Land is the new pot of gold at the end of the urban rainbow. Every weekend, city dwellers with multiple bank accounts and fueltanks dripping with ambition, head off to the countryside chasing visions of their own piece of pastoral idyll—to build farmhouses, to “invest” for the future, to have their own little Walden.
Sunrise sectors shoot from the shoulders of hapless and helpful netas, babus and dalals to twist and turn the laws of the land so that they can gobble up vast tracts of farm land for special economic zones, software companies and sundry industries; international airports and other such supposedly “public” projects.
Some sons of the soil give in because they want to; some because they have to. Those who don’t want to are seen as speed bumps on the superhighway to “progress” and “development”. But what goes on in the minds of those who are asked to snap their umbilical link with what has been their life and livelihood for decades and centuries?
K.S. NIKHIL KUMAR in Poona forwards a copy of what he says is considered to be one of the most beautiful and profound environmental statements ever made. Apparently it was made by Chief Seattle, the chief of the Suquamish and other Indian tribes in Washington state in 1851, in response to a proposed treaty under which the Indians were persuaded to sell two million acres of land for $150,000 to white Americans.
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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 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 the land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes 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 father’s grave behind, and he does not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children, and he does not care. His father’s grave, and his children’s birthright are 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 than your ways. The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. 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 the insect’s wings. 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 the 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, cleaned by a midday rain, or scented with pinon pine.
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 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 shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives 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 a savage and 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 do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be made more important than 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 the 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 that we have taught our children that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.
This we know; the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.
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 on 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 by talking wires.
Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone.
The end of living and the beginning of survival.
Thanks for posting. It was a worthy read.
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We are living here because the nature is helping us to survive here. The air, water, the greens are all here is making our living comfortable. Even the other species like animas, birds and insects are all helpingthe man to live better. Our contribution to this earth is nil. We want every small portion of the nature to us. For this we destroy the forests, kill the animals for our greed. Drain the water table, destroy the atmosphere. Every contribution of ours is a negative impact on the Mother Earth. Here the contribution of the big nations is high. In order to cover up their mistakes they pass on the laws on poor countries.
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Beautiful, beautiful essay.
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There is no historical proof that this was actually said by Chief Sealth ( Please note the name was Sealth and not Seattle, There is a statue of Chief Sealth in Seattle downtown, there is also a school named after him )
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what is the purpose of these words now? these are all empty words now. nobody lives by that code now. nobody lives in that state of awe & respect either.
these are all now words that we collect and use to ocassionally sensualize our lives. these words are simpy icons that we use to derive pleasure from. if i can get off these types of words then i am good, if i dont i am bad. that is the only difference between the good guy and the bad guy, getting off, otherwise there is no distinction between the two types.
millions of copies of walden are sold under copyright. they’ve made it mandatory reading in schools. and there is an eponymous park too, frequented by adult joggers, concerened about toning their bodies and on occasion by idealistic school teachers with restless teenagers in tow. presiding over all this is a genial gentleman who sells coffee mugs, t-shirts, stickers and trinkets apart from readings including the geeta.
the pond itself is surrounded on three sides by roads, one of these heavily trafficked one is less than 30 feet from where the hut was. and on the fourth side there is a railway track. yeah the park ‘looks’ serene but it is now a garden of convenience. nothing much to it now. and in concord, home of a famous free man, they’ve built a huge prison.
perhaps slightly fewer people have read the seattle chief. it does not matter. like as i said before, these are nothing more than icons. while university professors and intellectual people analyze & ‘celebrate’ his words, chief’s own kids have a very high rate of poverty and alcoholism.
any reference to the ideas of the chief, if at all it ever comes up, is all symbolic – impersonal analysis like what happens in universities, or they will build $$$ worth museums to preserve the stick, the stone, the sound and words like these of the lost culture as if that is what it was all about. oh! i forgot the self important, intellectualization of whether football teams should be named after the natives.
now, if you make arguments like this you will be in the best of the books. you will be called a noble man if you collect these words and then you can go on and build lakeside homes, mountain top ranches and river side cabins and then drive off all the buffaloes and the wolves and the bears because they threaten your ability to preserve these words and regurgitate them.
there is not one living person who lives the words of the chief.
the sage of walden had nothing going behind him. he had no system. he was starting out for himself.
but the chief had a system. he was responsible for a principle. the chief failed. he fell too much in love with his own words. he forgot he was part of the system. he forgot he was an animal, even if a social one.
bottomline, his words are extinct and only fit for museums. useless shit.
anyway, thanks for posting this. dunno about others i got my fix, now i will get back to scoring brownie points.
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This speech is certainly not the one Chief Seattle made, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Seattle. Let’s not make up things out of whole cloth. Besides the Chief is not someone to be emulated, a bloody warrior, and primitive in his thinking.
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From an ecological/ philosophical perspective, it does not matter who wrote this piece or how that person might have lived. What matters are the thoughts and emotions that are conveyed by the same.
Obviously no one can live the way Chief Seattle asks us to in the present day. It’s not possible. But what we can do is perhaps change our lives in ways through which we can live better and in a more sustainable way.
Right now, in my mind, I am picturing a monkey sitting on a branch of a tree and sawing off the branch on the side on which it is connected to the tree. To me the monkey is representing the whole of humanity and the tree is depicting the earth (this is infact a very famous satirical cartoon of humanity). If we continue to live like we are doing right now then the earth will slowly put an end to humanity through climate change and other natural mechanisms.
We are all living like stupid and unintelligible creatures who are completely disconnected from the world which sustains us. We need to change the way we live. And fast.
It is because of the attitudes of people like tarlesubba that we are still on the road to disaster. People who don’t care about their own future and the future of generations to follow us. People who have no regard for principles and ethics. We owe every living creature the right to live and by disregarding any concerns towards the environment we are forgoing this responsibility.
How the native Americans live today and the social problems they are facing are not even relevant to the essence of this entire debate. Tarlesubba jasti tarle madu tiddane! mr subba’s perspective is ridiculous because he is indicating that he does not want to change in any way that might give us a better existence.
I quote “his words are extinct and only fit for museums. useless shit.” I ask, what is wrong with being inspired? Can’t we make small efforts to rekindle this love for nature that we are inherently born with, but have subdued because we’re afraid of being labelled as a ‘lousy bunch of tree-huggers’, not to mention the race for survival?
Lastly, tarlesubba, I’m sorry, I don’t know how else to say this, but you’re take on this just sucks!
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What really is contextual to our times and circumstances is the concept of romantic Environmentalism – its neccasity to harness development in a sustainable fashion and the very real danger of it’s becoming an obsession. In an ideal world there would be harmony and balance- but sadly we inhabit a very unideal world and mankind influences nature as much as we are influenced by nature itself- and therefore there is a need for such a thing as Romantic Environmentalism and such a thing as keeping it in check. I would suppose that the historical reality of this speech is secondary.
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The Earth or The World does not belong to us , but it belongs to our Children, so, it is our duty to take care of it and hand it over to them safely without any blemish!
This applies to them also when they grow up>
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I dont care whether they were actually said or not. I believe it has a message for all of us who think concrete means progress, consumption means development.
We need checkpoints like this. Cynicism about this be damned.
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I agree that this is a)not the ‘original’ of this work, it has been ‘edited’ and added too ‘ie. Him’ as opposed to the non-gender specific ‘Creator’, b)it is also not by Chief anybody, c) it was written by an American ad-copy writer. However, none of those minor points changes the veracity or potency of its moving words. There is much TRUTH here. Since when is TRUTH embarrassing, shameful or redundant? We are SO polluted by propagandists, hucksters, politicians and media that we forget the resonance that truth CAN have. That’s why these words are so poignant: we KNOW they ring true, that they point to our collective greed and waste. We are the most dangerous species on the planet filled with hubris and insatiable hunger. Words of temperance, tolerance and TRUTH are needed to keep us from the brink of destruction. Truly. Carry these words in your heart, and share them freely.
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Dharma; “the earth does nor belong to us, it belongs to our children, so it is our duty to take care of it and hand it over to them safely without any blemish” try looking at this writing a bit differently. There are good ideas in your words, but the point is that the earth does not belong to our children, our children belong to the earth, so yes we need to hand it over to them safely. If we dont start treating it as though we belong to it, there will be nothing but rot to hand over to the children. The more people that consider this writing the better we will all be off.
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If the earth belongs to our children, then who are the children that the essay refering to exactly? To me that is not a mystery. But many don’t know what is meant by that. To find out who the children are do a little research.
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The words of the Chief are very profound and something lost to our people. You see the Earth is our Mother and as such she deserves our care. As do our bretheren. You know every living being on the planet. If you look back, you will find similar words in the Essenes writings. It is time for us all to recognize we are one and our parents are the Earthly Mother and Heavenly Father.
Remember, no one owns the earth. This is an illusion created by those who believe they are in control . Stand up with me and let them know every living being is our bretheren and we all share space and resources provided by our mother and father.
Peace be with you.
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