SourceCred Turtles, Wolves and Bears
Hoping to give some insight on the beautiful access to bottom up power distribution protocols, we all have, with our historical Two Row Wampum dialogue! Below we hope to describe what can be called the physics of bottom up consensus. Extrapolated from a 2k year old oral constitution and over 10k year old cosmology of the Kanienke’ha’ka of the Five Nations Confederacy. Below we can see what the founders of the US constitution & authors of modern modes of democracy failed to recognize.
Turtle:
Wake’niah’ton [wahgay-neeah-doan] “I am Turtle clan” — Indigenous meaning — ‘puts its head in its shell’. A reference to access of knowledge, in this case of the internal shell structure — which was needed for the construction of the outer shell. Both (Pre)physics & physics. The capacity to revert back to original instruction & design. This why they are known as the ‘owners of the house’ — if one wanted to know something specific about the architecture you ask the engineer/builder — they know it inside and out.
This may translate as folks who have firmest understanding of the SourceCred ecosystem, including core values of: Achieving polished product & Open Source Software values, authentic community care models, bottom up power for sustainable decentralized community building.
These folks might also have a keen awareness for the respective regional structures and needed protections, innovations for the voices therein-- of the global Sourcecred ecosystem.
In the indigenous formalizing process for decision making — Turtles play the role of observers & validators. They understand the ins & outs of the very dense cosmology, law or physics. They have a strong recollection of the oral documentation over thousands of years & the collective protocols decided upon by the generation of their respective spaces & times. Indigenous oral constitutions are in the context of physics — what everything, including us and our social dynamics — is made up of — Turtle, Wolf & Bear… or protons, neutrons & electrons.
What may be just as important as translating the above to the SC ecosystem, is understanding the role of the clan system design during informal dialogue in preliminary decision making discussion and casual dialogue, at the granular scale within groups of individuals in respective communities & ecosystems.
Naming can go a long way in bottom up modes of social organization. For example, when a Turtle is needed for balancing out a Wolf and Bear dialogue, or when a Bear should function as Wolf or Turtle in a specific group of all Bears. A beautiful means of scaling the historical Two Row Wampum protocols up to nation fire sized peaceful dialogue with formal use case — and all the way down to the friends & family ‘political’ fire with the informal use case.
Wolf:
Wa’ka’tha’hi’ion’ni [wagah-dah-hee-oanee] — “I am a path maker.” In the formal indigenous council process the Wolf clan speaker initiates by by bringing the issues from preliminaries onto the official floor to be formalized by deliberation with Bears and finally validated as official within the collectively agreed upon law by the Turtles.
This might translate to folks who have a knack for facilitating collective actions in the SC ecosystem. This can range from simply being a prolific contributor to facilitating collective gathering of minds in decision making. Initiating important responses to challenges or questions in the ecosystem — anywhere in that spectrum.
As with all the clans, Wolf clan is a reference to access to specific kinds of knowledge. The indigenous meaning of Wolf clan being “I am a path maker” references the essential spirit of the concept — always moving, pushing life forward, life in a constant motion has a fundamental impact on how everything is shaped — including initiating healthy ecosystems i.g. discerning the sick animals of prey. We all owe a great deal to this specific fundamental design in all things, as it pushed us, along with all our billions of years worth of dependencies.
Bear:
Waks’ka’re’wa’ke [waks-gar-air-wagay] — The indigenous meaning 'I eat oskara’ (inner of log). Referencing the access to all knowledge of transition. The transition of the end of a life cycle into another — from tree to Bear food. And the Bear clan is the medicine clan, it has its nose in all medicines.
As knowers of the know how of transition, they know how to keep an important issue alive in the council process. Thus they are the deliberators. 9/10 times the issue passes through all clans, bottom up decisions are streamlined! But the one time the Turtles seem the deliberation unlawful — the Bears know how to keep it alive. It is this interaction between fundamental elements of life, that the Wolf clan keeps going indefinitely, life constantly moving, evolving, expanding — the Wolf keeping the Bear on its toes.
Bear clan may translate as folks comfortable communicating & leveraging the transformative power of the Sourcecred ecosystem. Folks keenly aware for best ways to bring important new additions to the ecosystem — whether at individual, collective or whole ecosystems scale. Balance and sustainability at these scales in respective SC ecosystem areas is also important to this role and function. This goes along with an important bridging of conventional organization models and bottom up system design models throughout the ecosystem.
Making visible, value flows that are usually made invisible intentionally by conventional top down structures to efficiently alienate or extract labor, expression, ecological values generated. Bears are great at explicitly communicating and or executing actions that show this decoupling of control is fundamental to maximizing innovation potential in bottom up systems design.
Final Words
Will briefly conclude with making explicit the presence of all 3 of these concepts in all things and everyone of us, one may be more dominant at any given time. Especially as learners of these protocols from a non native lens. Representatives of clans should also be temporary for non natives learning in this dialogue as well, to preserve the incorruptibility of the titles until transformative potential is reached in Two Row Wampum process.
Also important to make explicit the scalability herein, with a historical precedent of millennia to back it up. Scaling to even include more than the three when the community arises that determines this is needed — the Onondaga have a 13 clan system, there is also a Potato clan somewhere in the Five Nations for example. No matter how funky folks need to get with clan design — the core of Turtle Wolf & Bear enables peaceful dialogue between autonomoys nation scales of communities!
Skennen Kowa, Great Peace to y’all.
Definitely helps to know it actually came together ok & makes sense 