TECHNOLOGIES
Research insights from the ORA global community A publication of Omega Resilience Awards (ORA) A program of Commonweal | 2026
“When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.”
—Ilya Prigogine
SERIES INTRODUCTION Four years ago, Commonweal founder Michael Lerner had a sense that the world was entering unprecedented times. Shocks already being felt across much of the Global South were now going to impact everyone with similar intensity. Out of this recognition came a question: How do we practically navigate the polycrisis—the cascade of interconnected crises reshaping our world? ORA (Omega Resilience Awards) was born as an attempt to learn from those already doing this work. Rather than inventing solutions from the outside, we gathered a global community of changemakers—63 fellows and 30 research teams across India, Africa, Latin America, North America, and Europe—to form a learning community. The goal: support each other, accelerate understanding, and share what emerges. Thanks to the Oak Foundation, we were able to fund a four-year prototype to discover what was possible. And we are finding out that a lot is possible. Small islands of coherence exist around the world. When connected, they strengthen the larger field of work interested in creating generative, life-giving human culture. This is one of a series of three zines created by ORA research teams. These zines look inward at our community to understand what works, what’s emerging, and what insights might inspire others navigating similar terrain. We offer these reflections as contributions to the urgent work of collectively imagining what comes next.
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Living the Polycrisis
Survivance, Worlding, and Relational Technologies
Photo by Isapi Rua 2
Survivance (survival and resistance) and the Polycrisis: Cultural, Animist, and Digital Technologies reflects a set of conversations with ORA Fellows to explore the role of technologies. We interviewed 10 ORA Fellows across four continents and eight countries, including Kenya, Nigeria, India, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, and Mexico. The following Zine presents nine overarching emergent themes and subthemes illustrated with examples and story from fellows. Also included are our reflections and notes. (Virtual interview conversations were conducted using Zoom and lasted between 30 mins and 1.5 hours.) Artwork and photography provided by ORA Fellows.
survival + resistance
Survivance
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Sections in this Zine 1. Polycrisis is Lived, Sentient, and Relational 2. Violence as Structural, Gendered, Racialized, and Epistemic 3. Technology Reframed as a Relational Support Structure 4. Continuous Fluctuation Between Colonial and Indigenous Paradigms 5. Spiritual Technologies and Memory Work 6. Arts, Narrative, and Witness as Resistance 7. Community Knowledge as Primary 8. Cultural Liberation as the Precondition for Political Change 9. ORA as a Living Network
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Illustration by Manita Oraon via Jacinta Kerketta
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1 Polycrisis
is Lived, Sentient, and Relational
Photo by Jeferson Panche Chocué 6
Polycrisis is not abstract or global, it is lived locally and experienced through overlapping systems of violence. Examples ● Environmental degradation is inseparable from gendered, racialized, caste-based, and state violence.
● Extractivism (mining, wind, solar, land, water)
intensifies instability, creating often “impossible choices” for survival.
● Multi-level violence compounds extractivism and
operates at multiple interacting levels: interpersonal, communal, institutional, and state or federal.
Summary Conversations made clear that for the communities represented, the polycrisis and climate in particular produce conditions that are beyond government solutions or risk management toward “embodied harm and survival politics.” Climate is not an external shock—it is structurally produced.
Photo Courtesy of Natalia Roca of Fuegas, Brigadistas Organizadas 7 7
Gendered, 22Structural, Racialized, and Epistemic Violence
Violence is not only physical but epistemic—targeting knowledge systems, memory, and legitimacy. Epistemic violence seeks to eradicate language (prioritizing hegemonic language, i.e., Spanish and English), as well as religious sacred and spiritual practices including rituals, relations with land, plants, and other living beings. Violence is positioned as world-erasing, not just lifethreatening. It curtails futures (i.e., life expectancy in one of the regions is between 40-50 years).
● Stories of pervasive gender-based and sexual violence,
including torture and murder, particularly against cis and queer women
● Epistemic erasure of Indigenous, Dalit, Adivasi, and Afrodescendant knowledge systems
● Criminalization or delegitimization of Indigenous cosmologies and governance structures
Subthemes
Colonialism as Spiritual and Bodily Violence Colonialism is experienced as an assault on the entire body: physical, cultural, spiritual, and historical
● Destruction and desecration of shrines and sacred sites ● Pathologization endangering of traditional healers, diviners, as “witches,” “evil,” or “devilish”
● The imposition of Christianity as a civilizing force that delegitimized African cosmologies
● Cultural erasure through moral, epistemic, and institutional violence
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Healing as Resistance: Healing Practices Are Inherently Political Healing is not recovery from harm alone; it is an assertion of continuity in the face of attempted erasure.
Forms of Resistance ● Traditional medicine and spiritual healing as counter-colonial epistemologies
● Calling on ancestors as an act of historical reclamation
Photo, Isapi Rua
Artwork, Mwongela Kamencu (Monaja) 9
Cosmovisions
India Cosmovisio Responses to Structural Violence ● Epistemic erasure, risk of harm, exposure to violence, poor health, caste marginalization
● ORA is a platform for recognition | Understanding change is slow
● Ecology offers deep healing for children and adults—“nature as archive”
Illustration by Labani Jangi via Jacinta Kerketta 10
ons
Epistemic Violence The ORA Fellows in the India region reveal two distinct yet resonant Indigenous responses to structural violence. Fellows operate from positions historically rendered marginal within dominant national narratives, via Dalit trans organizing in Karnataka and Adivasi land-defense in Jharkhand. Yet each insists on community knowledge as primary rather than derivative. Their work reframes resilience away from neoliberal adaptation toward collective continuity. Sacred technologies are embodied in gharānā structures, ritual transition protocols, and theater as an epistemic insurgency. Technologies of continuity manifest in night schools, revived democratic Parha systems, poetic testimony, and forest-based cosmologies that resist extractivist logics.
Image by Chandini Gagana 11
Cosmovisions
Latin America Wide critique of extractivist practices: ● Land, wind, solar power, fire, water ● Recognition of all living things animated with spirit
● Honoring Pachamama is most important
Photo, Isapi Rua 12
Pachamama and Land-Based Autonomy “Esta intervención también ha aportado a una desvinculación de la espiritualidad… This intervention (extracting natural resources) has also supported a disconnect with spirituality…” —ORA Fellow, Latin America Honoring the spirits (people, serpents, animals, plants, wind, everything has a spirit) is important to the everyday lives of the communities most impacted by extractivism, exploitation of natural resources, and colonial violence that threatens cultural transmission of language, rituals, and customs that have defined these communities before Spanish colonialism. The hegemony of Spanish language and Spanish colonialism result in racist practices that do not respect the self-determination of Indigenous nations throughout South America. These territories or sovereign communities are not a part of the modern nation-state. The fellows are from or related to these Indigenous nations or zones and are introducing various technologies, such as radio broadcast or biological study of insects, so that they can study climate change on their own terms. Indigenous people have their own cosmological frameworks for understanding it as a spiritual imbalance between people and their ecosystems. The theme of spirituality as a practice of remembering or creating social memory for the dead was also salient. Each community found creative ways to honor the memories of victims of structural violence.
“Every time I pray, I pray to my saints and they (the victims of sexual violence) are my saints. They are my own saints, like my own Santería. My own religion where I keep her memory alive and where, when I ask the sky or wish for a good wish, I am sure they are protecting me too. I feel that a relationship has been established a little between that which is unspeakable, which we cannot explain, but which connects us with them, with talking about their history, with doing justice for them, and with looking back again at the terrifying thing that happened to them in a way… artistic love, we believe, also manages in some way to cleanse all the violence that occurred in its stories into something.” —ORA Fellow, Latin America 13
Cosmovisions 14
Africa
Cosmovisions
● Creating organizational and institutional responses to diverse ecological challenges
● Establishment of new community structures and innovations
● Journalism as an organizational change agent ● Art and music as consciousness-raising technologies ● Consider how “Westernization” has impacted traditional practices in medicine, spirituality, and cultural life.
Prince Eze (Screenshot taken by Susan James from documentary Polycrisis in the Niger Delta | https://vimeo.com/1064515032) 15 15
3 Technology Reframed as a Relational Support
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What Counts as Technology?
● Communities, kinship systems, ritual practice, collective governance (Garana structures, Parha councils)
● Arts-based practices (theater, poetry, radio, storytelling) ● Spiritual practices, ancestral veneration, ecological memory (“nature as archive”)
Ref lection This is a direct dismissal of extractive, Western technological paradigms. Technology here stabilizes life rather than optimizes growth. It precedes and exceeds the state.
Photo, Evaluna Valdivieso Segura 17 17
4Moving Between
Colonial and Indigenous Lifeways Fellows operate in liminal or borderland spaces strategically and subversively navigating conditions, ways of knowing and being between worlds.
Examples: Navigational Requirements
● Fluency in Western institutions while grounding action in Indigenous epistemologies
● Tactical engagement with media, NGOs, education systems, and research frameworks
● Conscious resistance to full assimilation or translation of Indigenous knowledge into colonial terms
Tensions Visibility creates significant opportunities for raising voices, awareness, and consciousness, as well as potential risk. Fellows have studied in Western academic fields and institutions and spoke about translating those frameworks to problem solve in their home communities. They critiqued their theoretical training in the academy because it does not consider Indigenous and African worldviews and other forms of knowledge about biology, the planet, and climate crises. Each of the fellows is interested in practical applications of theoretical and cultural knowledge to produce solutions for everyday people. Recognition can empower—or expose— communities to further extraction and surveillance. 18
Prince Eze (Screenshot taken by Susan James from documentary Polycrisis in the Niger Delta) 19 19
5Spiritual
Technologies and Memory Work
Spirituality in communities is not an individual belief system but forms a collective (and protective) infrastructure.
Practices
● Honoring Pachamama and animism among land, animals, wind, and water
● Venerating and integration of relational ethics with ancestors
● Memorializing victims of violence as saints, ancestors, protectors
● Restoring relational balance disrupted by colonial extraction
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Ref lections Spirituality functions as “counter-archive” for rehistorization and a “justice system,” particularly when there is no legal recourse. It sustains communal memory in the absence of state accountability. Spirituality is a relational system spanning the living, the dead, and the unborn.
Elements God is encountered through community, not private devotion.
● Ancestors are agential beings who participate in healing, guidance, and political struggle.
● Prayer consistently invokes both God and ancestors as co-present forces.
● Sacred sites, shrines, festivals, and rituals are infrastructures of wellbeing.
Prince Eze (Screenshot taken by Susan James from documentary Polycrisis in the Niger Delta) 2121
6 Arts,
Narrative, and Witness as Resistance Storytelling is not representational it is interventional.
Examples ● Theater, poetry, radio, journalism, ritual, collective witnessing
● Artistic love as a means of transforming unspeakable violence into shared meaning
Ref lections Art narrative and witness are positioned as a technology of survival, communication, recognition, not expression. “It mobilizes outrage, preserves dignity, and enables collective processing of trauma.”
Photo, Evaluna Valdivieso Segura 22
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Illustration by Labani Jangi via Jacinta Kerketta
Art and Music as Political Technology Music operates as a technology of memory, resistance, and futurity. Functions ● Grounds present struggle in ancestral history ● Creates a felt sense that ancestors are witnessing and accompanying current movements
● Serves as homage to those who resisted colonial oppression
● Makes cultural erasure audible and contestable 24
Arts and Sound as Social Practice Art does not merely represent politics, it does politics by shaping collective consciousness and possibility. “Y en este sentido hemos tomado la radio porque es una tecnología que nos permite, también, acercarnos de una manera sútil. (And in this sense we have taken to the radio because it is a technology that also allows us to become closer as a community in a subtle way).” — ORA Fellow
● Grandparents cooking and listening to the radio, radio as technology of the past
● Sound art and connection with radio broadcasting ● Radio as an accessible skill The fellows are using interdisciplinary arts to respond to climate and political crises in their regions. In Latin America theater, sound art and radio broadcasting are some of the creative methods that fellows are introducing into their communities. Each of these artistic practices has a community-based focus coupled with accessibility as problem-solving tools that everyday people can learn. For example, one fellow spoke about being inspired to use radio broadcasting in Guaraní communities because when she was growing up, her grandparents listened to the radio frequently. “Siempre recuerdo a mi abuela escuchando la radio, cocinando, escuchando a mi abuelo. (I always remember my grandmother listening to the radio while she was cooking and listening to my grandfather.)” She is interested in the connections between sound art and radio broadcasting, which allows her to rethink how radio can be repurposed to address extractivism in Guaraní communities. Photo, Isapi Rua
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7 Community Knowledge as Primary Fellows insist on epistemic “sovereignty.” Examples ● Indigenous knowledge systems are
complete, longstanding, expansive, and self-sustaining.
● Resilience is a way of life and
being, embedded in collective continuity (“not neoliberal adaptation,” or individualism). Change is slow, cyclical, and spanning generations.
Ref lections This directly challenges development, humanitarian, and climate-policy timelines that demand immediacy and measurable outcomes.
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Photo, Isapi Rua 27 27
8 Cultural
Liberation as the Precondition for Political Change Liberation cannot be achieved through politics alone.
Examples ● Political struggle fails if culture remains colonized.
● Culture defines “the rules for living with people.”
● Social change must be socialized— internalized, practiced, and lived.
● Artists function as visionaries who can sketch futures before institutions catch up.
Ref lection This reframes revolution as a cultural process that precedes and enables structural transformation.
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Photo, Chandini Gagana
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9ORA a LivingNetwork ORA is framed not as a project, but rather as connective tissue, in which members share the omnipresence of struggle and solidarity.
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Functions ● Amplifying voices, political positions “without extraction” ● Enabling cross-regional recognition and solidarity ● Supporting survivance politics
Ref lections, Tensions The interviews raise the question of how social networks avoid reproducing the very hierarchies they seek to dismantle. Resilience is not episodic or related to a singular event or even a set of events. Rather, it’s pervasive, with a long reach. What types of challenges do individuals who receive funds navigate among the collective?
Photo by Isapi Rua 3131
Endnotes Emergent themes are not just about climate, technology, or resilience. They ask, who gets to define life, knowledge, and futurity under conditions of ongoing colonial violence?
ORA Fellows
● Work collectively ● Reject technocratic fixes ● Center relational worlds ● Treat memory, spirituality, and art as infrastructure ● Reclaim survivance as an active, political practice
Photo, Agnes Oloo 32
“When I lose my hope, I see around me forest and river.” —Jacinta Kerketta
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Technologies Meet the Research Team SUSAN JAMES Susan James, Ph.D. is leading two ORA Research Grants, including Integrating Global South Knowledge Systems into Organizations in the Global North, as well as a project to understand the narratives of both traditional and modern technologies—including sacred practices and ritual—that exist within communitybased projects within the larger ORA community. She is a professor and Chair of the Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Eco-Psychologies M.A./Ph.D. Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her work has focused on structural violence, transnational African spiritualities as resistance and innovation, visual design methodologies and research communication strategies. Her journal publications include American Journal of Community Psychology, Violence Against Women, and Women and Therapy.
JADELE MCPHERSON Jadele McPherson, Ph.D. is an artistscholar who has produced an extensive body of work as a vocalist, musician, and theatermaker. As a vocalist, Jadele creates sound art to produce collaborative projects based in Black experimental and improvisational musical lineages, which explore healing and embodied memory in West Africa and the African Diaspora in the Americas. As a cultural anthropologist, she researches the impact of sound on social and cultural movements throughout the African Diaspora, with a focus on Afrolatinidades and migrations. Dr. McPherson’s current project amplifies the stories of Afro-Cuban artists and historical actors who founded the first Afro-Latino mutual aid organizations in Florida and New York City at the end of the late nineteenth century. Photo credit: Jon Vachon 34
JACKÉL AGBOOLA Jackél Agboola is a transdisciplinary artivist and doctoral researcher in Depth Psychology with a specialization in the Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Ecopsychologies program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her research explores how African diasporic and Indigenous communities sustain cultural memory, ecological relationships, and collective wellbeing through sacred knowledge systems, ritual, art, and other spiritual and relational technologies. Working across psychology, decolonial studies, ecology, and expressive arts, she collaborates with healers, artists, and community knowledge keepers to explore how embodied, spiritual, place-based, and more-thanhuman ways of knowing respond to the intersecting crises of colonialism, climate disruption, and social inequity. Her work is grounded in commitments to epistemic justice, relationality, and collective flourishing.
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A Note of Gratitude
Fellows Interviewed
We want to extend our gratitude to the ORA Fellows for taking the time to talk with us and share their experiences and visions for this ongoing life labor.
AFRICA
Mwongela Kamencu (Monaja) - Kenya Agnes Oloo - Kenya Prince Eze - Nigeria INDIA
Chandini Gagana - Karnataka Jacinta Kerketta - Jharkhand LATIN AMERICA
Evaluna Valdivieso Segura - Chile Natalia Roca - Argentina Isapi Rua - Bolivia Jeferson Panche Chocué - Colombia Orlando Huerta Ponce - Mexico
You can use this QR Code to view additional resources for stories featured in this zine.
orawards.org/research/technologies
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Photo, Jacinta Kerketta
मातृभाषा की मौत
Matrabhasha ki Maut Death of the Mother Tongue In the very mouth of Mother Mother tongue was imprisoned and children grew up demanding her release. Mother tongue had not died naturally She had been assassinated. But Mother never came to know this. Before the possibilities that showed Dreams of rotis For her children Mother had clenched her teeth And beneath the dreams of those morsels Mother tongue was crushed. Mother believes even today That the death of the Mother tongue Was a mere accident.
By Jacinta Kerketta translation by Richa Nagar
ABOUT ORA ORA (Omega Resilience Awards) is a global learning community exploring community-based responses to the polycrisis and the narratives that promote resilience. Operating across India, Africa, and Latin America in partnership with regional anchor organizations, ORA has supported 63 fellows and 30 research teams over four years. Unlike traditional fellowship programs focused on individual leadership, ORA takes a collective, collaborative approach centered on community-driven change. We believe that shifting cultural narratives requires the collective insights and shared wisdom that emerge when community-based innovators connect across regions and learn from each other’s work. Our logo—an archipelago—reflects our commitment to identifying “small islands of coherence” in an otherwise chaotic world and connecting them into a resilient network. This zine is one product of that work: research exploring how our fellows use art, culture, ecology, and technology to advance community resilience. ORA is a program of Commonweal. Learn more at ORAwards.org Follow our work on LinkedIn and Instagram. Omega Resilience Awards
omegaresilienceawards
ABOUT COMMONWEAL Commonweal is a nonprofit supporting transformative programs at the intersection of healing ourselves and healing the Earth. For 50 years, we have been a home for work that shifts fields and builds movements. As a fiscal sponsor for over 30 programs, we support work creating tools for living better now and envisioning better futures. Rooted at the edge of Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California, we hold space for innovation, depth, and the kind of patient, grounded work that creates lasting transformation. Learn more at commonweal.org
REMEMBERING OUR FUTURE: Technologies Research Team: Susan James, Jadele McPherson, Jackél Agboola ORA Co-Directors: Mark Valentine, Andrea Frey Creative Direction: Susan Grelock Yusem Art Direction: Erin O’Reilly Cover Illustration: Jon Marro Graphic Design: Sienna Dawn Editorial Assistance: Erin McAuley Project Coordinator: Jackél Agboola Spanish Translation: Jadele McPherson Design: Susan James With contributions from ORA Fellows: Mwongela Kamencu (Monaja), Agnes Oloo, Prince Eze, Chandini Gagana, Jacinta Kerketta, Evaluna Valdivieso Segura, Natalia Roca, Isapi Rua, Jeferson Panche Chocué, Orlando Huerta Ponce Copyright © 2026 by Commonweal Cover Artwork © Jon Marro Select images were expanded using generative AI Published by: Commonweal | Bolinas, California | 2026 ORAwards.org Sharing This Zine This zine was made to roam. Please share it. Print it for your community. Pass the PDF to your networks. Translate it into your language. Use it in workshops and gatherings. All we ask: • Credit ORA and Commonweal • Share the link to ORAwards.org • Don’t sell it or modify the content • Contact us if you want to translate: ora-outreach@omegaprograms.org This work is licensed under Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This work was made possible with funding from the Oak Foundation. 39 39