344: Beginning the Year With Ancestral Wisdom

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Prince Atawe Akoyi Oussou Lio (guest, Tolinu people, Benin): Sometimes in the mindset of human being, we forgot who we are. We have ecological crisis because we have our really identity crisis. And we think that we are the alone, we have the law. We are the only one who has the law. And we make our own law, not a law of nature. We refuse to know what is the nature. Because we are the end of the channel, we are the last born. And come back, we destroy ourselves for the many years. But for that moment, the indigenous people, the First Nations, they are in the forest. They had the link with the water. For example, when you dig a hole in the town for the indigenous people to go to the river, because the river is not only to take the water, it's to have the contact with the human being and the non-human being. For our anthropocentrism, we want everything for us. We think about development, and we refuse to know who we are. We come to the nature, we go back to the nature. It's a circle. We come from Mother Earth, we go back to Mother Earth at the end of our life. When we refuse to see that, we refuse also to know that we have some background, we have some roots, and that's the quesicase. We're talking about the climate change effect today. We have another crisis. Who we are? To ask this question, we must remember that we are a part of the nature. We don't come in the nature, we come from the nature, and at the end, we go back to the nature. We forget that, and we get lost. And now we have to remind. And one proverb in my country say, if you don't know where you're going, just know where you come from. You must know your home, and come back to your home. You come back to your roots. Now we have to come back, and it's the justice. If not, nature can survive without us. But we never, never survive without nature.

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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, you both speak with wisdom, and honestly, with a lesson that I don't think anyone would question, because it is a wisdom that we all have somewhere in us. So it is very much of something that we resonate, that we echo, but that is in this part of our body, around our chest, and doesn't get up here. Somehow that wisdom that is here gets filtered, and it is up here that we forget our roots. It is up here that we decide that nature is at our service, that we can extract constantly, that we do not have to give back, that we do not have to protect, but that is all up here. That is not where the spirit of humanity is. And so I think from your perspective, how do we remind people about that? How do we get them to go to this part where we do know the truth, if we're so used to approaching all of these issues through our head and through analytics and through data and through models and everything that is academic and scientific and analytical, but is not the lived experience?

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Mindahi Bastida (guest, Otomi-Toltec peoples, founder of Earth Elders): Well, in ancestral times there was always a way to connect people through the names, through the totems, through the lineages. You carry out that sacred connection with other beings. And that's why it's important to know what even our names means, because all where exist in the world, they got names. The mountains, the seas, you know, it's very important. To recover that sacred connection, it begins within ourselves. How we treat your mother, how you treat your father, how you treat your children, this contact. But also where you are born is also important, because the landscape, let's say, of the landscape around you also gives you the identity, gives you those roots that we are talking about. Because I remember once when I went for the first time outside of Mexico, my home country, I remember that I went away for almost two months. When I was coming back, I was feeling here in this part, in my chest and in my stomach, a connection that was so strong. It's like homing. That homing feeling is like the mountains were hugging me. I felt so much. It's emotion. I wanted to cry. I think I cried. That happens every time, every time. But it also has expanded. Because when I come here, I have come here to the Amazon, it's the third time. And I feel the same. Because I have knowledge. Also, wherever you go, you have knowledge. You ask permission. So in other words, what I'm saying is that we need to give us a chance to put intention for this reconnection, for this remembrance. Because we are more than we see. We are more than that. Because this rational mind sometimes is taking over instead of taking care. And that's a problem of human beings. Because we need to reciprocate with other beings, because thanks to them, we are here as well. We believe that this sacred connection is beyond this mother earth, is with the celestial bodies as well. And that's the very reason we are knowledge. So much the sun, the moon, Venus and other stars and constellations. Because they live in the cycles, in the rhythms of the universe, in the rhythms of life. So time and space are very important categories or concepts that are not linear, they are circular. Because this... Cyclical, yeah.

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Prince Atawe Akoyi Oussou Lio (guest, Tolinu people, Benin): Add to what Mindahi is saying. Now in Benin, it's very difficult when people are disconnected to their tradition. When you go back, you look like the newcomer. And now, what we want to do, you have to see our education. Because that starts by education. When you have education that your nature is object, it's not subject, and it's object, you can destroy. And now, today, we have artificial intelligence. But we need now ancestral intelligence.

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Christiana Figueres: A different AI.

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Prince Atawe Akoyi Oussou Lio (guest, Tolinu people, Benin): Yeah, that's a different AI. And we come back and we do learn about... Because I'm from the Kingdom, the Tolian Kingdom, and when during January we make what we call the University of Nature. Water can teach you flexibility, resilience. Water can teach you a lot of things. Water can speak to you. The trees speak, the animals speak. When you're born in my community, they give you two totem, animals and plants. You never, never kill. In my... I never kill Python. It's forbidden for me. He can be there, he can do anything for me, because it's my totem. I have a link with. What do you... you love your dog. He love you? If you have a good contact, how can we reconnect with the nature? How can we know the right of water, have... use water with respect? How can you have a contact with the tree? Hear the bird. Sometimes the bird advises you for the rain. If I'm somewhere and I hear one bird singing, I know that in a few minutes I can have a rain. How can we come back a part of the modern education? How can we be... go back to the nature, to recognize the nature? I know that is very difficult, but how can we find time to go to have the link with the nature? The seas, the sea, the ocean speak to us. They are the wind, the universe speak to us. But sometimes we don't have the air to hear. And because in our mind, we are the last one, we are the big boss.

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Christiana Figueres: Superior.

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Prince Atawe Akoyi Oussou Lio (guest, Tolinu people, Benin): Superior, that is the arrow. You know, the day the bird can use the fire, the only thing we have now is the fire. The animal don't know how to manipulate the fire. The day they know to manipulate the fire, it's finished for human being. We need now to be lucky. And it's time now to change the mind, to change the education. You know, when the fish is dry, it's difficult to put it in a circle. Let's start by our children now, the young people. Tell them the truth, because sometimes we lie for the future generation. We have to take them now to that ancestral intelligence. They have artificial intelligence, but put them, ancestral intelligence, then you can have new person to change something in the future.

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Christiana Figueres: You said something that I would love to ask for you to explain to me. When the fish is dry, you cannot put it in a circle. What does that mean?

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Prince Atawe Akoyi Oussou Lio (guest, Tolinu people, Benin): When you have some attitudes and you grow with bad attitudes, when the fish is dry, you turn it in a circle, he broke. If you try to change the adjunct, sometimes it's very difficult. But if it's the young people, the children, you can tell the children, have the new children, through dialogue and third-generation journal. You say, we make some error, we make some mistake in the past, but you, you are supposed to do the right way, connect to the nature. That is the fresh fish. You can tell it. But if it's the adjunct, it's a dry fish. He get old and he tells them, I know, I don't want to do it. That is a dry fish. It's difficult to turn in circle, the dry fish. The adjunct is a dry fish. But the fresh fish is the new one, is the young people, the young generation.

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Christiana Figueres: Okay. I love that analogy. And I'm going to challenge you with that, both of you, because I would argue that what we humans are doing is because we are already dried fish. Now, we cannot export the responsibility of becoming more responsible citizens on this planet to the young generations who are still fresh fish. Somehow, we have to get us, in our generation, already dry fish, already flat non-movable fish. We have to be able to at least begin to prepare the ground for that fish to be folded in a circle because that is not the responsibility of young people. I am with you that a wet fish is easier to put in a circle, but maybe it's not their responsibility. Maybe we have to take on some responsibility. So, what do we do about the fact that we are all dry fish?

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Prince Atawe Akoyi Oussou Lio (guest, Tolinu people, Benin): We are in the same circle. We are in the same, because it's our responsibility. We are the first human being, the first, our generation is the first who have to do bad things against the universe. That cannot be the responsibility for our children. It's not make sense. We have to change ourselves. But how many people want to do like you, like me? We are few nowadays, and sometimes we go to talk, to talk, to talk after that, no action. Then we can start. The one kilometer start by one foot, and slowly, and then the dry fish can start, but also look at the fresh fish. It's not the responsibility, but the only heritage we know we can lend to the future generation is that universe, is that nature.

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Mindahi Bastida (guest, Otomi-Toltec peoples, founder of Earth Elders): I see, I do agree in general, but I think it's also responsibility for the coming ones. Because if they grow up without responsibilities, then nothing is going to change. So it means that it's intergenerational responsibility. It means that we need to provide all the elements as much as we can to the new seeds. And this is when we talk about intergenerational equity. But in this case, it's not just from the human perspective, but it's from a holistic perspective that takes into consideration the material and the spiritual approach. We are, as human beings, having very difficult times, but it's not the first time. We are in transition, always. But this is a big transition. And that's why we...

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Christiana Figueres: Why is it bigger than others?

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Mindahi Bastida (guest, Otomi-Toltec peoples, founder of Earth Elders): Because in our cosmologies, in our teachings, we say that we are at the end of a big cycle. It was around May 3rd, 2013, when the big accounting of the Mayan, Ottoman, Toltec, Olme calendars ended. And it has to be with other calendars around the world. But talking about here in this continent, in Mesoamerica, we have these teachings. Because the long account ended, we were said and we were taught that a new time was coming. It was what we call the New Dawn. And it also comes with the prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor. Because of colonial times, colonization, and all of that, peoples were put apart, nation states appeared and all of that, so the peoples couldn't communicate. But we are not talking just about human beings, also about other beings. Now this is the time to think about this prophecy, not something that is going to happen because it is going to happen, but because the human agency has to take action a lot. So we have to put intention for this New Dawn, how we want to receive the new accounting of the times. It is more than linear. It is really sickle-cut.

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Christiana Figueres: So our intention is actually what creates the future that we walk in and what we prepare for future generations.

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Mindahi Bastida (guest, Otomi-Toltec peoples, founder of Earth Elders): Let me tell you about these times. Because we always think about, even now we hear that some are futurologists, others are historians, you know, futurologists. But we know we have to acknowledge the past so we know who we are. And knowing who we are, we can envision something. And we have that responsibility to take care, give care of the seven generations at least. But there is something very crucial that we always cherish. We acknowledge the past, we acknowledge the future, but we cannot live in the past nor in the future.

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Christiana Figueres: In the present only.

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Mindahi Bastida (guest, Otomi-Toltec peoples, founder of Earth Elders): And this is now that we have to take responsibilities. Because some people always justify with words like hope. Hope is a beautiful word.

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Christiana Figueres: Sentiment.

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Mindahi Bastida (guest, Otomi-Toltec peoples, founder of Earth Elders): Sentiment. But if you don't put any intention, it's worthless. Even though it's on the contrary, some people are maybe later. Tomorrow. Or maybe next year. And this is why we are failing. We don't observe. Even the man-made laws or now human-made laws. Because we don't cherish the law of nature and the law of the universe. So we need to come together with those laws and really begin. Let's say a new beginning. Because this is a time to really be humble. We have misbehaved so much. Misbehave. We are in a very difficult time. And we know it.

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Christiana Figueres: And we know it. Thank you so much to both of you. We really appreciate that. First of all, that you have come all this way. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for coming to Brazil and to chat with us. And thank you for the work that you do as guardians. So, Tom and Paul, how is that for a non-COP 30 conversation? Such a breath of fresh air, such a pause in the, as I said before, in the franticness. What did that conversation do for you?

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Paul Dickinson: I love AI as ancestor intelligence. We need more AI. The ancestor intelligence is pretty extraordinary. And not to say that nature, like an object, is something that we, we kind of mentioned at the start, but also practical thinking like, hope is a beautiful sentiment, but it needs intention. And yeah, I would say that there's growing kind of interest in understanding of indigenous wisdom. And for example, not being able to separate the forest from the people. It's, it's quite profound, like to think of living, you know, where you are, you know, kind of at one point, Christiana, you said, did we, did we kind of forget who we were? And the advice was, you know, start with your roots. And if you don't know where you're going, think where you've come from, which once again goes back to the, to the conversation we were having at the start. And then that wisdom that making your own laws is potentially conflicting with the existing laws of nature. These all seem to me like kind of obvious truths, but very sort of beautifully framed and, you know, profound guidance that I think Arne Ness, the ecological philosopher used to talk about, kind of ability to think how we want or behave how we want, but within the confines of the sort of extant world. And I think that they both were very effective at, you know, describing that essential architecture.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, Paul, I mean, I concur with a great deal that you said there. And I think it's just so wonderful to start this year with this interview. You know, the core diagnosis here is really cultural and spiritual, as much as technical. And it's pointing out that the anthropocentrism, the disconnection from the living world that we have, sits underneath the ecological breakdown that we're enduring. And we keep trying to, like, fix different pieces around the manifestation of it. But while we have that fundamental world view that is anthropocentric, that disconnects us, as you said, Paul, we're not connected from the forest. We sit outside of things, we sit in our heads. It's very difficult to imagine that actually the solutions we come up with are going to go to the depth of addressing the crisis. So I think it's a really helpful and really needed reminder of how we are trying to approach this crisis and solve it with the same kind of thinking that created it. And I think that's true probably of me, of maybe of both of you, of most people listening to this podcast. And I think if we go into 2026 thinking about, we haven't lost this, but in many ways it's not going that well to try and avoid the worst impacts. We need to go much bigger and different to try to make the changes that are necessary. And coming at the solutions from a different place has to be part of that. I don't know where that leads us to, but just as I was in the room there and both listening again now, Christiana, it just really underlined for me how much of the solutions lie in seeing the world differently and trying to reclaim what we've lost that interconnected with you.

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Christiana Figueres: Totally. So agree. I just spent a week up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, at the Fetzer Institute with some very thoughtful leaders, two of whom are also indigenous leaders, in this case, female indigenous leaders. And they were such teachers. And I was reminded every day of this conversation that we had in Brazil, because there is such a clarity in that indigenous wisdom. The fact that we think of dominance and control, right? Who, we and the West, because what we have learned, we think of control. How do we control? How do we dominate? How are we superior? And in indigenous wisdom, as we've heard, they don't think about equality as much as they think about belonging, a step farther than equality, right? It's like we belong here and everything, the whole entire web of life that is here belongs here. It's a deeper sense of interconnection than just equality. We also, just because you said we have to think about this, a worldview that is different. We have complained so much about short-termism as being one of the roots of the climate problem that we have. Then we tend to jump to, if it's not short-termism, then we should be thinking long-term. No. For them, they think about continuity. That's different than short-term and long-term. They think about continuity. They think of themselves as being a link in a chain that has come from and will proceed to. So continuity, so different, completely different than short or long-term. We are such extractive creatures and they don't think about extraction. They don't operate with extraction. They think about relationships. They think about reciprocity. Reciprocity, they are so careful about everything that they harvest and then they reciprocate for what they have harvested and consumed. It's just complete different eyeglasses, if you will, where from their perspective they hold place for uncertainty. How do we get so nervous about uncertainty? We hold on to this is going to happen with that. And if we are in the unknown or uncertainty, we get so nervous. Uncertainty actually is a fact of life. Yeah. Reverence, which we talked about last time, reverence and awe. And what I really appreciate, and one of the lessons that I've learned from these leaders, is that they recognize limits that we experience in our life, not as failures, but as guides. So a constraint or a limit is actually an invitation to learn. How different. How different. And as you said, Tom, if we don't think very, very differently, if we don't really evolve our worldview, there's no way that we will be able to engage in this year and in this decade and century with a more healing, regenerative structure for society, if we don't change the way we understand life.

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Paul Dickinson: Change the way we think. I mean, uncertainty, I think Christiana is an incredibly, potentially a very creative space. But how to get that change in thinking? I know somebody, pretty mainstream financial person who was saying, you know, maybe the answer is kind of psychedelics. That's not my personal recommendation, but some people talk in those terms. It's what we belong to. And what really came through to me when you were talking just now, Christiana, was the simple comments from the very brilliant sort of ecological economist, or you might call them EF Schumacher, who said that one of the biggest problems is that we're making decisions about the whole world from cities. And cities, you know, the center cities are extremely artificial environments. You know, they're not, they don't seem to be impacted by nature. But so many decisions about what happens to nature being made in these separated places. So something about belonging and connection and thinking differently is certainly at the heart of what I'm taking into 2026. So thank you for that.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: As we now look forward a bit to the year, it's going to be challenging in many ways. And I think that possibly what we can try and take from where we've come to now at the beginning of the year with this great interview you did, Christiana, is we need to, yes, focus on the urgent work at hand, yes, do everything that we can to try and improve the trajectory we're on, but also step back and have enough space that we can approach those challenges in a fresh and different way. It's very easy to just work harder and harder in the face of an emergency and not step back and then be thoughtful and participate in a way that enables the future to be different. It would be very easy for 2026 to be incredibly busy, running around, doing a lot of things, and end up at the year not really having made a big difference. So I think as we think about the year, that maybe is something to take with us, maybe for the three of us, and maybe listeners will see some resonance in that for themselves as well. Okay, should we wish our listeners a very happy 2026, and we'll see you next week.

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Christiana Figueres: Very good. Have a wonderful start of the year.

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Paul Dickinson: The days are getting longer in the Northern Hemisphere, they're getting shorter in the Southern Hemisphere, but change is always good, and looking forward to a wonderful new year. Great to be with you both, and see you next week. Bye. Bye.