' HOW CAN YOU BUY OR SELL THE SKY? '

Chief Seattle of the Duwarnish tribe

how can we 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 the earth is sacred to any people. the white man 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 our race. we are part of the Earth and it is 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 of the meadows, the beauty of the pony & man - all belong to the same family. the waters murmur is the voice of my father's father. the rivers are my brothers they quench our thirst. if we sell you our land. you must remember and teach your children that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must give the rivers the kindness you would give to any brothers we know. the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of his land is not the same to him as the next. the Earth is not his brother but his enemy, and when he has conquered he moves on. he treats his mother the earth, and his brother the sky as things to be brought, plundered and sold. if we decide to accept I will make on condition, the white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers. I am a savage and cannot understand of rotting buffaloes on the prairie left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. i am a savage and cannot understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important then the buffaloes we kill to stay alive. what is man without the beasts? if all beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. this we know, all things are connected, like the blood that unites one family. whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. man did not weave the web of life - he is simply one strand in it. whatever he does to the web he does to himself.