Participation in decision-making is the key to democratic decision-making. We do not all have to participate in every decision made, but we have to be able to participate in the decisions that affect us, our families and our various communities of belonging. What has to emerge is a dynamic, multi-centered and interlinked system … not isolated circles but overlapping circles, like the interlinked circles in a Plains Indian hoop dance … where each of the interlinked hoops represent a different created realm … the Two Leggeds, the Four Leggeds, the Swimming People, etc.

What enables the system to interlink is dialogue … the creation of mutual meaning through words. Unfortunately, no existing parliamentary or congressional governance structure is capable of adequately representing the world's diversity, so we have to use our imaginations to create new dynamic forms of governance which more adequately allow the true aggregation of opinion/meaning in our world, plus figure out a way to include, paradoxically, the voices of those and things that have no voice … the natural environment, children, the challenged.

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Jacqueline Howell Wasilewski Ph.D.,
Professor at International Christian University at Tokyo, Japan. Teacher of intercultural communication and conflict resolution in the Department of Communication and Linguistics in the Division of International Studies and in the Graduate School of Public Administration. Email to V. Schreibman, Dec 31, 2006.