusted allies must gather across territories, listen deeply and make decisions that honor the Earth as a living being. Through these councils, communities can speak and act in service to the whole.

The responsibility before us belongs to many Nations, many traditions and many ways of knowing. As the circle grows, so does our capacity to care for life together.

The Earth Elders are already protecting water, sacred places, ancestral territories and the knowledge carried through generations. They remind us that we are nature ourselves. We’re not separate from the rivers, the mountains, the forests or the sea: we’re another species within the greater concept of life. Our presence on Earth is for the care of life. We must acknowledge and honor the sacred elements …the elements that give life. It is the time for reconnection with our ancestral way of living, with harmony, with nature and with the cycles of life.

The prophey is our guide: expand the council.

Mindahi Bastida at the gathering place on Onondaga Nation Territory, where Indigenous Elders and leaders from across the Americas came together to share ancestral teachings and prophecies, June 4–7, 2026.

Over the past year, across Guatemala, New York, Benin, Sedona and beyond, I have had the honor and duty to be in relationship with Indigenous leaders, clan mothers, chiefs, and traditional knowledge holders whose communities continue to carry living systems of knowledge, ceremony and responsibility. 

In Onondaga territory this summer, I was welcomed into a gathering hosted by Onondaga chiefs and clan mothers, alongside relatives from the other five Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. We entered into sacred ceremony with one another, with the rivers, the [returning!] bison, and sweet berries around us. 

We slowed down. We honored one another— ‘all our ancestors’. We listened and learned.

Community members take part in ceremony during a visit to Q’eqchi’ and Lake Atitlán communities in Guatemala, where ancestral spirituality, agriculture, and hopes for a future university remain deeply connected.

Change begins by listening to nature and to the Peoples who have kept faith with their territories across generations. In carrying the First Earth Mandate, these journeys create space to meet leaders who are already safeguarding nature through traditional ecological knowledge, ceremony, and stewardship. We experience how responsibility is being lived in the sacred sites of the Earth, and how care might come into relationship. 

Through interconnectedness and sustained intention, the circle can widen to receive more territories, more traditions and more forms of living knowledge.

A Council of 52 Elders will gather the wisdom of many Peoples, territories, languages and living traditions. This diversity is the fabric of resilience. Each Elder carries a distinct relationship with land, water, ceremony and the Original Instructions, contributing to a fuller understanding of how humanity may live in sacred relationship with Mother Earth. Together, the Council can help reweave the web of kinship that unites all beings. May we affirm the sovereignty of Original Peoples as custodians of life. 

Through this wider circle, wisdom can speak across regions and generations. May it be guided with humility and emboldened with strength as we make decisions that serve the whole … as we look seven generations forward and seven generations back.

The expansion of the Council strengthens our shared responsibility to Mother Earth, to all the alive beings today, and the generations yet to come. It asks us to think beautifully with Mother Earth and all her forms of life, guided by interdependence, reciprocity and the Original Instructions. In a Council of 52, many traditions of care can meet, learn from one another and help shape decisions rooted in reverence, resilience and long-term stewardship. 

This is the sacred work before us as leaders: to deepen relationship, to nourish [all] life and to become good ancestors.