Founder's Statement
My passion is to foster and promote what I call "reciprocal transformation."
The idea is, wherever possible, to make the inevitable encounter between
indigenous systems and technological systems mutually enhancing.
Conventional analyses have primarily acknowledged the manifest poverty of
contemporary indigenous
cultures in comparison with the obvious material wealth of
industrial-technological societies. In the 21st century, however, the
specter of planetary destruction forces us to also see "wealth" in wisdom
about how to live sanely on the earth, in practices of sustainable land use
and in evolved knowledge of community-building -- all of which exist in the traditions of autochthonous peoples.
Correspondingly, mounting evidence of imminent environmental catastrophe
forces us to see "poverty" in the underdeveloped ecopsychology of the
technoculture.I believe it is possible for the interaction between
indigenous and technological worldviews to generate solutions to many of our
world's current grave dilemmas. Woodfish Institute was founded with this
idea of synergistic enhancement in mind. The guiding vision in all of its
projects is to go beyond a unidirectional model of aboriginal education to
create learning situations that are reciprocally transformative.
Leslie Gray
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