Declare Interdependence
Join me in Sovereignty and Interbeing
America’s 250th came and went. I skipped the fireworks and amplified bravado. Instead, I headed to Hopland to co-create the RegenEra Rising — where we activated a temporary city of the future and launched Project Interdependence — a civic prayer emerging through decades of work by folks from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, other Indigenous leaders and allies to help America reground in the indigenous roots of American Democracy.
We gathered at the old Solar Living Center — a gorgeously reclaimed 12 acres of land next to the Russian River. Formerly a desiccated patch of earth used to store derelict machinery, 35 years of hard work and care have brought this land to life. It now boasts five ponds, lush food forests, towering willows, an olive-tree ceremonial circle, passively cooling buildings, reclaimed water features, innumerable trails and art surprises, and abundant wildlife. The entire place is powered by solar.
I can’t think of a more perfect container to mark the passage — a passage that isn’t (for me) about America’s strength or continuity. It’s about whether we can cultivate the will, courage and wisdom to confront the hungry ghosts of our expansionism, exceptionalism and greed to break and remake the spell that was cast at the signing of the Declaration of Interdependence.
It is said that a curse cannot be unmade, it can only be unwound and made anew with its component parts.
If this is the case, I think we must reimagine Idependence according to the logic that undergirds it — the Interdependence “of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
Can we, will we, reimagine ourselves as part of and participants in a larger wholeness — our interdependence with all of Life?
So… as the rest of America moves on, and Trump resumes bombing, I’d like to offer my Declaration of Interdependence (written in 2018 and published last year in True Human).
After you read it, I invite you to make your own Declaration of Interdependence HERE.
A DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE
(excerpt from True Human: Reimagining Ourselves at the End of Our World)
How can we co-create Life Culture? The following words call forth that aspect in each of us that is a guardian, protector, gardener, and co-creator of an emerging Life Culture. They invite you to take a stance of vitality, to stand in the dignity and power of your aliveness. I invite you to speak them out loud with feeling. Speak them as a prayer in personal practice or ceremony. Or read this declaration to your community, replacing “I” with “we” as you read. Or, better yet, write your own declaration.
I decree and command that this planet, our home, is holy, wholesome, sacred, and free.
I decree and command that any energies, entities, programs, or patterns that are anything other than life-affirming be banished from this Earth.
I declare freedom within myself, for my communities, and with and for all my relations as I welcome my response-ability to nurture Life. I declare the sovereignty of my mind, body, time, energy, attention, and agency. I declare my membership within the human species and my belonging to this Earth. I am interdependent and sovereign.
I invite communion. I dissolve and disabuse myself of any myths, stories, or beliefs that inhibit my interbeing with other beings, people, and forces of nature.
I honor the indigenous intelligence that flows through my blood. I remember my tribal ancestors and what was done to their bodies, lands, and lifeways. I forgive those who raped, maimed, and persecuted my people, seeking to erase our identity and our magic. I acknowledge my ancestors who then perpetrated such atrocities. I forgive them.
I walk in solidarity with all those whose cultures, languages, homes, bodies, children, lands, and cultures have been harmed by colonization, racism, and patriarchy. I uphold your self-determination, health, safety, joy, and wisdom. I respect your authority, knowledge, and identities. I stand with you—for the land, the water, the children, and the future.
I dissolve and resolve invisibility and dominion. I am willing to be invisible. I am willing to be visible. I listen. I speak. I elevate and amplify voices that need to be heard.
I protect and uphold collective inquiry and experimentation. I am an invitation to communal possibility.
I am in service to healing the unhealable.
I claim medicine as a birthright for all peoples. I declare all seeds, plants, animals, and molecules as open-source gifts from Gaia that must be shared and cannot be patented or owned by anyone.
I claim my right to direct mystical experience. I protect and nourish awe, magic, and mystery.
I welcome vulnerability. I am unarmored. My love is my safety. When I say no, I mean it. When I say yes, I mean it. Free will honors this.
I reclaim innocence as a sacred birthright. I offer my reclaimed innocence in service to peace and wisdom.
I offer trust to the feminine. I invite the divine mother, creatrix, weaver, dreamer, dancer, nurturer, and artist in every being to come forward.
I offer trust to the masculine. I invite the divine father, protector, provider, architect, and builder in every being to come forward.
I am absorptive. I am penetrative. I am chaotic. I am ordered. I am entangled.
I sing Life’s logic.
I root in wise limits and sacred restraint.
I declare my fidelity to the land. I choose to nurture beauty and fecundity. I protect and regenerate the commons of water, soil, seeds, air, watersheds, biodiversity, and consciousness. I stand for technologies that tend harmony between nature and culture.
I will not tolerate fear-based control. I cannot be corrupted or coopted. I refuse violent programming. I am the unwinding of manufactured addiction. I am immune to mining.
My love is my power. My power means nothing if not in service to love. I have no right to power. Rather, I am powerful. I use my power to nurture wholeness. Through this, I have authority.
To anything or anyone not in alignment with this declaration, I say, let me be.
I am Safe. I am Sane. I am Sacred.
And so it is!
DECLARE YOUR INTERDEPENDENCE HERE
Want to go deeper? Grab your a copy of True Human: Reimagining Ourselves at the End of Our World anywhere books are sold: https://www.samanthasweetwater.com/truehuman
Or, join me for DEVOTION: A Leadership Initiation at the Turning of Worlds — at the Headwaters Outdoor in Mount Shasta, CA, September 8-13, 2026. Info & Registration