Indigenous Governance and Tomorrow's Democracy: Join the Conversation
Every Friday, August 1-29, 2025
8 a.m. MT (11 a.m. BRT)
Trilingual format with simultaneous interpretation in English, Portuguese, and Spanish
Join us for Friday Dialogues: Listening as Governance—a multilingual journey into community-led governance that bridges continents and cultures, and an opportunity to meet representatives from Indigenous communities worldwide.
What if the solutions to our most pressing democratic challenges have been practiced for millennia, waiting in the collective memory of Indigenous and traditional communities worldwide? What if the path toward more equitable, sustainable governance isn't forward but inward—toward the ancestral wisdom that has sustained communities through countless generations?
This August, Meli Bees Network and the Media Economies Design Lab (MEDLab) are launching an exciting initiative to change this narrative. The Community Governance IdeaLAB creates space for Indigenous leaders, researchers, and allies to share their governance practices in their own voices, on their own terms.
The Forgotten Foundation of Democracy
Across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, Indigenous and traditional communities have developed sophisticated systems of collective governance that prioritize cooperation over competition, reciprocity over extraction, and mutualism over individualism. These aren't relics of the past—they're living, breathing models of democracy that continue to guide communities in managing their territories, preserving their cultural heritage, and protecting their environments.
Yet these governance models remain largely invisible in mainstream discourse, overshadowed by predominant North Atlantic systems that have historically erased or diminished Indigenous ways of knowing and organizing. The result? A global governance crisis that could benefit tremendously from the very solutions these communities have been perfecting for generations.
A Global Network Takes Action
At the heart of this initiative are the Friday Dialogues: Listening as Governance—a trilingual series that transforms Meli's weekly community calls into intercultural exchanges spanning three continents. Every Friday in August, participants will gather with simultaneous interpretation in Portuguese, Spanish, and English, creating a truly multilingual commons for sharing governance wisdom.
The knowledge shared in these sessions will lay the groundwork for future co-authorship opportunities, policy influence, and collaborative prototyping of what organizers call "pluriversal governance tools"—technologies and frameworks that honor diverse ways of organizing collective life. As democratic institutions worldwide face unprecedented challenges, the governance models of Indigenous and traditional communities offer proven alternatives rooted in principles of care, autonomy, and reciprocity. Their territorial self-management practices demonstrate that another world is not only possible—it's already being lived.
Join the Conversation
Whether you're a community leader, researcher, ally, or simply someone curious about alternative pathways to collective governance, the Friday Dialogues offer a unique opportunity to engage with governance wisdom. The Community Governance IdeaLAB recognizes that the solutions to our democratic challenges may not lie in innovation but in remembering—in honoring the governance models that have sustained communities through colonization, globalization, and climate change. By creating space for these voices to be heard, amplified, and shared, we're not documenting the past. We're building the future.
Hosted by Meli Bees Network gUG, in partnership with MEDLab. Photo courtesy of Meli Bees Network.