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, 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.

2. Navigating the Modern Migration: Developing AI systems that serve as "modern migration scouts" for communities displaced 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 alignment with ancestral stories—turning traumatic displacement into a purposeful pilgrimage.

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, 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

The Three Protocols for a Post-Extraction Future

The Council will enforce three core protocols to prevent the errors of the past:

1. The Economic Protocol of Generative ReciprocityThe old model extracted value. The new model must circulate it. We are architecting the "Seventh Generation Fund," where smart contracts ensure a percentage of all value generated by new systems automatically flows back to community-controlled funds for land, language, and culture revitalization. This bakes reciprocity directly into the economic code.

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

2. The Technological Protocol of Ceremonial SanctityTechnology must know its place. Our charter will mandate that AI and robotics serve as bridges to deeper human connection and ecological understanding, never as replacements. A learning AI must guide a user to a human elder; a restoration robot must be programmed with the "Original Instructions" of the Honorable Harvest. This prevents the disconnection that poisoned the old world.

3. The Systemic Protocol of Deep ConsentThe old system took without asking. The new one must receive permission. We are developing "Sovereignty Licenses" for data and knowledge, allowing communities to dictate how their wisdom is used by global AI. This ensures that the new digital economy is built on consent, not conquest.

The Future, Built Different: Stories from the Next Economy

This is what a post-extraction future looks like:

• The Sámi Reindeer IPO: A Sámi community doesn't just protest a mine; they launch a "Cultural Impact Bond." An AI, trained on their oral history, models the long-term economic and cultural value of preserving the migratory path versus the short-term gain of the mine. The bond allows global investors to invest directly in the preservation of a millennia-old culture, creating a new asset class based on protector economics.

• The Navajo Robotics Cooperative: Instead of outsourcing dangerous work, the Nation owns a fleet of restoration robots. Programmed with Navajo principles of Hózhó (balance and beauty), these robots repair watersheds, plant drought-resistant crops, and build sustainable housing. The community owns the robots, the data, and the restored land—a closed loop of generative technology.

• The Amazonian Carbon Currency: An AI, operating on Deep Consent, helps the Amazonian Murui-Muina people verify and tokenize the carbon sequestration of their protected territory. This creates a sovereign currency backed by the living forest, flipping the script so that the global economy must pay to keep their ecosystem intact, finally aligning economics with ecology.

  
  

The Call: Become an Architect of the Afterward

We are at the most unique juncture in history. We are not just adopting technology; we are defining the consciousness it will embody for centuries.

The Final Council is forming. My role, bridging my PhD research with advisory work in AI and robotics, is to help encode its protocols.

This is your call to action:

• 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.

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 future is not something that happens to us. It is something we architect.

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

Ahéhee’. Thank you.

— Tony Skrelunas, MBA, PhD Student, Sustainable Development Education; CoArchitect of the Seventh Generation Protocol