Spiraling with Our Ancestors: A Re-Calling Our Ancestors Dreamwork Retreat

We do not walk alone—our leadership is shaped by those who came before us and those who will come after. This course invites participants to explore the fullness, richness, and complexity of our ancestral legacies – the legacies of our ancestors of blood and bone, of lands and waters, of kinship ties, of traditions we carry – as well as our more-than-human kin. By listening and dreaming across time, we practice leading with dignity, humility, responsibility, and a sense of deep continuity toward cultures of ancestrally-rooted relation with self, each other, habitat, and planet.

In this long weekend together, we will explore a holistic way of being with our ancestors and lineages, tending to the earth-cherishing traditions of our ancestors, the harm our ancestors endured, the harm our ancestors caused, and the ways our ancestors resisted and persisted along the way. Through story, song, ceremony, dreaming, and time on the land, we will reconnect with the folk traditions of our ancestors – stories of resistance, resilience, and relationship that predate colonial systems and can help us untangle the multiplicity of our identities.

When we strengthen our own resilience and relationships—individually and collectively—through ancestral practices and cultural reclamation, we have far more to offer to our communities during these times of polycrisis and systems collapse. Coming together across lineages, we will build collective capacity to offer leadership – each in our own way – as we tend to the spiritual and cultural loss.