Building upon its years of work recognizing native wisdom, documenting indigenous science, and bringing it to the attention of scholars and practitioners of "modern" western science, the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network has launched a new program which we believe will further strengthen these tender and important beginnings. This new program will recreate those opportunities told, and sometimes foretold, in our oral histories; by establishing a Council of Elders bringing respected and recognized holders of traditional knowledge together at places that hold sacred meaning for their peoples.

The Council of Elders is groundbreaking in several ways. In particular, it will provide a precious opportunity for the native equivalent of statesmen and women, scientists, healers, and religious leaders grounded in the knowledge of their own ancestors, to come together, open their hands and hearts and minds to the precious opportunity of exchange. Not only for themselves and for their peoples, but also for international scholars and scientists, these gatherings hold tremendous potential for global insight and inspiration.

The first gathering of Elders will be held at the Caldera of the Goddess Pele on the island of Hawaii in 2002. The second will take place in VeraCruz, Mexico, the oldest sacred site in Meso-America belonging to the Olmeca people and, according to oral histories in the Americas, Polynesia, and Africa, the location of earlier such Councils.

Most ancient religious traditions hold that we humans are the gardeners or stewards of the planet. Together, across language and place, our elders, the holders of these ancient understandings, have insights to bring to the pressing question of how "modern" man and woman can assume that responsibility to the betterment of our fractured and fragile world. And yet few attempts have been made today to recreate the opportunity for those elders who hold the histories, healing knowledge, ecological wisdom, and spiritual symbologies of their ancient cultures to meet and share, let alone to work together towards a common understanding of the problems of the modern world and the answers which their ages-old traditions might have to offer that world.