What will it take to shift from seven generations hoarding to seven generations thinking?

Thank you for such a rich conversation over our two book club sessions this summer reading American Indigenous Democracy: A Call for Interdependence. These conservations went deep fast. Here's a recap and some resources people shared along the way:

Where we find peace

MCK opened with a condolence practice inspired by Chief Beverly Cook, acknowledging the time and energy it takes to show up. We each shared where we've felt peace recently: Queer mahjong gatherings on a rooftop in Seattle. Walks to the beach in San Francisco and being struck by the sound of waves as one of the oldest, most unchanged sounds in the world. A rare solo weekend with nothing on the agenda in Michigan. Motorcycle rides through the Arizona desert achieving flow state, despite the adrenaline. Making time for daily poetry. Permission from a friend to feel difficult, scary feelings offered its own kind of peace. These sharings were a reminder of the grounded, specific ways we each know peace.

The Great Law of Peace

We shared a collective reading of the book's account of the Great Law of Peace—how the Peacemaker unified the warring nations into what became the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and how the foundational role of women and clan mothers shaped that governance structure from the start. A thread that stood out: Peace is not the absence of conflict. It's the active, ongoing work of establishing universal justice through power, reason, and righteousness.

From there the conversation moved through some big questions:

• Consensus vs. voting — several folks reflected on the difference between "power over" (voting) and "power with" (consensus). We noted some recent examples of Fist to Five processes tipping into something that felt more like a vote than moving toward true consensus. Process is hard!
• Seven generations thinking — Seven generations is an intentional timeframe: it's the distance between the memory of knowing my great-grandmother, and her rememberance of her own great-grandmother. We compared this to the Chinese concept of nine generations (four above, four below) as a similar frame for long-term responsibility. In 九族 (jiǔzú), the individual is viewed not as an isolated unit, but as the central pivot point balancing the debt owed to the past with the duty owed to the future.
• "Seven generations thinking not seven generations hoarding." We connected the "seven generations" question to Lewis Hyde's The Gift — the idea that formal contracts and transactions are often substitutes for the informal sharing that used to hold communities together, and that a "get yours now" mindset is the opposite of seven-generations thinking. We suffer from zero-sum thinking in our present contexts.
• Care and interdependence — care as the active ingredient that makes interdependence possible, and the idea that peace and care are deeply relational rather than individual.
• Making peace "cool" — We think it's time for reframing peace as active, collective, and connected to thriving rather than as passivity or softness.
• Unlearning — much of the work we see ahead is in unlearning the dominant narratives, frames, assumptions that limit our imaginations for what's possible.

Resources shared in the chat

The zoom chat was blowing up with fabulous resources throughout our conversations. Here's as many as we could capture:

• American Indigenous Democracy — get involved
• Harvard Human Flourishing Program
• Gallup World Happiness Report
• Fist to Five decision-making
• Quaker decision-making model
• White Supremacy Culture characteristics (to be unlearned)
• When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse by Norma Wong
• Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle
• Becoming Kin by Patty Krawec
• The Gift, by Lewis Hyde
• 10 Elements of Dignity, Donna Hicks
• Repairing the Constitutional Omission of Care, Melissa Cosgrove
• Liberating Structures 2026 Fieldbook
• Daily poetry in your inbox from: Rattle, The Slowdown, Poetry Foundation, Only Poems, and Poetry Daily
• More-Than-Human Life Program
• Song of the Cedars collaboration between the Los Cedros cloud forest, Cosmo Sheldrake, the writer and lyricist Robert Macfarlane, the field mycologist Giuliana Furci, and the legal scholar-advocate César Rodríguez-Garavito
• Abolition Geography Ruthie Wilson Gilmore on organized abandonment

Read with your people

The publishers have some great resources for hosting your own book club gathering and discussion here. Host around your local community table.

Add your books to the (m)otherboard canon

Let us know what we should read next together! And add your personal canon to the collective list.

If you're not already a member, you can join future (m)otherboard book clubs here.

MR JESUS on tour

God(m)other Emily Best bringing Mr Jesus to festivals around the country. Find her at a screening, or think about hosting your own screening with your company, church, or community!

We live in an age where people form parasocial relationships with chatbots, where AI can generate sermons indistinguishable from the real thing, and where the line between authentic and artificial gets blurrier every day. Mr Jesus takes this reality and pushes it to its emotional, logical, and hilarious extreme. We explore the profoundly human questions about faith and purpose, and what happens when technology gets involved.

Sidewalk Film Festival August 24 and 29
Cary Film Festival September 12
Breck Film September 17
Kansas City Filmfest International September 18
Nashville Film Festival September 25

Thank you all again for bringing so much presence and thought to our conversations. It feels good to get on the same page with you all.

In interdependence,
The god(m)others