CoALA

CoALA — the Cooperative Authentic Learning Association — is the Eldest Sister of the Office of the Three Sisters. It's a community pathway to Indigenous higher education that grows learning out of relationship rather than colonial college structures.

CoALA rests on one principle: communities have the sovereignty to cultivate the higher learning of their own people. So it organizes education through:

• Community relationship instead of institutional separation
• Cyclical development instead of semesters and standardized progression
• Ayni (sacred reciprocity) instead of tuition debt

Education here isn't a product you buy. It's a community-supported process: you develop your gifts, knowledge, and ways of serving — so you can one day offer them back.

Learning in CoALA moves in 6-day Medicine Wheel cycles. Each cycle is one unit of credit — and it's meant to be lived, not rushed. Four cycles fit inside one lunar cycle, giving a steady rhythm of learning, reflection, and integration.

The entry stage is Hampina — Associates level, a time of first roots:

• 1 Medicine Wheel cycle = 1 unit of credit
• 60 cycles = completion of Hampina

The full pathway has four stages, each a deeper layer of maturity and stewardship: Hampina (Associates) → Wasi (Bachelors) → Sacha (Masters) → Yachay (PhD).

Across Hampina you build living responses to CoALA's seven essential questions — about connecting with your highest self, building community, expressing yourself truthfully, creating with technology, teaching and learning, transforming inherited institutions, and designing with the Earth in mind. You don't answer them once; you grow with them over time.

In CoALA you don't pay tuition. Instead, you take part in Ayni — sacred reciprocity — with CoALA.

Ayni isn't a fee by another name. It's a living relationship that helps sustain the learning path for those who come after you. It might look like:

• supporting community projects
• offering service, labor, or creativity
• helping tend the CoALA learning field
• sharing skills as they develop
• one day mentoring new learners

You receive, and you give back, so the whole keeps living.

You're not on this path alone. Two circles hold each community learner:

Knowledge stewards — mentors, guides, and subject-matter experts (one-year terms) who offer mentorship, listen and reflect, ask clarifying questions, and witness your growth. They don't run your path; they help you tend it.

Community sponsors — people who make a one-year commitment to help sustain you materially during your journey. Not simply donors — participants in a community-supported act of learning.

Together they're a living demonstration that education can be upheld by relationship, not only by institutions.

Ready to begin? Here's a gentle on-ramp:

1. Open the CoALA space — react 🌱 in #choose-your-path on Discord to join #coala-cooperative-learning.
2. Introduce yourself — share what draws you, and what you hope to learn or offer.
3. Sit in a cycle — come to a Medicine Wheel gathering when one calls to you (watch #calendar-updates).
4. Talk with a steward — when you're ready to formally begin Hampina, a knowledge steward can help you map your first cycles.

There's no rush. Hampina is a time of first roots — begin where you are.

Want the full picture? Read the CoALA & Hampina Path handbook.