ANCESTRAL

We have never had greater capacity to generate information, simulate futures, automate decisions and develop technologies.

Yet some of the most urgent challenges facing humanity — biodiversity loss, climate instability, food insecurity, ecological degradation and the governance of artificial intelligence — demand more than faster computation.

They demand memory. Context. Relationships. Judgement. Responsibility.

For generations, Indigenous peoples have developed living systems of knowledge through observation, adaptation, ecological relationships, language, collective experience and the transmission of understanding between generations.

These systems are not static archives. They continue to evolve.

When a language disappears, when a practice can no longer be transmitted or when a community loses the conditions required to maintain its relationship with its territory, humanity loses more than cultural heritage.

It loses ways of understanding the world — and possibilities for shaping its future.

476.6M

Indigenous people worldwide, 2019 estimate

90

Countries with Indigenous peoples

5,000+

Distinct cultures and groups

Source: ILO global estimate for 2019 and UN information, as cited in the ANCESTRAL foundational dossier. These figures are contextual estimates, not programme participation figures.

Mars Challenge uses Mars as an extreme learning environment. By imagining survival under finite resources, interdependent systems and unforgiving constraints, participants discover assumptions that often remain invisible on Earth.

This is the foundation of Earth-Back Thinking: learning from extreme conditions to reconsider the systems that sustain life on our own planet.

ANCESTRAL introduces a complementary movement.

Instead of looking farther into space, it invites us to look deeper into human memory.

Both movements challenge the idea that today's dominant assumptions represent the full range of possibilities.

Mars Challenge asks what we need to invent. ANCESTRAL asks what we must not forget.

Both questions are necessary to shape a responsible future.

ANCESTRAL is not a separate educational programme operating alongside Mars Challenge. It is a distinct mission within the same global learning system, introducing additional ways to observe, interpret and respond to the challenges of life on Earth.

Indigenous peoples should not be invited merely to participate in futures designed by others.

They must be able to shape those futures through their own knowledge systems, identities, institutions and relationships with territory.

ANCESTRAL challenges the assumption that innovation always flows in one direction: from external expertise to communities.

Instead, the mission creates conditions for multiple knowledge systems to meet without requiring one to surrender its authority to another.

The goal is not to teach Indigenous communities how to imagine the future. It is to ensure that the future is not imagined without them.

Memory is not simply the storage of information.

It exists through relationships between people, languages, territories, practices, values and generations. Knowledge remains alive when communities retain the capacity to interpret it, transmit it, challenge it and decide how it can be used.

Sharing knowledge does not mean surrendering ownership, authority, cultural context or the right to define the conditions of use.

This principle is fundamental to ANCESTRAL's legitimacy.

Every Mars Challenge mission asks participants to investigate problems, connect ideas, make decisions, develop proposals and reflect on their consequences.

ANCESTRAL retains that educational ambition while introducing a deeper layer of observation, intergenerational dialogue and responsibility to knowledge holders.

The foundational experience is described through seven connected movements:

1. Observe
2. Listen
3. Understand
4. Ask
5. Connect
6. Create
7. Return

These seven movements are the ANCESTRAL conceptual lens. They do not replace the official Mars Challenge methodology or establish definitive 2027 operational phases.

Participants begin with their own identity, experience and territory.

They encounter a question that matters. They seek relevant voices and evidence, including knowledge that communities agree may be shared. They work with other young people and disciplines, connect different perspectives and develop a response.

They also confront an essential question that conventional innovation programmes can overlook:

Who should benefit from what we create, and who has the authority to decide how it is used?

The experience is intended to culminate not only in a visible proposal but also in learning that can return meaningfully to the originating community.

ANCESTRAL does not predetermine what communities must create. Its value lies in opening a rigorous process through which different kinds of knowledge can reshape both the problem and the possible responses.

Projects and prototypes

Solutions, designs or conceptual models developed in response to real needs and identifiable constraints.

Questions that change the problem

New interpretations that reveal overlooked assumptions and alter what should be investigated.

Intergenerational dialogue

Meaningful encounters between young people and knowledge holders recognised by their communities.

Responsible knowledge integration

Collaboration across science, technology, design and territorial knowledge without erasing origins or rights.

Community-defined return

Useful learning, capabilities, relationships or resources whose value is determined with the community.

Institutional learning

Changes in the way educational institutions, public bodies and other organisations understand evidence and participation.

These are intended forms of contribution, not achievements already demonstrated by the 2027 mission. Their implementation and evaluation will depend on agreements and the operational framework developed with participating communities.

Dialogue between knowledge systems cannot be built on extraction.

ANCESTRAL recognises that access to knowledge is not the same as permission to reproduce, digitise, commercialise or redistribute it.

A credible future-facing mission must protect the people and communities whose knowledge makes that future possible.

Its foundational commitments include free, prior and informed consent where applicable; respect for collective rights and legitimate decision-making structures; attribution and recognition; control over permitted uses; protection of knowledge that must remain restricted; and meaningful community-defined benefit.

These commitments are informed by international frameworks, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, UNESCO's work on Indigenous and local knowledge, IPBES guidance and relevant WIPO instruments.

They are not a substitute for community agreements, applicable law or operational safeguarding arrangements.

What a community chooses not to share deserves the same respect as what it chooses to contribute.

ANCESTRAL creates an opportunity to connect policy areas that are too often treated separately: education, culture, biodiversity, youth participation, research, technology and territorial development.

For public institutions, the objective is not to sponsor a symbolic celebration of ancestral heritage.

It is to help create the conditions through which young people and their communities can participate in learning, innovation and future-oriented decision-making on their own terms.

Governments and public authorities

Connect education, territorial priorities, youth participation and long-term public responsibility.

Parliaments and legislative institutions

Advance informed dialogue on collective rights, knowledge governance, intergenerational equity and future policy.

Indigenous peoples' organisations

Define participation, knowledge boundaries, community priorities and the conditions of legitimate collaboration.

Universities and research institutions

Contribute scientific rigour, interdisciplinary methods and learning infrastructure while respecting community knowledge authority.

International organisations and partners

Support connections between education, climate, biodiversity, culture, science and responsible innovation.

The State does not speak for Indigenous peoples. Its role is to help establish conditions for autonomy, access, protection, resources and continuity.

MARS CHALLENGE · EDITION 2027

How Much Intelligence Can the Planet Sustain?

The 2027 edition challenges participants to rethink artificial intelligence within the physical, environmental and human limits of our planet.

For ANCESTRAL, this global question opens another, equally consequential inquiry:

What happens when artificial intelligence encounters knowledge systems it was not designed to understand, represent or protect?

Artificial intelligence can help translate languages, analyse environmental data and create new opportunities for learning. It can also remove knowledge from context, reproduce incomplete representations or facilitate uses that communities have not authorised.

ANCESTRAL introduces questions that must be considered before proposing technological solutions:

• What kinds of knowledge should be digitised, and what should remain outside datasets?
• Who has authority over the interpretation and use of community knowledge?
• Can technology help sustain intergenerational transmission without replacing the relationships that make it meaningful?
• How do we recognise the limits of both algorithmic systems and human interpretations?
• What would responsible AI look like when designed with, rather than merely for, Indigenous communities?

The purpose is neither to idealise ancestral knowledge nor to reject emerging technology.

It is to investigate how different forms of knowledge can contribute to responsible decisions, while preserving evidence, context, rights and human agency.

ANCESTRAL's foundational moment took shape in Chiapas, Mexico, in 2026.

The conversation revealed a need to move beyond inviting Indigenous communities to remember or represent their past, towards enabling them to participate in the design of what comes next.

The ambition is global. The process must begin with legitimacy, not volume.

1. 2026 — Foundational Moment Chiapas. Initial listening, relationships and recognition of the mission's purpose.
2. 2027 — Foundational Cohort Proposed first global cohort, deliberately limited to build shared direction, safeguards and legitimate participation.
3. 2028 — Network and Capacity Regional connections, facilitator development and community-return protocols.
4. 2029 — Knowledge and Public Policy Where authorised, connect learning with public challenges in biodiversity, climate, education and responsible innovation.
5. 2030 — Living Memory Within Mars Challenge Build a cumulative network in which each cycle strengthens relationships, learning and future capacity.

Foundational roadmap and intended milestones, not confirmed deliveries or operational commitments.

Nothing resets. Every cycle should build greater trust, understanding and capacity for the next.

ANCESTRAL is entering a foundational phase.

The ambition is not to create the largest possible network immediately. It is to bring together communities, organisations and institutions willing to help develop a credible, rights-respecting model that can grow without losing its purpose.

The invitation is open to conversations with Indigenous peoples' organisations, governments, parliaments, educational institutions and international partners interested in helping establish the conditions for the 2027 mission.

Expressions of interest do not constitute formal applications. The participation rules, confirmed calendar, agreements and safeguards for 2027 remain subject to publication and validation.

The future does not begin from zero.

Young people are not passive inheritors of history. They can become authors of its next chapter.

What does the future need to remember?

Start a founding conversation · Explore Mars Challenge