World Elders Building New Leaders

Television series, The Sky Ahead of Us, tells a story of life along the edge of continents

"The Sky Ahead of Us" web experience. Illustration: Dan Griffin/GG Films. https://storycats.ggfilms.com/the-sky-ahead-of-us/

(Los Angeles, CA / Anchorage, AK) - The historical and culturally based television series, The Sky Ahead of Us, in production for PBS distribution, explores climate change through the lens of several millennia of traditional aboriginal knowledge and wisdom (TKW).

The series traces the historic migrations of peoples, south from Asia, across the lost land of Beringia, then Alaska, and down the coasts of North and South America – by “the greatest explorers the world had ever known,” who would populate the vast land masses.

From this adventure of discovery, aboriginal societies developed sophisticated understandings of both Nature herself, and human nature.

Scientists & tribal community members work together 2

Executive Producer, Patrick Anderson, A.B. Princeton, J.D., University of Michigan, who is a Tlingit tribal member from the Thunderbird clan of Dry Bay, Alaska, explains.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health by the noted psychologist, Abraham Maslow, is predicated on fulfilling innate human needs by priority.

Patrick Anderson Executive Producer 3

Once culminating in the state of self-actualization, according to Anderson, Maslow sought to elevate his famous “Pyramid” to a “higher” point through his observations while living with a Blackfoot Indian community, Siksika.

There, the expectation is that children are born self-actualized, and the community would ensure that all children achieved it.

"Three Peaks." 4

In turn, “elders are those from any aboriginal culture who have reached a state referred to as ‘Self-Transcendence,’ which Maslow later defined as, ‘...the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos.”

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.

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

It also paints an astounding picture of migrations as early as 15,000 years ago, and suggests how these living histories may provide important guideposts in today’s era of climate change.

To learn more about the future seen through the lens of the past, visit The Sky Ahead of Us.

"Now a new dawn is breaking, as science and oral histories interweave answers to a climate in question..."

¹ & ² : Scientists and tribal community members work together to create the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, off the central coast of California. Drone images: Dan Griffin/GG Films.

³ : Patrick M. Anderson, A.B. Princeton, J.D., University of Michigan, Executive Producer, "The Sky Ahead of Us," owner, Patrick Anderson's Future State https://patrickandersonsfuturestate.com/
Photo: Dan Griffin/GG Films.

⁴ : "Three Peaks." "The Sky Ahead of Us," includes stories that are thousands of years old. "Mastumho, with his magic wand, stirred the contents of a three-legged pot, or “Molcajete Bowl” and he threw the contents behind him, thus creating the Milky Way, the entire universe, water, and air. When he finished, he placed the empty pot upside down on the Earth, with the three legs up, creating the three peaks, known as “Hamock Avi” in Mojave language." Illustration: Dan Griffin/GG Films