Indigenous Systems Thinking Vol. 1: A Leadership Blueprint for Clarity, Connection, and Continuity

In Indigenous Systems Thinking Vol. 1, Jesse Grey Eagle offers eclectic leaders, culture workers, and system builders a robust intellectual toolkit designed to uproot the inefficiencies and fractures embedded in Western governance. This book is the cornerstone text for the Eclectic Leadership Movement, bridging ceremony, memory, data, and actionable wisdom for anyone determined to lead with clarity, connection, and confluence.

Rethinking Leadership and Systems

If leadership were a board game, most of today’s organisations would be playing Snakes & Ladders on a spreadsheet. Jesse Grey Eagle has provided a system that feels more like a campfire circle—one where memory, accountability, and belonging matter far more than frantic dice rolls to the finish. It’s no exaggeration to call this volume a cultural-shifting “operating manual” for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders looking for meaningful alternatives to business as usual.​

Who is Jesse Grey Eagle?

Grey Eagle, an Oglala Lakota raised on Pine Ridge Reservation, has lived the fractures he writes about. His career began in systems analysis in the private sector, where he absorbed first-hand the ways extractive institutions consolidate power by fragmenting relationships and trivialising memory. His pivot to founding Indigenous Futures OS—now central to embedding ancestral governance into law, education, and economic design—roots this work in authentic lived experience, not boardroom abstraction.

Grey Eagle’s writing is a blend of protocol and wit, ceremony and critique. In his words, “systems that break are systems that forget.” You’ll hear more of this in your soon-to-be-released podcast, where his humility and incisive humour help cut through committee-speak and management clichés.

The Big Problem: Systems That Don’t Remember

Western leadership frameworks are all about speed. Deadlines wag the dog. Dashboards glow but rarely warm anyone’s heart. The cost of this urgency is not just burnout or inefficiency—it is the structural erasure of memory, trust, and coherence. In the UK, only 4.7% of top leadership roles are held by ethnic minorities, with Black communities specifically holding a mere 1.5%. At this rate, true proportional representation will take decades, and that’s assuming we can make it past the next round of strategic reviews without dying of committee fatigue.​

Grey Eagle’s diagnosis: Systems do not break because of incompetence or lack of innovation. They break because they are misaligned with both time and memory.

Key Takeaways from Indigenous Systems Thinking

1. Memory as Architecture

Indigenous governance treats memory as operational code, not nostalgia. Systems must ACTIVELY recall the promises, stories, and relationships upon which they are built. If your system can’t remember who it serves, it isn’t a system—it’s a mechanism. This insight is not just poetic: studies show that organisations that value historical accountability see 28% higher stakeholder trust.​

2. Circular Time, Not Linear Deadlines

Grey Eagle eviscerates the myth that progress is best depicted as an upward arrow. Indigenous systems move in cycles: decisions require readiness, relationships require return, and ceremony refuses urgency. Relational time offers better resilience in crisis and greater depth of healing—outperforming linear decision-making by at least 25% in team cohesion metrics.​

3. Ceremonial Coherence

Ritual, not rush, restores dignity. Leadership is not just about checking boxes or “hitting KPIs” with the energy of a caffeinated lemming. In Indigenous Systems Thinking, ceremony is the timing mechanism and elders are the governance infrastructure. Systems that routinely lose coherence (think: health and education that treat humans like outputs) are symptoms of deeper cultural amnesia.​

4. Kinship and Consent

Consent protocols and kinship networks are central: authority is distributed, not hoarded. Grey Eagle’s model calls for lateral accountability, where all members (not just managers or boards) carry obligations that stretch across generations. For institutions struggling with diversity retention, this approach correlates with up to 40% higher engagement and reduced attrition rates.​

5. From Silos to Circles

The book takes merciless aim at “silo logic”—the bureaucratic tendency to segment services and knowledge, producing activity with little impact. Grey Eagle’s alternative: build governance circles, not silos, where feedback and relationships are central, and disconnection is treated as an arch-enemy. This shift is measurable. Case studies in Indigenous-led organisations report 32% increases in community wellbeing and service uptake after moving to circle-based leadership.​

Instead of treating leadership like a technocratic exercise, Grey Eagle invites us to view it as ceremony, pattern, and memory in motion. His path—from generational poverty, through direct experience with punitive Western systems, to activist architect—infuses every chapter with both gravity and hope.​

He cites his family’s traditions and elders as governance mentors, reminding us, “If the system doesn’t remember, it cannot be in right relation.” His humour is never far away, often poking fun at Western obsession with reform: “Most systems change is just a programme masquerading as architecture. Culture change on a six-month grant cycle: that’s the joke.”

Grey Eagle’s work goes beyond theory: his platform, Indigenous Futures OS, is now adopted across Turtle Island, Aotearoa, and the Scottish Highlands—integrating Indigenous protocols for land management, health, and education into real-world systems.​

Why Dashboard Diversity Isn’t Enough

If leadership feels like a pantomime sometimes, Grey Eagle’s work is a breath of fresh air. He skewers “performance equity theatre”—institutions that host endless listening sessions only after budgets are set, or release glossy DEI statements while quietly doubling down on silos. “Our real crisis,” he writes, “is dashboard diversity—the art of simulating coherence while quietly forgetting relationship.

The satire is not just for laughs: it is a cultural analysis warning. Don’t treat ceremony and memory as “add-ons” to systems; make them the heart of design.

Indigenous Leadership Outcomes

• Consensus decision-making (as seen in Haudenosaunee and Maori governance) delivers both higher commitment and reduced conflict—NGOs and companies that have adopted consensus protocols report 60% better retention and 25% lower burnout levels.​

• Storytelling as Leadership: Teams led with a culture of storytelling and memory transmission scored 60% higher on engagement and 41% higher on innovation surveys.

• Presence, Pausing, and Mindfulness: Practices rooted in Indigenous time models increased performance by up to 63% and satisfaction by up to 30% in multi-year cross-sectoral analyses.​

• Circles over Silos: Organisations that replaced hierarchical silos with feedback-driven circles saw improved wellbeing and better metrics for trust, uptake, and outcome coherence.

The Five Pillars of Indigenous Systems Thinking

1. Systems Hold Memory: Architecture must carry the stories, obligations, and unresolved grief across generations; what is forgotten will always return as rupture.​

2. Feedback Loops: Responsive design means treating feedback not as a tick-box but as a ceremonial obligation. This is the “original systems thinking,” long predating flowcharts and Gantt charts.​

3. Consent, Kinship, Governance: Authority flows from relationship and dialogue, not just title or expertise.

4. Role Restoration: Success is measured not by exit rates or quick fixes, but by the capacity to re-enter roles, relationships, and belonging after rupture.

5. Land and Restorative Infrastructure: All systems are rooted in land; repair begins with connection to place, season, and ceremony—think healing as a practice, not just a process.

Practical Actions for Eclectic Leaders

As you prepare for the Eclectic Leadership Movement, here are actionable steps drawn from Jesse Grey Eagle’s book and leadership practice:

• Begin all gatherings with intentional ceremony, not just agenda review; let memory and coherence anchor meetings.

• Decentralise decision-making, inviting elders, youth, and diverse kinship roles to participate.

• Pace decisions by readiness and relationship, not just fiscal urgency; embrace cycles and reflection, not relentless schedules.

• Document decisions not only as metrics, but as part of story and community archive.

• Restore feedback as a ritual of re-entry, ensuring unresolved issues can return for deeper resolution.

• Mentor by modelling: let leaders demonstrate wholeness, accountability, and humility at every stage.

• Expand your reporting: balance metrics with stories, relationships, and the broader narrative of healing and belonging.

Building Leadership for the Future

Indigenous Systems Thinking isn’t just theoretical—it offers a living pathway for leadership transformation in times of uncertainty and crisis. It shows us that to build durability, we must invest in memory, allow grief its season, and measure progress by our capacity to restore and reconnect.

This text remains especially urgent for world leaders, where the discrepancy in representation and ongoing social fractures highlights both the risks and opportunities of structural change.​

From Fragmentation to Confluence

Leadership for the next generation is about coherence, connection, and continuity—not acceleration. Jesse Grey Eagle’s Indigenous Systems Thinking Vol. 1 is a blueprint for shifting how organisations hold time, memory, and accountability.

If your systems feel fractured, in endless reform loops, or lacking meaning, the architecture Grey Eagle describes offers clear steps forward: restore relationship, pace for readiness, remember your obligations, and always begin in the circle.

And—if nothing else—let’s make sure our meetings have more ceremony than dashboard theatre, and our retreats more substance than strategic jargon. The ancestors, and the future, will thank us for it.

If you are inspired by this review, then get a copy of Jesse's ground-breaking book.

Join the Eclectic Leadership Movement.

The movement for improvement.

Lead with improved Clarity, Connections & Confluence.

Shehzaad Shams

London, UK

20th November, 2025