Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ
The advent of social media came with a promise of proximity. We could see what our loved ones were up to through their updates, and we could find ourselves a place in each other’s everyday lives. And yet, with time, this promise paved the way for a shift in mindsets, where more and more of us began to think of proximity as a substitute for meaningful connection. This designed move primed us for the next development: Relying on an anthropomorphic tool like generative AI over people.
Against this backdrop, Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ, a living utterance that the Lakota People on Turtle Island speak in their daily lives, in building community through greeting, and in ceremony. The phrase means “All my relations,” and invites us to recognize that we are but one speck in a vast cosmos.
Understanding Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ
Before proceeding, we want to draw attention to the fact that Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ is not a philosophical concept in the way in which the term is usually understood in Western academic contexts. It is a living utterance that the Lakota people speak as part of their daily lives. Extracting it from that context and placing it in a governance document is an act we do not take lightly: We chose to include it in this archive because we believe that it carries something that AI governance desperately needs and cannot generate from within its own traditions. We also openly hold the fact that this choice is itself in tension with the meaning of concept, as it resists instrumentalization. We welcome correction and encourage readers to seek out Lakota voices directly rather than relying on our interpretation as the absolute.
In Lakota life, Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ is spoken as both a greeting and prayer, acknowledging kinship with every being in the web of life, be that human, animal, plant, water body, rock, ancestor, descendant, seen, and unseen. It transcends being a conceptual metaphor to convey the idea of interconnection and affirms an ontological fact that we are all related and this relatedness is a foundation for all ethical obligations. At its heart lies the Lakota understanding of kinship, which does not cease at the boundary of the human. Kinship is foundational to life and includes all beings as relatives that carry their own forms of dignity, intelligence, wisdom, and claims on our collective care. This is their foundational cosmology that describes the actual structure of the world, and thus the precise scope of moral responsibility.
What follows from Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ is a radical commitment to being attentive to the full community of beings that are affected by our actions. It invites us to introspect and ask a very important question: Who are my relations and what does this moment require of me toward them?
What Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ unsettles in AI governance
The boundaries of moral concern in AI governance are almost entirely human and anthropocentric. Frameworks and regulatory measures that do address ecological harm and environmental degradation tend to frame these outcomes as a threat to human health and well-bring, the economy, and the future of humanity as a whole. The hyper-centrism of the human world results in the relegation of the non-human world into a mere resource that can be extracted from, appropriated, occupied, displaced, and destroyed. By treating the non-human world as a mere externality, there is no ethic of care in reflecting on the harms caused to the non-human. By treating the non-human world as peripheral to the human core, there is no respect for the non-human world as a community of relations with integrity and claims of its own.
Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ calls on us to push back against this boundary. It tells us that waterbodies, landmass, animals, birds, and the atmosphere are all relations that have their own forms of dignity and stakes in the way the world is organised. AI governance cannot, then, dismiss their exploitation, appropriation, degradation, and destruction as a secondary concern. AI consumes vast amounts of water, land is disrupted by mineral extraction, surrounding areas are heated up and affect the biodiversity and their life-needs. Governance and regulation are seeing these as side effects, and in extreme instances, as collateral damage. But Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ invites us to see these outcomes as harms to our relations.
Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ invites us to go beyond thinking of the human users while designing, developing, deploying, and using an AI tool. It asks us: “What does this system do to the full community of relations it touches, including the human and non-human, living and not yet born?” It tells us that our governance priorities cannot stop with the human world if we want to be meaningful and centre care. In asking us to think about the not yet born, it tells us that we owe our future generations a moral responsibility to leave them a world that is liveable. Mitákuye Oyásʼiŋ is an active acknowledgement that precedes action. It is a practice of humility and attentiveness. Governance processes that centre colonial processes as non-negotiable seldom explore the world beyond with humility or attentiveness.
References
Elk, B., & Neihardt, J. G. (2014). Black Elk speaks: The complete edition. U of Nebraska Press.
Deloria, V. (1999). Spirit & reason: The vine deloria, jr., reader. Fulcrum Publishing.
LaDuke, W. (1999). All our relations: Native struggles for land and life. South End Press.
Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed editions.
This article draws from the wisdom, practices, and life work of Indigenous groups. While educating ourselves on Indigenous worldviews is important, we understand that our actions can also contribute to and enable appropriation. As part of our ongoing attempts at practicing accountability, we invite readers to consider donating to Lakota Funds and the Oglala Sioux Tribe or other Indigenous groups, collectives, organizations, or initiatives to support their lives and work.
