This year took me from Stanford to UNDP's Pasifika Futures 2050 forum in Suva, the Omidyar Foundation's Governance Futures convening in Bogotá, and finally a futures retreat with the School of International Futures in England. The volume of these invitations tells a story–there's a global hunger for answers to shared problems, with international eyes increasingly turning to indigenous solutions as offering something genuinely new.

Bogotá left the deepest mark. Meeting Colombian leaders who had navigated decades of armed conflict and state-sponsored violence shifted something for me. Despite extraordinary pain, loss, and ongoing consequences, they have built remarkable collective muscle for addressing conflict. They have developed tools to stay in dialogue across differences, to keep talking even when threats of violence remain.

Colombia's painful history forged some of the world's most skilled conflict mediators, facilitators, and democracy innovators. Their capability wasn't born from avoiding pain – it emerged through hope and necessity.

It made me confront an uncomfortable truth: here in Aotearoa we often think we're better than everyone else. Our international reputation asa 'progressive country' (everyone still asks about Jacinda Ardern) gives us a false sense of security. Do we have the muscles Colombia has developed? Can we genuinely work through disagreement and move forward across difference?

As complexity intensifies and polarisation worsens, indigenous frameworks may offer new possibilities, but they'll only deliver if we build the collective capability to navigate conflict together. We all share the same future. The question is whether we can move forward together or watch it fracture because we never learned how to stay in the room.

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