The Final Council: Architecting a Post-Extraction Future for Economics and Technology

By Tony Skrelunas, MBA, Phd Candidate, Navajo/Lithuanian, Transitional Economic Leader

Co-Founder of the Protectors of the Seventh Generation

The Dream of the Protocol

It begins with a dream. Not a gentle wish, but a solemn, recurring vision that arrives with the weight of prophecy.

In it, I walk through a world both familiar and shattered by the legacy of a single, flawed operating system: an economics of extraction and a technology of domination. But from this silence, a new council fire is lit.

I am led to a great, round room under a vast, starry sky. I take my seat among my ancestors, Hopi dry farmers, Sámi reindeer herders, Peruvian healers, and Maori navigators. Scientists and engineers sit as humble listeners. We are the Final Council. Our charge is to stand at the threshold of a new beginning, vetting every new economic model and technology with one devastating question:

“Will this system repeat the cycles of collapse, or does it honor the covenant of the Seventh Generation?”

Our purpose is not to reject progress, but to architect it. To ensure that the very logic of our new tools—from AI to quantum computing to new financial systems—is encoded with reciprocity from the start, so they become instruments of regeneration, not a second, more efficient wave of disaster.

The Spark in San Francisco: A Warning from the Old World

Years later, in a room in San Francisco, this dream met reality. I shared the vision with a circle that included a former Wall Street CEO, data and blockchain engineers, a Lakota elder, an phd student and professional from Aboriginal Australia. The former CEO's warning was a cold splash of truth: “The system I come from is an ecosystem of extraction. It is engineered to co-opt and commodify everything, even your spirituality. If you build this council, you must build it to be immune to that virus.”

Her words became our sacred charge. We were not just dreaming; we were designing an immune system for civilization’s next iteration. This was the birth of the “Protectors of the Seventh Generation”—a council designed to vet the future before it is built.

Where our Vision was Ignited in San Francisco

The Scholar's Path: Living the Integration—From Family to the Frontier

This dream demanded a rigorous path. It is the reason I am now pursuing a PhD in Sustainable Development, where my research is not a theoretical exercise, but a lived practice. My work is centered in a powerful, real-world intersection:

My fieldwork is a deliberate weaving of three strands. It begins with time spent with my own family and community, listening to the stories and the silence, ensuring this work remains grounded in the relationships it seeks to serve. From that foundation, I step into two seemingly opposite worlds in the Bay Area.

On one hand, I am advising a dedicated organization whose sole purpose is to save endangered Indigenous cultures, working to build the ethical foundation for any future technological intervention. On the other, I am sitting at the table with an advanced robotics and AI company, engaging with the raw frontier of technological capability.

I sit at this precise intersection. My PhD research focuses on creating a tangible blueprint from this unique vantage point, centering on a critical trifecta:

1. AI as a Cultural Sanctuary: Designing frameworks for AI to act as a "Linguistic Time Machine," not just archiving words but actively teaching the context and cosmology of endangered languages, ensuring that the cultural software needed to navigate a changing world is not lost. In basics, most languages have a older language form that most likely is a stronger language and more descriptive. The newer form has lost many of the old terms due to acculturation and adoption of worldly languages. A child in the future will come to a situation where they want to honor their ancient past, to raise a family, conduct a ceremony, using the older language. To do this, they would need an immersion, a conversation with an elder that can recite stories, lifeways, songs, prayers, ways of living with the land. Someone in the future will need healing when not one medicine person is left. Their family will want the proper background, the proper herbs, cultivation prayers, approach, family assistance, even cooking. A family member may decide to learn a certain prayer or song, to cultivate the medicines, even build a proper setting or structure. These are very real scenarios that some of our societies are already encountering.

2. Navigating the Modern Migration: Developing AI systems that serve as "modern migration scouts" for communities affected by climate change. These tools would be trained to identify new lands using both climate data and Indigenous knowledge—evaluating soil for ceremonial plants, water sources for traditional practices and continued agricultural systems, and alignment with ancestral stories—turning traumatic displacement into a purposeful pilgrimage. The pilgrimage could simply be finding new ways of living as community.

3. Robotics as Restorative Tools: Re-framing advanced robotics from replacements for human labor to extensions of the Protector's hands. This involves programming robots for reforestation, land healing, fighting dangerous fires, and sustainable building according to the "Original Instructions" of the Honorable Harvest, ensuring they become active participants in ecosystem restoration.

This doctoral work is the engine room where the vision is translated into testable models and deployable strategies. It provides the academic rigor behind the protocols the Council will uphold, born directly from the dialogue between the deepest traditions and the most advanced innovations.

The Convergence: A Partnership Forged in Protector Consciousness

A vision of this scale cannot be built alone. My journey has converged with powerful allies who provide the spiritual and intellectual foundations.

My work is now in direct partnership with Arkan Lushwala, an Indigenous guide from Peru whose vision provides the moral architecture for our council. Arkan’s work, "Time of the Black Jaguar," is a prophetic text for our era. He names this pivotal moment as a necessary initiation, a turn from a "predator consciousness"—a mindset of taking and domination—to a "protector consciousness," founded on sacred relationship, reverence, and reciprocity. His teachings outline the spiritual qualities—deep humility, courageous heart, and attentive listening—that we must cultivate to become the stewards the future demands. Arkan’s vision is of a conscious evolution into a future where humanity takes its place as a responsible, generative part of the cosmic order.

Tony, Arkan, and Marlene who is Tony's mother

Complementing this spiritual framework is the rigorous intellectual toolkit provided by Tyson Yunkaporta, an Aboriginal scholar from Australia. In his groundbreaking book "Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World," Tyson demonstrates a systems-based way of thinking that is relational, cyclical, and practical. He masterfully deconstructs the inherent unsustainability of Western linear, reductionist thought, arguing it can only create "complicated" systems, not the "complex" adaptive systems that mirror living reality. Tyson gives us the how: a tangible methodology for thinking, designing, and creating in a way that naturally generates regenerative, balanced systems.

This summer, Arkan and I will convene the first council of elders and wisdom keepers to draft the charter for this new era. This gathering is the crucial link between the academic blueprint, the spiritual vision, and the actionable protocols for the “Protectors of the Seventh Generation.”The

We Are the Ancestors We've Been Waiting For

The old world is ending. You can feel it in the parched earth, see it in the receding forests, hear it in the silence where our grandparents' languages once flourished. The system that taught us to take without asking, to see the world as a resource instead of a relative, is crumbling under the weight of its own hunger.

But all our peoples have been here before. We all have an emergence story. We remember the Emergence—how we journeyed through worlds, learning through each transition. In my ancestral story, when the Third World flooded from our imbalance, we carried its hard-earned wisdom into the Fourth. Now, we stand at the doorway again. The signs are clear: it's time to build the Fifth World.

Hózhó-nomics: The Original Instructions for What Comes Next

Hózhó (pronounced hoe-zhoe) is a Navajo word that means walking in beauty, balance, and right relationship with all of creation. It's not just aesthetics—it's a sacred way of being.

-nomics comes from the Greek for "management," as in economics—managing our household.

Together, Hózhó-nomics means managing our world to walk in beauty. It's the original instruction manual we were always meant to use.

The Three Sacred Protocols

1. The Governance Protocol: Wisdom Councils & The Sacred Veto

In previous worlds, we learned that decisions made without wisdom lead to disruption. In the Third World, people stopped listening to their elders, and the world became flooded.

The Fifth World Way: We restore the sacred circle. The Council of Grandmothers and Grandfathers sits at the heart of every venture. These are not executives; they are the memory-keepers, chosen by the old ways, who carry the long story of our people in their bones. Their role is sacred. They hold the "Sacred Veto." Before any new technology touches our land, before any ground is broken, they must ask: "Does this choice lead us toward Hózhó? Does it honor the seven generations yet to come?" If the answer from the ancestors' wisdom is no, their word is final. This isn't a delay; it is a return to a sacred pace.

2. The Technology Protocol: Ceremonial Sanctity with AI & Robotics

In our journey through the worlds, we've seen how tools can either connect us to creation or separate us from it.The Fifth World Way: We create technology that remembers its ceremony:

• The Dry-Farming Steward - A solar-powered partner to farmers worldwide, from the Hopi mesas to the African savannah. Its sensors don't just measure soil moisture; they understand the "soil breath," analyzing the complex web of life beneath the surface. It whispers to the farmer: "The earth two hand-lengths down remembers the last rain. It dreams of millet today." Or, "The wind patterns speak of coming dryness. The ancestral way is to build stone terraces here to catch the morning dew, just as your grandmother taught."

• The Herder Companion - For the Navajo shepherd and the Mongolian pastoralist alike, this platform becomes a guardian of the ancient bond between caretaker and herd. It monitors the flock's health through subtle behavioral changes, detecting illness days before the human eye can see it. It analyzes satellite data and weather patterns to suggest migratory paths that honor both the animals' needs and the grassland's recovery time, ensuring this sacred relationship continues for seven more generations.

• The Fire-Going Steward - As our forests face infernos too great for human firefighters, these robotic partners walk courageously into flames. They don't seek to conquer fire, but to work alongside cultural burn practices as partners in protection. Using targeted oxygen displacement, they can create firebreaks around ancient trees and sacred sites, while allowing beneficial fires to cleanse the land. They are the brave hands where the heat is too intense for human bodies.

• The Hózhó Algorithm - The sacred logic underlying all these tools. This AI is constrained by our principles, programmed to ask not "What is most efficient?" but "Does this decision increase beauty and balance? Does it honor the water and the animals? Does it leave the land more whole for the seventh generation?"

3. The Economic Protocol: Generative Reciprocity

The old economy is a one-way river, sucking life from the land and the people, leaving us all poorer.The Fifth World Way: We make the river circular again. This is Generative Reciprocity.

• The Seventh Generation Fund - A community-controlled fund where a percentage of all value created by new enterprises automatically flows back to language programs, seed banks, and land restoration. This isn't charity; it's the economy remembering its duty to the sources of its life.

• Sovereignty Licenses - When corporations want to use traditional knowledge—like the healing properties of desert plants or ancient dry-farming techniques—they must negotiate terms that ensure benefits flow back to the source communities in perpetuity. Our wisdom is no longer a free resource, but the most valuable capital we possess.

• The Generative Capital Fund - An investment vehicle that only supports businesses chartered as Sovereign Stewardship Corporations—enterprises legally bound to honor cultural values and ecological balance.

The First Council Fire: Planting the Seeds of the Fifth World

Before we can ask the wisdom keepers to share their knowledge, we must first build a vessel strong enough to hold these sacred dreams. This spring, in the shadow of the sacred mountains, a small group will gather—not for a conference, but for a foundation-laying council.

We will bring together just enough voices to begin the pattern: elders who carry the long memory, technologists who understand systems, entrepreneurs who build new structures, and storytellers who can weave vision into something the heart can understand.

Around this fire, we will co-create the sacred vessels:

• The Vessel of Purpose – Why does this work exist?

• The Vessel of Protocols – How do we ensure technology serves life?

• The Vessel of Relationship – How do we grow this circle with integrity?

This is not the beginning of an organization—it is the lighting of a sacred fire. And from this single flame, we will light countless others.

Tony speaking on a panel on new economic governance that ensures preservation and support for culture and land

Kee's Story: The Future We're Building

One hundred years from now, a boy named Kee will ask his grandfather to teach him the old language. Because of the systems we build today, his grandfather won't have to say, "I wish I could, but I never learned."

Instead, he'll smile and bring out a smooth river stone that seems to hold the warmth of countless hands. The stone will speak in the rich, melodic Diné Bizaad of the early 1900s: "Shí éí Kee yinishyé," it will begin. "My name is Kee. I will tell you about the mountain that has watched over our family since the Emergence."

The stone's voice will carry the subtle tones and rhythms that hold the Navajo worldview—the patience of the desert, the resilience of the pinyon, the laughter that survives generations. It will know these things because we designed technologies that treated cultural preservation as sacred work, funded by economic systems that valued language as precious living capital.

Kee won't be learning words from a dictionary. He'll be learning his place in the world from the accumulated wisdom of his people, made accessible through tools designed with reverence rather than extraction.

The Call: We Are the Bridge Between Worlds

We stand at a moment of profound global transformation. Across continents, Indigenous nations are navigating the journey from ancient lifeways to modern society, facing a critical question that concerns us all: how do we honor deep cultural knowledge while building economic systems that allow communities to thrive?

My work has been to explore this delicate balance worldwide—to understand how we might protect languages, healing traditions, and ancestral farming knowledge while creating opportunities for communities everywhere. From the high deserts to the halls of global innovation, I've been studying how we might build systems that serve both cultural continuity and our collective future.

The global conversation is beginning. This is not yet a formal council, but a worldwide gathering of curious minds asking essential questions about how we move forward together as one human family.

Here is where your global perspective is needed:

To the Systems Thinkers and Researchers Worldwide:Help us study how Indigenous and traditional communities across the planet are navigating this path. What models exist for preserving ancient wisdom while building economic resilience? How can humanity learn from both successes and challenges?

To the Global Technologists and Documentarians:Join us in exploring tools that might help preserve knowledge with proper protocols across cultures. How can we use technology to document traditions while respecting their sacred nature worldwide? What systems could help without exploiting?

To the Economic Innovators Everywhere:Help us imagine economic models that might value cultural preservation globally. What would businesses look like that generate prosperity while protecting our collective connection to the land and traditional practices?

To the Global Learners and Listeners:Bring your open mind and willingness to understand the complexities we face as one human family. This is not about having answers, but about asking better questions together across all cultures.

For Economists and Financiers:Help us build the models for Generative Reciprocity. Redesign the plumbing of the global economy.

For Technologists and Engineers:Join us. Code the protocols of Ceremonial Sanctity and Deep Consent into the foundational layer of the next internet.

For Wisdom Keepers:Your knowledge is the blueprint. Guide this council with the original instructions for a sustainable human presence on Earth.

This is our shared exploratory work: to understand how we might build a future where all children can honor their heritage while engaging with our interconnected world. We're not here to provide solutions, but to create space for meaningful global conversation.

The dream of the council is a warning and a gift. We have a brief window to install a new operating system for civilization—one that won't crash.

The council fire is lit. Come, bring your expertise. Let us build a world that our grandchildren will not have to fix.

Come—let us explore together how cultural knowledge and economic development might walk hand in hand for all of humanity.

In gratitude and solidarity,

Tony Skrelunas