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In Buganda stewardship, a clan's accountability to a totem meant the community held a distributed sensing network for the wellbeing of animals, plants, waters, soils, margins and memories. This page invites funders to meet the kin of the relations currently seeking renewal.
Totems can be misunderstood as symbols. In the context of Obuntu Resets, they are treated as material, place-based indicators of systemic health. A heron at the water's edge, papyrus holding a bank, a mudfish surviving in the shallows, a mushroom transforming waste into nourishment: each carries knowledge about the state of a relation in the bioregion.
When a funder steps into relation with a totem this season, they are not funding a species in isolation. They are entering a covenant with a living relation that the community is learning to heal. This is one way to make financial response less abstract, more situated, and more accountable to the web of life.
When a totem catches you, that is already the beginning of kinship. The next step is not to "apply" to it, but to write a Letter of Intention that names why this relation has called your attention, what you bring, and what your institution may need to soften in order to respond to life.
Write a Letter of Intention →A totem is not a mascot or logo. Carol Sanford describes it as a material representation of a people’s history, essence, and future potential — something that evokes the timeless qualities that unify a community.
In Buganda, totems wove people into kinship with animals, plants, waters, soils, and place. Kinship changes how we relate: a being is no longer “it” to be used, but “who” to be cared for.
For funders, entering relation with a totem is not about adopting another culture. It is a way to reconnect and unify yourself — and the money you steward — to life, meaning, and purpose, so that what changes inwardly can reshape how resources move outwardly.
Each card opens a brief. Read slowly. Look for the relation that catches you.
In the familiar pattern, a funder scans opportunities, evaluates proposals, and selects the one that fits their thesis. The funder is the chooser; the community is the chosen. This is so ordinary it rarely registers as a power asymmetry — it simply feels like doing diligence.
Here, the movement is mutual. You notice which kin catches you and write a Letter of Intention. Wetland Attuners and elders listen, and either welcome the covenant or redirect it. You declare an intention; the place discerns whether the affiliation is right.
And once in covenant, you become accountable to the thriving of that kin — not to us. A totem cannot be charmed and cannot soften bad news. That is what quietly protects the ecological and cultural specificity of the place from the drift that well-meaning funding can otherwise fall into.
The value of this shift runs in three directions at once. Inwardly, it reconnects you to a living relationship and a sense of purpose that abstract giving rarely offers. Outwardly, it reshapes your practice — you begin to listen before you direct, and to measure health rather than only outputs. Systemically, as more funders move this way, the field itself evolves: money learns to follow life. The posture is gentle, but its consequences are not small.
This is the spirit of Omukago — the Buganda covenant through which people of different clans became kin while remaining themselves.
The word Buganda carries it: nda is the womb, ganda is what emerges from it — kinship. A bringing-together of what belongs together, extended through totems to every living being a community was responsible to tend.
Begin a covenant →That moment of recognition matters. It may point to a relation your institution is ready to learn from, nourish, or be changed by.
A Letter of Intention is read as the beginning of relationship, not as a grant application. It helps the organising team understand what you are hearing and where the covenant might begin.
Begin a Covenant →