Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ — All My Relations
The Lakota prayer 'All My Relations' declares that every human being is kin to every creature, plant, stone, wind, and star — and that this kinship carries sacred responsibility.
Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ is both prayer and worldview. Spoken before ceremonies, when entering sweat lodges, and throughout daily life, these words acknowledge that humans are not the pinnacle of creation but participants in a vast web of relationships. The Lakota do not distinguish sharply between human persons and non-human persons — the wolf, the cedar, the stone, the river all have personhood and agency. Ecological responsibility flows from this recognition: if the river is a relative, you cannot poison it without harming yourself. Modern ecology, systems biology, and relational philosophy are only now approaching what Lakota cosmology has always held.
All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One.
Philosopher Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi) describes Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ as a grammar of animacy — a way of speaking and thinking that restores moral relationship to the non-human world.
Lakota oral tradition
Written about in
- What Native American teachings say about community
The Lakota phrase said at the opening and close of ceremony names animals, plants, stones and winds as kin. Once the circle of relatives is that wide, self-interest has a much wider boundary too.