I know this is completely off topic... but sometimes i find it really therapeutic to distract myself from constantly assessing, worrying, planning and get the old brain juices flowing with something thought provoking, this piece of text has stunned me each time i read it... the fact it is also poetic is always a bonus :)
i hope i havent revealed the secret hippy inside by posting this!
American Indian, Chief Seattle, wrote to President Franklin Pierce in 1854...
How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us.
If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
Every part of this earth is sacred to my people। Every shining pine
needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing
and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people.
The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red
man. The white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they
go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth,
for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the earth and it is
a part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the
horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the
juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man--all belong
to the same family.
So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy
our land, he asks much of us. The Great Chief sends word he will
reserve us a place so that we can live comfortably to ourselves. He
will be our father and we will be his children. So we will consider
your offer to buy our land.
But it will not be easy. For this land is sacred to us.This
shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water
but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you land, you must remember
that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred
and that each ghastly reflection in the clear water of the lake tells
of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is
the voice of my father's father.The rivers are our brothers, they
quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes, and feed our children.
If we sell you our land, you must remember, and teach your children
that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must henceforth
give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.We know that
the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the
same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night
and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother
but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his
fathers' graves and his children's birthright is forgotten. He treats
his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be
bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will
devour the earth and leave behind only a desert. I do not know.
Our ways are different from your ways. The sight of your cities pains
the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a
savage and does not understand.There is no quiet place in the white
man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or
the rustle of an insect's wings. But perhaps it is because I am a
savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the
ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of
the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night?
I am a red man and do not understand. The Indian prefers the soft sound
of the wind darting over the face of a pond, and the smell of the wind
itself, cleansed by rain or scented with the pine cone.
The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same
breath: the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath.
The white men, they all share the same breath. The white man does not
seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he
is numb to the stench. But if we sell you our land, you must remember
that the air is precious to us, that the air gave our grandfather his
first breath also received his last sigh. And if we sell you our land,
you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man
can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow's flowers.
So we will consider your offer to buy our land. If we decide to accept
I will make one condition. The white man must treat the beasts of this
land as his brothers.I am savage and I do not understand any other way.
I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the
white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and I do
not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important that
the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.What is man without the
beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great
loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens
to man. All things are connected.
You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the
ashes of our grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell
your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach
your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our
mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.Even the white man,
whose God walks and talks with him as friend to friend, cannot be
exempt from the common destiny.
We may be brothers after all. We shall see. One thing we know, which
the white man may one day discover---our God is the same God. You may
think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land; but you cannot.
He is the God of man and his compassion is equal for the red man and
the white. The earth is precious to him, and to harm the earth is to
heap contempt upon its Creator. The Whites, too, shall pass; perhaps
sooner than all other tribes. Contaminate your bed and you will one
night suffocate in your own waste. But in your perishing, you will
shine brightly, fired by the strength of the God who brought you to
this land and for some special purpose gave you dominion over this land
and over the red man.
That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the
buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses are tamed, the secret
corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of
the ripe hills blotted out by talking wires...
Where is the thicket? Gone.
Where is the eagle? Gone.
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