Most organizations are built like a ladder or a pyramid. Someone at the top, decisions flowing down, a model based on delegated authority. IBRI is built like a tipi, circular, relational, and accountable not to a hierarchy but as relationships to the buffalo, the land, and the communities and partners the Buffalo Treaty was created for.
The tipi is not a symbol but an actual model for how we operate. How decisions get made, who bears responsibility, and what we’re ultimately accountable to. The tipi is an ancient technology of relationship. It stands because every pole shares the weight. It shelters because the canvas holds everyone inside it equally. It endures because the fire at its centre belongs to the whole circle, not to any one person.
The land beneath it all. The plants, the animals, the water, the air — is what everything rests on. It is the reason the Treaty with the Buffalo exists. The reason we exist.
Inside a tipi, there is no head of the table. There is a fire, and there is a circle, and everyone gathered around it has a place. This is how IBRI chooses to work moving forward.
