Today, October 27, I’m honored to deliver a keynote at St George’s House in Windsor Castle: “Towards a Culture of Peace-Indigenous Guiding Principles Applied to Innovation, Creativity and AI.”
This consultation between 25 world leaders from different disciplines will be held under the Chatham House Rule, so what’s shared in the room stays in the room. But I can share the journey that leads up to it and what I will personally share.
On Tuesday, the castle is closed to the public, so we will begin, if it is not raining, by witnessing the Changing of the Guard, and then, before lunch, I will offer prayers to the Eight Directions in St George’s Chapel.
First to the Great Mystery. Then to the East, where the red sunrise comes. Then to the South, where the yellow sun stands strong, and spring comes. Then to the West, where thunder, lightning, rain, and darkness come. Then to the North, where the melting White Giant lives. Then to Father Sky, and Mother Earth, and then to the Sacred Spirit within each of us.
This chapel holds deep English history. Edward III founded the College of St George in 1348 alongside the Order of the Garter, Britain’s oldest order of chivalry, and the chapel remains the Garter’s spiritual home. Edward IV began the building in 1475, and Henry VIII completed it around 1528. The chapel is a masterpiece of English Perpendicular Gothic, with its soaring fan-vaulted stone ceiling and the knights’ banners hanging above the choir stalls.
It is also the final resting place of English kings and queens. Henry VIII lies there with Jane Seymour, as does Charles I. In 2022, Queen Elizabeth II was laid to rest there beside her husband, Prince Philip, and her parents.
In this place of prayer, I will pray for spiritual upliftment and happiness for all the ancestors and representatives of this hereditary lineage, including the Church of England, and that they step forward with heartfelt courage to support the long-promised planetary transformation now underway and the healing of colonialism’s global impact.
I will especially pray for justice, restoration, and reconciliation to begin with the Indigenous peoples of British Columbia, whose lands were never surrendered or ceded and were illegally taken.
These lands were taken through the purposeful 1862 genocide to eliminate Indigenous peoples throughout the Salish Sea of Washington State and British Columbia, under the rule of Queen Victoria, also by armed force and the cultural genocide of Indigenous children in Indian Residential Schools.
These actions by the Crown directly violated King George III’s Royal Proclamation of 1763 and international law governing the conduct of nations. The Royal Proclamation recognized Indigenous Nations as holding title to our lands. It declared that those lands could only be acquired by the Crown through open agreement with the Nations themselves. Around 95% of British Columbia was never ceded, but is still called “Crown land.” Except for 5%, British Columbia is not Crown Land.
Despite everything inflicted upon them, the Indigenous peoples of British Columbia chose never to surrender their sovereignty, no matter what was done to them, and are now growing stronger than ever and have the land and potential to be the foundation of a new planetary economic system based in restoration, not extraction, as our completed Four Worlds Model now demonstrates.
After lunch, I’ll share an hour-long presentation with the relatives. Rather than the usual mainstream format of one person speaking for most of the hour, then some questions, I’m going to weave in our Indigenous Talking Circle process so that everyone can take part in our consultation.
After I ask each person to introduce themselves, I’ll share during what’s left of the first 30 minutes. Then each table of about five people will share in its own talking circle for 15 minutes, and we’ll close by bringing forward the sharing of each circle. Our ancestors always understood that when we speak, we must also take time to listen for the answer. And the first thing to build is relationships.
Our Elders share that this physical world of time and space is a womb world to the next. Just as a baby in the womb grows arms, legs, eyes, and ears for a life it cannot yet imagine, we are here to grow our spiritual arms, legs, eyes, and ears for the infinite worlds of light before us. When we leave, nothing of this world comes with us: not our titles, headdresses, crowns, wealth, or bodies.
Only our soul, that divine, eternal spark from the Great Mystery, and the spiritual qualities we have embodied during our physical journey travel with us when we journey to the Other Side Camp.
And Wakan Tanka is a mystery. Like a table trying to understand the carpenter, we can see the Creator’s qualities, but never grasp the unknowable essence of our carpenter. Even science points toward oneness: every grain of sand is unique, yet every electron in the universe is identical. Out of One comes many.
Artificial intelligence is now accelerating this understanding. AI is simply a mirror, reflecting the unlimited potential the Creator placed within each of us, for negative or positive.
What AI reflects depends on what we input and why. Even before AI, we were already on a path of self-destruction through extractive greed and materialism. Unless we change course from within, AI will simply accelerate our self-destruction. Mother Earth is not sick. We are sick,
That is why Indigenous guiding principles grounded in the spiritual laws of our universe matter so deeply right now. They are the foundation of the new planetary civilization now arising.
In December 1982, Elders, Spiritual Leaders, and community representatives gathered at the University of Lethbridge and, over a twelve-year process, gave us Four Worlds’ Sixteen Guiding Principles for Building a Sustainable, Harmonious, and Prosperous World.
For more than four decades, they have guided our Four Worlds work, and they carry the same teaching I will bring to Windsor Castle: “Starting from within, working in a circle, in a sacred manner, we heal ourselves, our relationships, and our world.”
When addressing the injustices we face, from my perspective, as challenging as this is sometimes, our actions must be done with love, compassion, and forgiveness, including for ourselves, because only hurt people hurt people, only colonized people colonize people, and only abused people abuse people. And as my beloved father always told me, “ Son, never judge others, because none of us know what our own end will be.
I will carry my full heart and faith into this day and then to the CC Forum in London to meet these good relatives.
