Gardeners of Consciousness

The first in my Indigenous Futurism series

When the stars go silent, only the storytellers remain.

In the sacred valley of Áísínai'pi, 147-year-old Aidan O:nenhkwe gathers thirteen enhanced children around an ancient fire to share the most important story ever told—how humanity survived its darkest hour and became something the universe had never seen before.

A century ago, alien forces brought Earth to the brink of extinction. What began as mysterious disappearances escalated into a global catastrophe that shattered every assumption about human civilization. From the ashes of the old world, something unprecedented emerged: a society built on cooperation rather than competition, abundance rather than scarcity, wisdom rather than power.

But survival was only the beginning.

As Aidan weaves together tales he witnessed of sacrifice and hope, of warriors like Kaiya who chose love over fear, and scientists like Dr. Aris Thorne who unlocked the secrets of life itself, the children learn they are inheritors of humanity's greatest transformation. Enhanced, long-lived, and scattered across dozens of star systems, they carry within them the responsibility of becoming gardeners of consciousness itself.

Blending Indigenous futurism with hard science fiction, Gardeners of Consciousness is an epic tale of cultural resilience, chosen family, and the understanding that awareness is the universe's most precious gift. It's a story about what we become when we choose to tend rather than take, to nurture rather than dominate.

Some flowers bloom only after the forest burns. This is humanity's bloom.

A multigenerational saga in the tradition of Octavia Butler and N.K. Jemisin.

Excerpt from Gardeners of Consciousness:

"My name is Aidan O:nenhkwe. In my Mohawk people's tongue, it means "New Land," and I suppose I am a living testament to that. Today, I am almost a century and a half old: a relic from a world that ceased to exist. My memories stretch back to a time when people worried about mortgages and celebrity scandals, concerns that, from this vantage point, seem utterly trivial.

At the time this story began I had worked as an archivist for the Indigenous Heritage Council, preserving stories in climate-controlled rooms, building digital monuments to resilience. I thought I was documenting the past. I had no idea I was witnessing the end of an era.

Here, now, I am a keeper of stories in the way of my ancestors. My people, the Mohawk, the Anishinaabe, the Ojibwe, and all the nations across this Turtle Island, we pass stories to be remembered, shared, felt in your heart. We speak truth straight, without drowning it in decorative excess.

In the "time before," those outside our communities stored everything in books, libraries, on paper and digitally, in elaborate institutions. They thought that because they could write everything down, they had captured truth itself. But we carried our stories in the only place that mattered: in our bones, in our breath, in the space between heartbeats.

I have lived long enough to see their way fail, to see our way endure."