Learnings from “Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures” with Giovanna Andreotti

On the 25th of January, during our fifth annual Learning Festival (Day 2 theme: Growing Up: Who do we need to become?), we were lucky enough to host Giovanna Andreotti from Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) for a session exploring the ways modernity has conditioned us and sharing tools to reimagine how we relate to ourselves, others, and the systems we’re entangled with. Using frameworks like the Four Mountain Story, the Bus Methodology, and the Anti-Assholism Memo, we reflected on holding space for complexity, unlearning harmful patterns, and navigating modernity’s mess with care and humility.
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Giovanna began by prefacing that growing up as the daughter of an activist and author (Vannessa Andreotti), her relationship with this work was complicated. For the first 18-19 years of her life, she actively resisted following in her mother's footsteps. The work came with significant costs, particularly in terms of family time. Moreover, 20 years ago, terms like "decolonial" or discussions about complicity and collapse were largely taboo. It wasn't until she went through the postgraduate system that her perspective shifted dramatically. Witnessing environmental and social collapse while systems continued to insist nothing was wrong created an undeniable dissonance. This confrontation drew her back to the work.
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During the session Giovanna took us through 4 key methodologies that the GTDF collective uses to hold and navigate complexity, beginning with the Bus Within Us:‍

Picture an internal bus carrying different aspects of yourself: your beliefs, experiences, emotions, and influences. Some passengers have been with you since childhood, while others are more recent additions. The front seats hold familiar aspects of yourself, the middle carries those you're still getting to know, and the back contains either unknown or uncomfortable parts of yourself.
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The bus has multiple decks representing different layers of being: your immediate self, your ancestral connections, and your relationship with the more-than-human world. The driver represents your present self, though sometimes other aspects might take control, especially during challenging moments.
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“The bus” is a central figure in a methodology for collective inquiry that emerged as a response to the need for difficult, honest and sober conversations where the integrity of relationships are prioritized above the emotional charge of the content being discussed. The methodology is being tested by our research group as a container for conversations about colonial continuities and decolonial possibilities.” - Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures

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The four mountains story

Through the collaboration of GTDF with Indigenous elder John Crier, we learned about the Four Mountains story, each mountain representing a stage of life we must travel through (not as isolated individuals as we may have been taught) but as part of a greater whole supported by land, ancestors, and all relations.

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The journey begins at Baby Mountain, where we're meant to be received with unconditional regard and respect, carried in bundles that strengthen our connection to community. On Warrior Mountain, we wrestle with our shadows and seek our unique gifts, often in darkness and uncertainty. The Hunter/Provider Mountain teaches us to use our gifts in service of community, while Elder Mountain brings us full circle, helping others navigate their own journeys.

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“This is a version of a story originally told by a Cree elder named John Crier. The story is about four mountains representing four stages of life. I (Vanessa) first heard this story from John in 2015. The story became very important in a research project that I was also part of, led by another Cree knowledge keeper, Cash Ahenakew. Cash’s project showed examples of how Indigenous education is fundamentally about preparing people, from the day they are born, to become good elders and ancestors for all relations.  John has kindly and generously given us permission to travel with this story and to write down this version of it.” - Vannessa Andreotti

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The House that Modernity Built

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But we're not living in the idealised world of this story. We inhabit what GTDF calls "the house that modernity built", a seemingly impressive mansion with deep structural problems. Built on the foundation of human separation from earth and hierarchical worth, its walls are universal reason and nation-states, its roof global capitalism.

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This house extracts resources from the earth and people, creating visible luxury for some and invisible suffering for many. It's organised in hierarchical floors:

• The top floor: the north of the north, home to those with the most power and wealth
• The middle floor: the north of the south, where people chase upward mobility
• The basement: the south of the north, where exploitation drives the system
• Outside: the south of the south, where indigenous and other communities resist absorption

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Living in and around the house that modernity built has significantly altered how we navigate the Four Mountains. Some key changes Giovanna highlighted were: loss of community and intergenerational connection; commodification of life and purpose; overwhelming distractions and information overload, disconnection from land and more-than-human relations, erosion of meaningful rites of passage, pressure for perfection and image management, accelerated pace leading to burnout, crisis of meaning and purpose, and lastly, particularly in activism, the rise of self-righteousness.

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Anti-assholism Memo 

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“Realizing we are ALL fucked up and that we have become assholes may be one (or the only) way to break this spell of modernity/coloniality, to seek re-habilitation and to do the painful decluttering and composting work that is needed to get ourselves out of the mess we have created.” - Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures

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Giovanna then shared with us the Anti-assholism memo, developed by GTDF for navigating these challenges with greater awareness. This list is broken down into: what you should never do; what you should do less and less and then not at all (if ever possible); what you should try to do more of genuinely, and more genuinely (not as a sacrifice); and what you should try to do more and more (fake it until you make it).

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We recommend taking a look at the complete list here. 

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The solution to the big questions our times demand us to hold is not easy, and most of us know this, but GTDF is testing some approaches that can be helpful in our journey towards liberation. These include recognising modernity's traps and how they amplify our challenges, while understanding that many popular solutions (such as self-help, hustle culture, and cancel culture) often reproduce harmful patterns rather than address root causes. Also focusing on building capacity to hold hardship before rushing to solve it, paired with prioritising relational accountability and care in our responses. Additionally, utilising tools like the "Bus Within Us" and the “Anti-assholism Memo” can help us hold and work with internal complexity rather than seeking oversimplified solutions.

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Giovanna shared all this not as someone with answers, but as a fellow traveler learning to hold both accountability and care. Like many, she shared that she has passengers within her that want to fix the house of modernity, others that want to watch it burn, and still others seeking a different way entirely.

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The challenge isn't to resolve these tensions but to hold them with humility and discernment. In doing so, we might find ways to navigate these mountains that honor both ancient wisdom and present reality, creating paths that future generations can walk with greater wisdom than we have shown.

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To watch Giovanna’s session see here and to continue learning check out Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures.

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We offer our gratitude and a big thank you to Giovanna Andreotti and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective for hosting this brilliant session at the YxY Learning Festival and for weaving and sharing this work with us.