How ancient indigenous wisdom is reshaping the most advanced technology conversations of our time
There’s a prayer in indigenous communities that asks for the wellbeing of the seven generations to come. Not just your children, but their children’s children’s children—stretching forward into a future you’ll never see, but one your decisions today will shape.
Dr. Catriona Wallace, one of the world’s most influential AI pioneers, carries this prayer into every boardroom, every technology decision, every conversation about humanity’s future. On The Wisdom Of … Show, she revealed why this ancient principle has become the most radical framework for modern leadership.
“What I do now determines what will happen to them,” Catriona explained, tracing her lineage back seven generations: “I am the daughter of Patricia, who’s the daughter of Eileen, who’s the daughter of Elizabeth, who’s the daughter of Alice, who’s the daughter of Mary, who’s the daughter of Sarah. These grandparents called for my birth. And just as I respond to them, I also now call for my ancestors and seven generations to come.”
This isn’t mystical thinking … it’s the most practical leadership philosophy for our age of AI.
The Evolutionary Tipping Point
Catriona has been working in AI for over two decades, long before ChatGPT made artificial intelligence a dinner table conversation. As the founder of the Responsible Metaverse Alliance, Chair of Boab AI, and co-author of Checkmate Humanity, she’s witnessed technology’s trajectory from the inside.
Her perspective is sobering … “We’re at an evolutionary tipping point. We’re at the early stage of transhumanism where technology and humanity come together.”
This isn’t science fiction. It’s happening now through the generative AI tools we use daily, the algorithms that shape our decisions, the digital interfaces that increasingly mediate our reality. The question isn’t whether we’ll merge with technology, but how consciously we’ll navigate that transformation.
“Australia is at serious risk of just becoming a backwater AI country where the tech giants come to make money, to take data and take control,” Catriona warned. The same risk faces every organization that treats AI as merely a productivity tool rather than an evolutionary catalyst.
Beyond Efficiency: The Regenerative Leadership Revolution
The conventional approach to AI adoption focuses on optimization … faster responses, lower costs, higher output. But Catriona’s work with leaders in indigenous communities has revealed a profound alternative: regenerative leadership.
Working with plant medicine guides and traditional healing practices, she’s witnessed tech leaders experience radical shifts in perspective. “A dear friend, professor Bennett Zelner, did a plant medicine journey where he saw the entire economic system and all of the points lit up that were extractive,” she shared. “From that moment on, he could never unsee that. He developed a whole new genre of economics called regenerative economics.”
This isn’t about replacing business acumen with spiritual practice, it’s about integrating the wisdom of systems thinking that has sustained human communities for millennia. Indigenous approaches center reciprocity rather than extraction, regeneration rather than depletion.
When applied to AI strategy, this lens transforms everything. Instead of asking “How can AI make us more efficient?” leaders begin asking “How can AI help us contribute to the wellbeing of seven generations?”
The Responsibility Imperative
Catriona’s concept of “responsible AI” goes far beyond ethics committees and bias audits. It’s a comprehensive framework encompassing eight principles, including:
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Human-centered values at the core
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Fairness and non-discrimination
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Reliability and safety
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Privacy and security
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Transparency and explainability
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Contestability and accountability
“There should be an AI-first strategy for all businesses,” she emphasized. “Instead of having a sales-first or marketing-first, it should be an AI-first strategy. How is AI going to enable the evolution of the business?”
But here’s the crucial insight – this AI-first approach must be grounded in responsible principles from the beginning. “If organizations don’t have that, they will absolutely be left behind.”
The Leadership Transformation
What emerges from this conversation is a fundamental challenge to how we think about leadership in the AI age. Most leaders are focused on adaptation – how to use AI tools to improve existing processes. But Catriona is calling for transformation … how to evolve as human beings alongside evolving technology.
“We need regenerative leadership, not extractive leadership,” she explained. This requires leaders who can “see in new ways and in different ways how global problems can be solved, how problems in their organization can be solved.”
The path forward involves what she calls “rapid transformation” … healing the disconnection from our deeper values, cleansing outdated mental models, reconnecting with nature and community, developing new vision, and committing to regenerative action.
The Path Forward
The future belongs to leaders who can hold the tension between technological advancement and human wisdom. Catriona’s work demonstrates that the most sophisticated AI strategies are actually grounded in the most ancient principles of stewardship and interdependence.
“I have a deep love of humanity and a deep love of nature and a particular orientation around the way indigenous communities think and feel,” she reflected. “And I love technology. The love I have of technology is like the way you would love a child or love an animal.”
This integration, technological sophistication with indigenous wisdom, AI innovation with seven-generation thinking, may be our species’ greatest hope for navigating the transformation ahead.
The question isn’t whether AI will change everything. It already is. The question is whether we’ll guide that change with the wisdom to consider seven generations, or merely the next quarterly report.
