Beloved Relatives,
With warm love and respect, I want to be clear about why I choose not to become involved in partisan politics or let our work be drawn into its divisions. Our responsibility is to the people, to Mother Earth, and to the generations still to come. I cannot place that sacred responsibility within any political party's partisan interests.
Our Human Family includes people on every side of these divisions, and I want to remain free to listen, speak honestly, and work with anyone whose actions show a sincere commitment to everyone's well-being.
As I look around the world, I see a system coming apart under the weight of the divisions it continues to create. We cannot keep separating people from one another, separating ourselves from Mother Earth, and separating material development from spiritual and moral responsibility, and expect peace to grow.
Just as planetary peace founded upon justice is inevitable, so too is the eventual collapse of a materialistic, adversarial system founded upon greed, selfishness, and the illusion that we can prosper at one another’s expense.
This is my conviction: whatever continually destroys the relationships upon which life depends cannot endure forever. A way of life that consumes its own foundations eventually leaves itself with nothing to stand on.
We belong to a living world of relationships. Our breath, our water, our food, our families, and the generations who brought us into being all bear witness to this reality. No person creates life alone. No nation sustains itself alone.
Even the wealthiest among us remain utterly dependent upon gifts they did not create and upon the work and care of others. When we forget these relationships, we begin to mistake possession for security, domination for strength, and accumulation for well-being. We may become materially wealthy while growing increasingly impoverished in the qualities that make life worth living.
The material dimensions of life are sacred responsibilities. Every child deserves nourishment, shelter, education, protection, and the opportunity to develop the gifts they carry. Every family deserves the means to live with dignity.
The difficulty arises when material acquisition becomes the highest purpose of existence, and everything else is made subordinate to it. Within such a system, forests become inventories, rivers become commodities, human beings become instruments of production, and the future becomes something to spend for immediate advantage.
Eventually, even our understanding of ourselves is diminished. We begin to measure our worth by what we own and our success by how far ahead of others we can get.
An adversarial system teaches us to approach one another through suspicion and competition. It encourages us to believe that someone must lose for us to win, that another people’s humiliation can secure our greatness, and that overwhelming force can provide lasting safety.
Over time, these habits enter our institutions, our communities, our families, and our own thinking. We grow accustomed to conflict and begin to regard it as humanity's natural condition. Yet a child does not flourish through constant hostility. Neither does a family, a community, or the Human Family as a whole.
The consequences gather wherever these broken relationships remain unhealed. When trust is repeatedly betrayed, cooperation becomes more difficult. When wealth is continually separated from responsibility, resentment and insecurity deepen. When Mother Earth is treated as though her capacity to give and renew has no limits, the conditions that sustain us are weakened. A system may conceal these consequences, shift them onto vulnerable peoples, or leave them for future generations, but it cannot make them disappear.
This is why I believe the present order cannot endure in its existing form. Its deepest contradiction is that it depends upon the very life, trust, care, and cooperation that its dominant values so often undermine. It requires people to raise children, care for the sick, protect communities, grow food, share knowledge, and maintain the living world, while too often rewarding those who accumulate the most power and wealth. Eventually, the distance between what sustains life and what the system rewards becomes too great to maintain.
But we must approach this understanding with compassion and responsibility. No spiritual victory lies in the suffering that accompanies the breakdown of institutions. Families depend upon them. Elders depend upon them. Children who had no part in creating these conditions will inherit their consequences. We should never welcome hunger, displacement, violence, or despair as evidence that we were right. If we understand the danger, our responsibility is to lessen suffering and help bring a more just way of living into being.
Nor does collapse, by itself, create peace. Fear can give rise to further cruelty. A wounded people can be drawn toward another promise of domination. The removal of one leadership can leave the same patterns of greed and exclusion firmly in place. We can change the names of institutions while continuing to live by the assumptions that made them destructive. That is why the work must reach into the human heart, into our relationships, and into the purposes around which we organize our collective life.
When I speak of the inevitability of peace, I am expressing a spiritual conviction about the destiny of our Human Family. I am also speaking of a responsibility that belongs to us. No one can honestly give a date for humanity’s awakening or promise how much suffering we will endure along the way. Our choices matter profoundly. We can resist the truth of our interdependence and learn through further sorrow, or we can begin to live consciously within it. Every act of healing, every courageous expression of justice, and every community that learns to work together helps prepare the ground.
Planetary peace must be founded upon justice because unresolved injustice continues to wound the relationships peace requires. A people cannot be expected to experience peace while their children go hungry, their homelands are poisoned, their dignity is denied, or their voices are excluded from decisions shaping their future. Those who have been harmed must have a meaningful part in determining what healing and restoration require. Those who have benefited from injustice must be willing to listen, accept responsibility, and help make things right.
This understanding asks something of every one of us. We cannot build a peaceful world while nourishing contempt in our own hearts. We cannot call for unity while refusing to listen. We cannot speak of the sacredness of Mother Earth while treating her care as someone else’s responsibility. Each of us carries wounds, habits, and assumptions that deserve honest attention. As we do that inward work, we become better able to build relationships and institutions grounded in the values we profess.
Our ancestral teachings guide this responsibility. In my understanding, the Sacred Hoop reminds us that we must approach life through the whole and the relationships that hold it together. The well-being of one part cannot be secured indefinitely through another's suffering. The hurt of one reaches others. The healing of one strengthens others. Our decisions travel outward through the lives of people we may never meet and forward into the lives of children yet unborn.
From this understanding, we must create practical examples that people can see, experience, and trust: communities where children are cherished; economies that support the well-being of families and the renewal of the land; places of learning that cultivate both knowledge and wisdom; and forms of leadership grounded in service, accountability, and consultation. Women, youth, Elders, and those whose voices have been pushed aside must participate fully. People need the opportunity to experience how life changes when mutual responsibility becomes a daily practice.
We have learned much through the development of science, technology, and material knowledge. These capacities can contribute greatly to the world we seek. Their contribution depends upon the purposes they serve and the moral understanding that guides them. Joined with compassion, humility, and a consciousness of our interdependence, they can help relieve suffering and restore the conditions of life. The head and the heart must learn to work together in service to the whole.
The transformation before us will ask for courage, patience, discipline, and love expressed through action. It will ask us to protect what sustains life, change what causes harm, and help one another through the uncertainty of transition. Above all, it will ask us to become trustworthy relatives—to one another, to Mother Earth, and to the generations who will receive what we leave behind.
I believe that planetary peace founded upon justice is the destiny toward which we must consciously work. I also believe that a system organized around endless greed, separation, and conflict cannot sustain itself forever.
Our responsibility is to prepare the way through the lives we live and the communities we build, so that more and more of our relatives can recognize a future worthy of their children and join in bringing it into being.
The future takes root wherever we begin to live these responsibilities. In the care we offer a child. In the dignity we restore to a wounded person. In the courage with which we face injustice. In the land and water we protect. In the willingness to sit together, listen deeply, and find a way forward that holds the well-being of all.
I do not want to give the remaining years of my life to struggles for control within that same way of thinking. I want to help bring forward a different way of living together. I want to stand with people of vision everywhere on our Mother Earth, whatever their nation, culture, faith, or background. No one person carries every answer. We need one another.
People throughout the world are ready to work from the understanding that we are one Human Family and that our future depends on the relationships we build with one another and with our living Mother Earth.
I want to devote my energy to helping create a living model of the world we want our children and grandchildren to inherit. A model where we practice consultation, share responsibility, heal the wounds among us, and align our conduct with our teachings. Where women and men stand as equals, Elders are heard, young people help shape the future, and children's well-being guides our decisions. Where people can see what unity makes possible in the everyday life of a community.
For me, this is how we begin building a new Planetary Civilization. Its foundations must grow through trust, justice, respect for the sovereignty and cultures of peoples, and a shared responsibility for Mother Earth.
Unity must leave room for the gifts of every people. It must be something we learn to live, beginning within ourselves and extending through our families, communities, and nations.
I have no desire to spend the rest of my short lifetime fighting the existing system. We have something positive to build, and it deserves our full attention, our discipline, and our love.
Let us create a planetary model that people will be drawn to because they can see and experience its goodness. Let them see the quality of our relationships, the care we give our children, the healing taking place in our communities, and the way we care for the land. That is the work I want to be part of.
Hecetu yelo! “So it is. This is where I stand, and this is what I live by!”