Adam DeArmon

International Center for Spiritual & Ancestral Wisdom

Honoring Our Ancestors

Empowering the Present

Inspiring the Future

The International Center for Spiritual & Ancestral Wisdom (ICSAW) grew from a simple but far-reaching understanding: ancestral wisdom remains relevant only when it remains alive.

At the heart of our work is relationship.

Relationship with the Earth.
Relationship with our ancestors.
Relationship with community.
Relationship with the sacred.

Across generations and cultures, Elders and Wisdom Keepers have carried teachings about how we live in relationship—with the Earth, with one another, with ceremony, and with those who will come after us. ICSAW helps create the places, gatherings, and opportunities through which these living traditions can continue to be honored, experienced, and carried forward.

Rooted in more than thirty years of relationships with Indigenous Elders, Wisdom Keepers, ceremonial leaders, and communities throughout the Americas, ICSAW creates opportunities for people from all walks of life to gather, learn, listen, and experience.

Through ceremony, sacred teachings, workshops, mentorship, cultural exchange, and journeys to ancient lands, we create spaces where wisdom is not simply studied—it is lived.

ICSAW is not about bringing many traditions together and making them one. It is about creating space where distinct voices can be heard, cultural integrity respected, and meaningful relationships formed across boundaries that too often separate us.

We believe the wisdom carried through generations still has something essential to offer the world today.

Come gather with us in a spirit of openness and respect. Come listen, learn, experience the power of community and ceremony, and remember the deeper connections that have always been part of who we are.

Our Mission

Native American Church (NAC)

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A VISION BORN AROUND THE SACRED FIRE

The roots of ICSAW reach back through decades of relationship-building among Indigenous Elders, spiritual leaders, cultural representatives, communities, and people committed to preserving ancestral knowledge.

A pivotal moment came during the Return of the Ancestors Gathering in 2009, when people gathered around a sacred fire that burned continuously for sixteen days near Sedona, Arizona. From those gatherings emerged the International Council of Elders and Spiritual Guides of the Americas.

In 2011, during a subsequent council gathering on the Islands of the Sun and Moon, the vision developed further: to establish an International Center for Spiritual & Ancestral Wisdom through which relationships, projects, teachings, and cultural exchange could continue.

What began around those fires continues today.

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A BRIDGE BETWEEN WORLDS

ICSAW serves as a bridge—not only between cultures, but between ancestral knowledge and contemporary life.

The Center brings together Elders, Wisdom Keepers, cultural representatives, teachers, and communities through gatherings, cultural exchange, education, ceremony, sacred journeys, and community projects throughout the Americas. Its longstanding work has also included cultural liaison, environmental stewardship, and support for sacred sites and Indigenous communities.

The purpose is not to speak for Indigenous peoples or to claim traditions that belong to particular cultures. It is to listen, connect, support, and help create opportunities for relationship.

WISDOM BELONGS TO THE FUTURE, TOO

Cultural preservation is sometimes understood as protecting something from the past. ICSAW sees it differently.

Ancestral wisdom is living knowledge—carried through people, language, prayer, story, ceremony, art, and relationship. Preserving it means creating the conditions through which knowledge can continue to move from Elder to youth and generation to generation.

The question is not simply what we can preserve. It is what we will carry forward.

THE EARTH IS AT THE CENTER

Cultural preservation and care for the Earth cannot truly be separated.

Sacred places, traditional plants, water, animals, ceremony, community, and ancestral knowledge all exist within relationship to the natural world. ICSAW’s work has therefore included advocacy for sacred sites and plant medicines, land restoration and preservation, and efforts to restore relationship between people and the places they inhabit.

The Earth is not simply the setting for this work. She is part of the relationship.

WALKING WITH THE EARTH

For Adam, this relationship with the Earth is not simply part of the philosophy of ICSAW—it has shaped decades of his personal work through ceremony, cultural education, mentorship, advocacy, and caring for the land.

FROM AN INTERNATIONAL VISION TO A LIVING CENTER

For many years, the International Center for Spiritual & Ancestral Wisdom has existed not as a single physical place, but through relationships—among Elders and communities, across countries and cultures, around ceremonial fires, through gatherings, journeys, projects, and shared commitments.

But the vision has always included something tangible as well:

A place to gather.
A permanent home where Elders can be welcomed.
Where teachings can be shared.
Where ceremony can be honored.
Where children and future generations can learn.
Where land can be cared for.
Where people from different cultures can meet one another in respect.
And where the sacred fire can continue to bring people together.

The longstanding vision for ICSAW has included establishing such a land-based center in the Sedona area and eventually supporting additional ancestral centers internationally.

Today, that vision continues to unfold.

ONE FIRE. MANY VOICES.

ICSAW does not exist to create another tradition. It exists to help protect the conditions in which many traditions can remain alive.

Different languages. Different prayers. Different ceremonies. Different histories. Different peoples.

And beneath those differences are relationships that remind us that the well-being of one community cannot ultimately be separated from the well-being of another—or from the Earth that sustains us all.

This is the work of the International Center for Spiritual & Ancestral Wisdom:

To honor what has been carried.
To strengthen what is living.
And to help ensure that something meaningful remains for those who come after us.

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