Jikohnsaseh
The Great Peace Mother
and the next generations
ART Marcine Quenzer
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Sustainability
The Path of Peace is Sustainability.
Most simply, Sustainability is living lightly on the Earth so that all have enough to share, including The Seventh Generation. Abundance assures peace, health and wealth for all, while war thrives in scarcity, and greed grows out of poverty.
Our spirit of sharing must embrace those yet unborn who will inherit the Earth we leave behind. The Great Law of Peace imparted at Onondaga Lake instructed leaders and elders to always consider how their actions and decisions will affect The Seventh Generation of their offspring. This wisdom says we don't own the Earth, but borrow it from our children and grandchildren.
Everything Is Connected
Sustainability requires us to draw our circle of relations wide enough to embrace all living creatures on the Earth.
The Lakota phrase "mitakuye oiasin" means "all our relations" to signify that animals, fish, plants, trees, insects, plants, and even rocks, wind and water are part of our family. Using science guided by sensitivity and spirit, we must invite natural communities to coexist in habitats of mutual awareness and respect. Ecological literacy instilled in the next generations is the key to an earth-conscious culture.
"Every human being has a sacred duty to protect the welfare of our Mother Earth, from whom all life comes.
"To do this, we must recognize the enemy—the one within us. We must begin with ourselves.
"We must live in harmony with the Natural World, and recognize that excessive exploitation can only lead to our own destruction.
"We cannot trade the welfare of our future generations for profit now.
"We must abide by the Natural Law, or be victims of its ultimate reality."
—Leon Shenandoah
Tadodaho
Onondaga Nation
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Sustainability is possible only if Stewardship becomes our prime responsibility as a species—as individuals, communities, cultures, and nations. We must embrace the primary economic principle that
all wealth
comes from the Earth
The greatest natural treasures are water, soil, food, and forest.
 Without healthy ecology, we can't have a wealthy economy. Conversion of natural resources into products for trade in commerce creates new wealth to annually keep any economy solvent. This means conscious care of Earth's living communities, not their thoughtless consumption and reckless management as "commodities." Rethinking industrial civilization will create new earth-friendly technologies as we redesign our lifestyles to be more circular, less linear.
"We did not come into this world.
"We came out of it,
like buds out of branches
and butterflies out of cocoons.
"We are a natural product
of this earth,
and if we turn out
to be intelligent beings,
then it can only be
because we are fruits
of an intelligent earth,
which is nourished in turn
by an intelligent system
of energy."
—Lyall Watson
Gifts of Things Unknown Things
courtesy of Living Earth
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Today, accumulating consequences of centuries of abuse of Nature now threaten the happiness and survival of future generations. In the face of climate change, mass extinctions and a multitude of lesser ecological crises, humans must build green communities designed for low impact, minimum consumption with renewable resource recycling, non-polluting energy, organic farms, whole foods, holistic medicine, zero emission transportation, topsoil renewal, and much more.
 And yes, we must drastically reduce the burning of fossil fuels, and begin to remove the excesses of greenhouse gases from our planet's atmosphere.
One goal of the Onondaga Lake Peace Festival is to organize a Sustainable Technology Fair to display, demonstrate and educate about emerging sustainable technologies, renewable energy systems, professional services, and earth-conscious lifestyles. The Festival will portray ideas, gadgets, designs,
tools, programs, projects, and strategies to build green communities as we adapt to rapidly changing global conditions. Among our models for this 
is New England Solarfest in Tinmouth, Vermont, and the Sustainable Communities conference in Burlington, Vermont.
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