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2025 Circle of All Nations Mini Year End Report
Greetings!
Here is a very short synopsis of Circle of All Nations work honouring and continuing the Legacy Work of Late William Commanda, Indigenous Elder, Spiritual Leader, Keeper of the Sacred Wampum Heritage of his Ancestors, Canoe Builder, Politician, Hon and Researched PhD and Officer of the Order of Canada – a short note but a HECTIC year!
As you can see it is difficult to know how to describe this special man in a few words! His important work impacted all the critical issues of our times, and, 14 years after his passing, his priorities remain as relevant and influential in the times of unprecedented change – global connection, diversity, violence, war and conflict, environmental crisis, extreme weather and climate change, accelerating physical and mental health concerns, and unimaginable advances in artificial intelligence. Despite all the heartbreak he experienced personally, he always said, I don’t give up hope… Still, we have been waiting for change for over five hundred years. The urgency of his appeal for a culture of relationship, inter-connection and inclusion and respect for Mother Earth drives our work.
Learn even more about William Commanda from our latest publications! These were launched on Amazon/Kindle for Grandfather’s 11 November 2025 Remembrance Day Birthday.
2025 is a super important anniversary year in the William Commanda work cycle – I feel so badly that we did not have a public event to acknowledge this. I shall only highlight a few key items here. In 1970, he became Carrier of the Sacred Wampum Belts that his own Great Grandfather Pakinawatik was the first known carrier of. In 1995, thirty years ago, he launched and guided the seven and a half Sunbow Fire Walk across North America, from First Encounter Beach, Mass to Santa Barbara, California, to ignite the Indigenous voice across their home land, Turtle Island, to raise awareness of the accelerating pollution and abuse of the resources of Mother Earth, and to take prayer and ceremony to places desecrated by war and bloodshed. In 2000, a quarter of a century ago, Grandfather hosted the CAN Millennium Peace Gathering at Nepean Point, the place where we sleep. With it came the launch of our website and Grandfather became known as the dot.com elder! He has been visible on Facebook since its inception, and his memories feed directly into AI algorithmic memories (we are researching this now). 2025 is also an important anniversary for me – it marks 55 years since my arrival in Canada! Along this line of commemorating his contributions to the evolving Canada, we are working on a William Commanda Retro Article, and we shall be sharing more about this work shortly. We are also working on the William Commanda biography.
We have been working very hard on updates on our Circle of All Nations websiteover the last six months. I am very happy to introduce our new Graphics Designer Raymond Ningyu Wu, a former Carleton University student, who has been both updating our website, and also creating our publications.
Our site was already populated densely with written and graphic materials. In fact, consistent with the principles of Open Access, all our material has been digitized and has been publicly accessible for decades; this is unlike some of the reality of access in the academic world. Likewise, we have shared extensively in our several facebook pages. We continue to ask that users acknowledge this foundational material so that we can leave a proper record of Grandfather’s lifetime of tireless work and influence for future generations and students to track.
Given the density of the documentation in our website (likely the only one with a table of contents that we can no longer update!), we are introducing our CAN TEACH module, for more focused, snappier, presentations of our past and ongoing work. You will find newer work here, as we populate it, as well as in the BLOG Module. We shall of course continue to update the rest of the site – we expect this website to be the comprehensive archive of the William Commanda/Circle of All Nations work.
It will include discussion of our new work and research, including our exciting new Children’s Mapping work. Grandfather initiated outreach to South African children in 2000 and 2001, and we recently reframed that as a joint international academic research project, under the leadership of my late thesis supervisor, world renowned cartographer and academic researcher, Professor Fraser Taylor – he actually knew Grandfather before I did! Some minor details about our work can be found in the Facebook page of ICA Commission on Cartography and Children. We have also initiated this work with GWC colleagues in Winnipeg and Mass!
Thanks to Raymond’s hard work and patience, we have finally been able to compile and publish reports on work mostly undertaken while Grandfather Commanda was alive, while including a few newer comprehensive reports. Thus, we are so happy to report that we now have Books One Two and Three (almost 300 pages!) in our Learning from a Kindergarten Dropout Series!! Grandfather has been a visible presence in the academic world since 2018, but we wanted to make sure there was a more comprehensive understanding of the extensive work undertaken with his grassroots CAN colleagues, and the exhaustive events, reports and communications that have contributed to systemic culture shift, especially with the recent spurt in the visibility of Indigenous presence and environmental awareness in the Canadian psyche. Raymond has also reframed the photos in my kayak photo journal from my early 2000 adventures on GWC’s lake – Passionate Waters Butterfly Kisses.
We have published our books on Amazon/Kindle, to facilitate ease of access globally. As you know, Circle of All Nations work is entirely unfunded; any funds from book sales will be dedicated to our WC/CAN archive work.
Thank you for your many years of support and interest in Grandfather Commanda’s Circle of All Nations work.
We end with the central Circle of All Nations prayer since 2000, Reconciliation with Mother Earth, Reconciliation amongst and with First Peoples, and Reconciliation with Each Other. May we find the deep love, forgiveness and compassion to help us further on this journey. May we continue to strive to Come together with One Heart, One Mind, One Love and One Determination, to create a Circle of All Nations, a Culture of Peace.
We are happy to share our 2026 Calendar, which can be downloaded or printed, and amended with your own “inspired by nature” reflections! It includes photos and text excerpt from our Kayak Photo Journal, Passionate Waters Butterfly Kisses. As Grandfather insisted, Nature is our penultimate teacher. Happy New Year from Circle of All Nations!
With love and respect,
Romola
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