This beautiful Native American prayer was taught to me by my best friend in Florida, Clint Fuller, a part Cherokee blues musician of some note along the Gulf of Mexico, who I recently learned has passed away from this world.
It is a saying spoken in the Lakota Sioux language, and in Clint’s language meant all the relations. It it difficult to pronounce on paper, but sounds something like Me Tak U We, Oy ya Sun.
“All the relations” is a reference to many things in many different tribes.
The phrase translates as “all my relatives,” “we are all related,” or “all my relations.” It is a prayer of oneness and harmony with all forms of life: other people, animals, birds, insects, trees and plants, and even rocks, rivers, mountains and valleys.
Aho Mitakuye Oyasin… All my relations. I honor you in this circle of life with me today. I am grateful for this opportunity to acknowledge you in this prayer…
To the Creator, for the ultimate gift of life, I thank you.
To the mineral nation that has built and maintained my bones and all foundations of life experience, I thank you.
To the plant nation that sustains my organs and body and gives me healing herbs for sickness, I thank you.
To the animal nation that feeds me from your own flesh and offers your loyal companionship in this walk of life, I thank you.
To the human nation that shares my path as a soul upon the sacred wheel of Earthly life, I thank you.
To the Spirit nation that guides me invisibly through the ups and downs of life and for carrying the torch of light through the Ages, I thank you.
To the Four Winds of Change and Growth, I thank you.
You are all my relations, my relatives, without whom I would not live. We are in the circle of life together, co-existing, co-dependent, co-creating our destiny. One, not more important than the other. One nation evolving from the other and yet each dependent upon the one above and the one below. All of us a part of the Great Mystery.
Thank you for this Life.
Farewell my red brother Clint, as you called yourself in our circles, and may your spirit soar like an eagle in your new home with “all the relations”. Mitakuye Oyasin.
I thought this prayer would form a good bookend to my earlier article about medicine wheels called It’s All About Balance.
Woodpecker
Woodpecker Writes 
Have you ever heard of the Native American group called Brule’? We saw them many years ago for the first time in South Dakota and try to see them every year in Milwaukee when they headline at Indian Summer. Your comments remind me of this group and their mission to heal the world.
loved the blog “Woodpecker”. And love the story of your best friend Clint. So much wisdom. I remember being very young and asking a dancer who was wearing a gold circle what it meant to him. He said he felt it was a circle of life to him. I pondered that. It seemed to make a lot of sense to me.
Love,
Wende