All Our Relations: Health, Wealth and Wisdom Is Up to Us

Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, speaks as the voice of conscience for America, and offers both penetrating insight and well-researched action to address the many ills in which the U.S. (and, by extension, the world) finds itself.

During this supposed season of peace and goodwill, Kucinich brought it all together: peace, energy dependence, the war in Iraq, the environment, economic power, and our moral obligations to all citizens of the U.S. and the world. This synthesis came in a speech he made Sunday, December 18, as the House debated suspending the rules to speed up passage of a number of bills before close of the 109th Congress's first session.

Referring to the use of House rules to get drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge added onto H.R. 2863, the 2006 Defense Appropriations Act, Kucinich described how drilling would destroy the Gwich'in Tribe, which for more than 20,000 years has lived on their ancestral lands in harmony with the natural world.

It's a sobering thought. I feel that when the rest of us have learned to live in harmony with all our relations for 20,000 years, we will have earned the right to make decisions that affect other peoples' existence -- and at that stage, we will have moved so far beyond the dominator, more-more-more mentality, that such a decision-making structure will be a relic of the ancient past.

Until then, and always, I send up a prayer for Mitayuke Oyasin, a Lakota prayer that means, "All my relations," and honors the sacredness of everyone and everything on Earth.

We are all One. Happy New Year, with love,
Amara