Co-hosted with Regenerosity, in this webinar we explored how indigenous wisdom can reshape our relationship with the planet by decolonising mindsets, reconnecting with nature, and building ethical frameworks that heal our disconnection.
Discover how ancestral knowledge can guide us towards a more compassionate, regenerative future.
Reconnecting to Ancestral Wisdom
Jyoti Ma:
Ancestral wisdom is rooted in original principles passed down through many nations’ creation stories. These principles teach us to honour all life as sacred. Reciprocity is a key principle: life flows when all things give and receive in balance. It also includes respect, collaboration, unity, and the honouring of nature.
Yeye Luisah Teish:
The African diaspora traditions are guided by principles such as “Oka ran” — which speaks of the unification of all principles in nature and the creation born from this unity. Another guiding principle is Sankofa, which teaches us to reconnect with the earth and bring forward the wisdom of our ancestors to live in harmony today. Ubuntu, an important South African concept, means “I am because you are," emphasising a common destiny: you are an ancestor of the future. Honour, respect, truth, humility, and courage are also core values. There are 16 main principles that are multiplied by themselves to form 256 guiding ideas.
Jyoti Ma:
We're in a significant moment of prophecy right now — as Mother Earth is changing. It's time to return to an original way of life that can assist her transition. We're going to change: because she is.
I started an intentional spiritual community, and down this 14-mile log road, elders started discovering and visiting us. They saw something in us that we didn’t yet see. Through ceremony and initiation, they started passing on a way of life to protect and tend to the Earth — and that brought an awareness of the original principles.
This wisdom didn’t come from us asking questions — it came through the elders who embodied these principles. They were not abstract ideas but lived practices. When you truly embody these principles, they flow through you. It’s just the way you are. You live in a spirit of collaboration, generosity, love, and compassion. Returning to this way of life brings us back to our authentic selves, to the original principles that guide us.
Gradually, more elders came to visit our community — they became storytellers. Mother Nature teaches everything we need to know through stories. When stories come from these old, original ways — listen carefully. We all have ancestral wisdom in our roots, and by reconnecting with that, we remember who we are. As we listen to old stories, languages, songs, and chats, we start to hear the Earth herself. She gives us instructions for what we need to do for our families, communities, and sacred territories. When we listen and align with these teachings, we reconnect to a web of life, realising that we are one living system. There is no competition. We each hold a thread in the tapestry of this new dawn. And it’s radically alive.
Why would we not want to resource that?
From Principles to Practice
Ruth Andrade, Moderator:
How can we apply these principles in our daily philanthropy? It's essential to embody them in our relationships, especially when financial capital can harm rather than heal. How do we decolonise these relationships and collaborate with grassroots organisations to foster genuine learning and connection, instead of imposing barriers or bureaucracy?
Georgina Gorman, TreeSisters:
Rooted in Ethics is a framework co-created by TreeSisters and The Fountain, developed over five years with input from 60 organisations through deep listening. It focuses on ethical, community-led tree stewardship, guided by ancestral wisdom and Aboriginal principles. The framework supports fair and equitable forest restoration, cultural connections to land, and trust-based philanthropy — offering practical guidance for ethical funding and ecosystem care.
Yeye Luisah Teish:
The first step is recognising that colonisation has harmed everyone; by exploiting Earth’s resources, denying sovereignty, and separating us. There’s a serious feeling of discomfort that calls our attention to something not being right.
As we try to reconnect with ancestral wisdom, we often interpret it through colonial lenses to fit modern systems like banking or media. Awareness of this calls for a return to how our ancestors communicated and organised. We need to reorganise through biomimicry. We have spent a lot of time as humans imagining that we are superior to Nature. We have to make a shift to see ourselves as children in nature: children of nature.
I am very fortunate to have inherited a tradition where every person is seen as a part of a force in nature. For me, I am a child of the river, which makes it very clear that I must defend water. I was born to defend water.
Let us study nature, find our position within it, and organise accordingly.
Transitioning Towards Ethical Restoration
Ruth Andrade:
We operate within a colonised system shaped by Western Europe, and frameworks like Rooted in Ethics are vital tools for guiding us through this transition. We've lost our innate ability to work this way, so documentation serves as a temporary strategy to support the emergence of a culture rooted in embodied practice.
I’d love to hear from TreeSisters about why you chose to publish and document this process.
Georgina Gorman, TreeSisters:
Publishing felt essential. Our partnership with The Fountain and conversations with restoration partners opened our eyes — we couldn’t continue working as before. The challenge was how do we transition? How do we apply these principles while still abiding by UK charity law and donor needs? It’s a balancing act, and an ongoing journey. We’ll always be on that learning journey, but sharing what we’ve learned felt like our responsibility. By documenting our story, we hope to inspire others to have similar transitions and revelations.
Ashley Tamburello, TreeSisters:
The framework is both a learning tool and a call to action. It urges individuals, organisations, and governments to redefine their relationships with nature, rooted in the intrinsic value of ecosystems. It’s a continuous learning journey — embracing failure, reflection, and evolution. Rooted in Ethics is open-source, and we welcome feedback as we refine it.
Trust-Based Partnerships for Lasting Change
Ruth Andrade:
How are you applying Rooted in Ethics to your programmes and partnership decisions?
Madeleine Scrodellis, TreeSisters:
While developing Rooted in Ethics, we were also evolving our restoration strategy, shifting from a transactional approach to community-led restoration that prioritises gender equity, biocultural and nature-led practices, and collaboration with Indigenous peoples.
A cornerstone of this shift has been trust-building with local community groups, moving away from reliance on international partners. The key to this transformation is simple: listening. Listening to the Earth, nature, our inner knowing, and, most importantly, our partners.
This trust-based approach invites partners to identify and lead projects that best serve their landscapes and communities. That's when you create radical change. That's what I’ve witnessed in our partners.
Alpha Women Empowerment Initiative — a grassroots organisation in the Rwenzori mountains, Uganda — is a phenomenal, inspiring group we’ve partnered with. They support vulnerable women by integrating gender equity with restoration; including tree planting, agroforestry, and stabilising landscapes with grasses and bamboo. They support women through training in kitchen gardens, creating micro enterprises, and leadership courses. They're also doing couples training on resource management to reduce domestic violence. They explained that agroforestry and kitchen gardens are real strategies to reduce violence, because food security reduces tensions in homes.
Remarkably, their tree survival rate is 97% — the average in large scale projects is 60-80% — because these trees are planted on their own farms, forming part of their livelihood. These trees survive because the women love them, they’re cared for as part of the family.
This demonstrates that community-led restoration isn’t just a “nice to have”: it’s essential for sustainable landscapes and thriving communities.
It’s been a beautiful journey of trusting our partners to know what’s best for their land, and encouraging radical listening.
Yeye Luisah Teish:
Madeline, listening to you brought me so much joy.
From my experience as an activist in the 60s, I can say the spiritual activism of that time faltered because it relied on a masculine approach disconnected from the earth and spirit. Now, with a deeper understanding of the balance between the divine feminine and sacred masculine, we can integrate spirituality into our work and move into that harmony you speak of.
Fishbowl Discussion: Insights From Our Audience
Michelle Wong, LA Eco Village:
Hello from ancestral Kumeyaay land in Southern California. I’ve lived at the LA Eco Village for 25 years, tending 40 fruit and nut trees in a low-income Los Angeles neighbourhood. This space, nurtured with love and a dance between masculine and feminine energy, has taught me so much about caring for the land.
I’m now co-sponsoring a project in Kakuma Refugee Camp, in northern Kenya. It’s a very different space, but the same ancestral wisdom has been so helpful. I’ve learnt how the people in this area have struggled; how it’s been maintained by the UN with many rules and organisations coming through. We want to create a sacred grove of trees that helps people learn about tree planting and sustainability — while creating a sense of ownership. We’re prioritising taking care of the soil — using biochar and compost to build fertility — just as we’ve done in LA’s desert climate over the last 25 years.
For the trees to survive, you first need that relationship with the soil. The gardens follow: a byproduct of taking care of the soil.
In LA, where 70% of us rent, land ownership is a challenge, but there are ways. To stay rooted in our community, we started a land trust and cooperatives, prioritising care for both the land and its people.
Yeye Luisah Teish:
In many Indigenous traditions, especially in Africa, a child's placenta was put in the earth and a tree planted on top, symbolising the connection between the child and the tree's growth. Today, we have developed mushroom coffins that turn human bodies into compost.
What if we used this concept to transform bodies from Covid and war into compost to regenerate devastated areas? This would honour ancestral practices like Sankofa and embrace life's cyclical nature. Recognising that we are energy, eternally connected to the Earth, requires a profound mindset shift — one that changes how we live and care for the planet.
Jyoti Ma:
Being in a space where such questions are welcomed is already a step forward. We’re in a room of people beginning to know and have direct experience with the intelligence of nature. There’s a ripeness to our consciousness.
Nature will guide us: if we listen deeply, feel deeply, and connect that feeling with the heart. It will show us that all life is sacred. This is the medicine we most desperately need.
This connection starts with simple actions: go to the river and give her prayer and thanks, put rose petals on her and remove the plastic bottles. Get the youth involved — they’re already attuned to nature’s voice. They’re already listening to her. She’s already speaking to them. As elders and communities, our role is to support the youth: they’re the ones carrying out the next chapter of our story.
Matilda Tsitsi Fakazi:
I’m from Cape Town, South Africa, and so grateful to be here. I’m a migrant woman originally from Zimbabwe, and a survivor of gender-based violence. I started an organisation to support women in townships facing similar challenges. During Covid, we opened a community soup kitchen to support our people with food; we struggled with resources — until we were given land to grow our own food.
On the first day, we started to speak to the soil and said that our people were hungry and we need to feed them. We asked it to guide us through the process of helping others.
Since then, an abundance of food has flowed from our garden — without needing to rely on donors, which is so tiresome. Despite being a migrant-led organisation with limited funding, we’ve seen incredible changes. Seven unemployed women, all survivors of gender-based violence, found jobs within a month.
Colonialism played a big role in brainwashing people from ancient wisdom, but we constantly fight to reclaim it. By teaching women to grow small home gardens, we’ve reduced the soup kitchen line and started reconnecting with the healing power of the soil and traditional practices.
Nick:
I run an organisation in the Ecuadorian Amazon, collaborating with indigenous nations to revive cultural food forests — some of the most nutritious foods on Earth — and harvest sustainably from standing forests.
I wanted to express synergy with TreeSisters in their transformation. We’ve also shifted from the rigid NGO model, where funders demand exhaustive documentation: geo-referencing every tree, recording every attendee, collecting every receipt.
It’s strangling to work in such a robotic way with Indigenous people who live in such an organic, relational way.
We’re working with humans, plants and ecosystems at the end of the day! It’s really refreshing to hear others are also navigating this transition.
Closing Reflections
Jyoti Ma:
When we step into new spaces, inspired and eager to help, do we pause first? Just as we’d introduce ourselves upon entering someone’s home, do we sit with the elders and say, “I’ve been called here to serve and want to honour the principles of this land”? How do we walk in alignment with right regard and respect? Starting with that dialogue creates a foundation for relationships rooted in integrity.
I’ve seen so many well-meaning efforts falter over the years. The Western world arrives with their money, but they haven’t made that relation; they don’t know what those dollars will do inside that cultural system. Then it starts to crack and break down that system, because we’ve treaded on it — that’s how the erosion begins. That’s how the ecocide and the genocide all begins.
TreeSisters' journey to remodel and restore themselves exemplifies courage and open-eyed awareness. This is how we collaborate: by pooling resources and listening deeply to the Earth and her original peoples, who are doing the hard, grounded work.
They guide us as bridge-makers, helping ensure this awakening unfolds gently, with kindness and care. We can do this together, because we have everything we need.
So as the awakening occurs, we can walk kindly and gently with people into their return. That's my wish.
Ruth Andrade:
I'd love to ask TreeSisters: what final message would you like people to hear?
Madeleine Scrodellis, TreeSisters:
That this work is worth it.
Yesterday, I was in a meeting with a partner in Colombia, and it reminded me why. When we first connected, they were trying to be very conventional to meet our expectations. Over time, we discovered a shared desire to work differently, and we encouraged them to involve women — a group they hadn’t previously engaged with.
From that, they created a programme called Women Sowers of Life, empowering women survivors of political violence to care for nurseries. What came next was completely unexpected: the organic evolution of this two-year project led to a three-day gathering of campesina and Indigenous women, sharing wisdom and knowledge around a sacred fire.
When they told me this, I cried. It was the outcome of trusting them, of saying, “We believe in you. Please, do this work.”
It was the most beautiful thing to witness. There’s so much potential when we nurture these journeys.