Envisioning Positive Futures

Patrick Anderson’s Future State introduces tools for recognizing and achieving personal and community potential

(Los Angeles, CA / Anchorage, AK) - It is common to hear some degree of incredulity from friends, family, co-workers, and in the popular media, that there are people out there who can really, truly see the future – think forward decades, visualize solutions to existing problems, create a roadmap to potential.

What’s the problem?

It has been said that an inability to see the future is a hallmark of trauma. Why?

• Trauma alters memory.
• Trauma can impair executive functioning.
• Trauma can alter one’s self-perception fundamentally.

Patrick Anderson’s Future State provides a structural framework for learning, not precisely what the future holds, but how to get there. Future State has created a suite of educational experiences to help native and non-native audiences, alike, gain perspective and tools by modeling “how we get there.”

Breakthrough initiatives teach:

• Understanding human experience the last 15,000 years
• Envisioning the Village of the Future
• How to manage and “heal” our own brain chemistries from the traumas of the past

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy has survived for centuries because it’s Future State stresses harmony among members. Respect permeates our Future State Education and Coaching Program.

A clearly focused Future State tells everyone where the organization is headed. Breakthrough Initiatives become a substitute for conventional Strategic Planning. They can be introduced and discussed at any time but set goals that cannot be achieved without innovative and creative thinking.

The historical and culturally based television series, The Sky Ahead of Us, in production for PBS, explores climate change through the lens of indigenous traditional knowledge and wisdom (TKW).

Shuká Káa: A Climate Story

On Your Knees cave is an archaeological site located in southeastern Alaska on Prince of Wales island. Human remains were found at the site in 1996. The remains were of a young man in his twenties, from about 10,300 years ago. He is known as Shuká Káa, Man Ahead of Us.

Generally speaking, the end of the Ice Age was characterized by unstable climatic conditions like we have today. 

Warming temperatures began a period of de–glaciation, resulting in the melting of Greenland’s ice sheets, glaciers across North America, and a significant rise in sea levels. 

This was Shuká Káa’s world.

Patrick Anderson:

The seafarer was found to be related to the Tsimshian, Tlingit, Nisga’a and Haida peoples living in the Pacific Northwest today. Shuká Káa, Man Ahead of Us, was found to have enjoyed an almost 100% marine diet. However, a life on the sea, at that time, was quite different than it would be today. Like us, Shuká Káa lived in a time of climate change.

Modern science has learned more about the history of ancient migrations through enhanced genetic analysis (DNA), which has, by and large, borne out the oral histories of tribal peoples since time immemorial.

Self-Transcendence reflects the state of mind of indigenous “World Elders,” regardless of age and location, who meet the moment, passing along their knowledge as it is needed.

Village of the Future – World Elders

During six weeks at the Blackfoot Reservation in the 1930’s, 30-year-old Abraham Maslow did not find support for his theory that social hierarchies are maintained by dominance.

Instead, he saw a tribal community where “...levels of cooperation, minimal inequality, restorative justice, full bellies, and high levels of life satisfaction...” were the norm.

Patrick Anderson:

During my career in Alaska, I watched a transformation of Villages from substandard houses with outhouses and honey buckets to places with more modern amenities, some more than others. Improved transportation, health care, education and water/sewer became common. Gathering traditional foods began to decline until today, many foods are unavailable during some seasons. Native people had always been able to adapt, but that adaptability began to fail in a world that was rapidly changing.
As a group of colleagues began a collective conversation behind a concept I had about what a Village of the Future could look like, we began to discuss a current change that Aboriginal populations had already survived, the great Ice Age. Migration was required as sea levels rose and fell. Water, a changing climate, and collective wisdom seemed to guide the ancestors. Could that wisdom provide a path to the future?

A Board Game of Resilience: Filling the Gap

Patrick Anderson:

At the 2022 Annual Convention of the National Congress of American Indians, held in Sacramento, CA, I placed a crude drawing on the table fronting my booth.

I was promoting my business, Patrick Anderson’s Future State, and a proposed Public Broadcast System series my partners and I referred to as “The Sky Ahead of Us,” a guide to a Future State I dreamed up as a proposal for reforming Alaska Native Villages.

The second grand goal for this Village of the Future is to heal from the Intergenerational Trauma, which I often refer to as “Childhood Acquired Trauma,” that plagues Alaska Natives.

The game is premised on 3 concepts: 1) our Fear Response and the Cortisol released when the response is activated is our primary enemy; 2) excess Cortisol lingering in the body causes a Stress Response in our emotional system that the brain seeks relief through a variable process of addiction; and 3) the pathway to healing is to recognize 3 Stress Response levels that Cortisol supports and actively seek to reduce the level of Cortisol in our body.

The game board, represents a simple Feedback Loop. The starting point is a person who has a Normal Stress Response and is in balance. Whenever a Threat appears, the Limbic System causes a Fear Response. The body reacts normally when it confronts the threat with Fighting, Fleeing or Freezing.

When the Threat is gone, the body returns to its balanced state (in the game I referred to this balanced state as Homeostasis). Drawing from a description of the way animals react to a threat and return to balance by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, there are 3 steps an animal follows.

It finds safety, usually defined as a safe distance from the predator. The animal starts to breath heavily and deeply to replace the Oxygen used in the response.

Finally, if the Cortisol chemical dump has not been dissipated during the Reaction, the animal will Tremor, or shake uncontrollably, until the chemical dump has been dissipated. If humans behaved this way, if there was just a Normal Stress Response, there wouldn’t be any need for a game.

Most importantly The Game of Resilience emphasizes the role simple brain chemistry plays in behaviors defined as negative or destructive, that could easily and more quickly be addressed without shame or guilt.

LINKS: Shuká Káa: A Climate Story - https://storycats.ggfilms.com/the-sky-ahead-of-us/

Village of the Future – World Elders - https://www.agence-rla.com/design-thinking

A Board Game of Resilience: Filling the Gap - https://youtu.be/3s3qFJD-PbY