HOW CAN ONE SELL THE AIR?
Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.
Every shining pine needle,
every tender shore,
every vapor in the dark woods,
every clearing, and
every humming insect
are 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 walk among the stars.
Our dead never forget this beautiful earth,
for it is the mother of the red man.
Our dead always love and remember
the earth’s swift rivers,
the silent footsteps of spring,
the sparkling ripples on the surface of the ponds,
the gaudy colors of the birds.
We are a part of the earth and it is a part of us.
The perfumed flowers are our sisters;
the deer, the horse, the great cinder,
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 buyout land,
he asks much of us.
What Chief Seattle says,
the Great Chief in Washington can count on
as surely as our white brothers can count on
the return of the seasons.
My words are like the stars.
They do not set.
Chief Washington also sends us
words of friendship and goodwill.
This is kind of him.
So we will consider your offer to buy our land.
It will not be easy.
This land is sacred to us.
We take our pleasure
in the woods and the dancing streams.
The water that moves in the brooks
is not water but the blood of our ancestors.
If we sell you the land, you must remember
that it is sacred to us,
and forever teach your children that it is sacred.
Each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes
tells of events and memories in the life of my people.
The water’s gurgle is the voice of my father’s father.
The rivers are our brothers; they quench our thirst.
The rivers, between the tender arms of their banks,
carry our canoes where they will.
If we sell 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
to any brother.
So Chief Seattle will consider
the offer of Chief Washington.
We will consider.
The red man has always retreated
before the advancing white man,
as the mist on the mountain slopes
runs before the morning sun.
To us the ashes of our fathers are sacred.
Their graves are holy ground,
and so these hills, these trees.
This portion of earth is consecrated to us.
The white man does not understand.
Our portion of land is the same to him as the next,
for he is a wanderer who comes in the night
and borrows from the land whatever he needs.
The earth is not his brothers, but his enemy,
and when he has won the struggle,
he moves on.
He leaves his father’s graves behind,
and he does not care.
He kidnap the earth from his children.
And he does not care.
The father’s graves and the children’s birthright
are forgotten by the white man,
who treat his mother the earth and his brother the sky
as things to be bought, plundered, and sold,
like sheep, bread, or bright beads.
In this way,
The dogs of appetite will devour the rich earth
and leave only a desert.
The white man is like a snake
who eats his own tail in order to live.
And the tail grows shorter and shorter.
Our ways are different from your ways.
We do not live well in your cities, which seem
like so many black wart on the face of the earth.
The sight of the white man’s cities
pains the eyes of the red man
like the sunlight which stabs the eyes
of one emerging from a dark cave.
There is no place in the white man’s cities
quiet enough to hear
the unfurling of leaves in Spring
or the rustle of insects’ wings.
In the white man’s cities,
one is always trying to outrun an avalanche.
The clatter only seems to pierce the ears.
But what is there to living
if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the thrush
or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night?
But I am a red man and do not understand.
I prefer the wind darting over the face of a pond
and the smell of the wind itself,
cleansed by a midday rainshower.
The air is precious to the red man,
for all thing share the same breath──
the beasts, the trees, and man,
they are all of the same breath.
The white man does not mind the foul air he breathes.
Like a man in pain for many days,
he is numb to the stench.
But if we sell our land,
You must remember that the air is precious to us,
and our trees, and the beasts.
The wind gives man his first breath
and receives his last sigh.
And if we sell you our land,
you will keep it apart and sacred,
as a place
where even the white man can go
to taste a wind sweetened by meadow flowers.
So we will consider your offer to buy our land.
If we decide to accept,
I will here and now make one condition:
the white man must treat the beasts
of this land as his brothers.
I have heard stories
of a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie,
left by the white men who shot them from a passing train.
I do not understand.
For us, the beasts are our brothers,
and we kill only to stay alive.
If we sell him this land,
the white nab must do the same,
for the animals are our brothers.
What is man without the beast?
Even the earthworm keeps the earth soft
for man to walk upon.
If all the beasts were gone,
men would die from great loneliness.
For whatever happens to the beasts, happens to man
for we are all of one breath.
We will consider your offer to buy our land.
Do not send men asking us to decide more quickly.
We will decide in our time.
Should we accept, I here and now make this condition:
we will never be denied the right
to walk softly
over the graves of our fathers, mothers, and friends
nor may the white man desecrate these graves.
The graves must always be open to the sunlight
and the falling rain.
Then the water will fall gently upon the green sprouts
and seep slowly down to moisten the parched lips of our ancestors
and quench their thirst.
If we sell this land to you,
I will make now this condition:
You must teach your children
that the ground beneath their feet
responds more lovingly to our steps than to yours,
because it 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.
If men spit upon the ground,
they spit upon themselves.
This we know.
The earth does not belong to the white man,
the white man belongs to the earth.
This we know.
All things are connected
like the blood
which unites our family.
If we kill the snakes,
the field mice will multiply and destroy our corn.
All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth,
befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life;
he is merely a strand of it.
Whatever he does to the web,
he does to himself.
No, day and night cannot live together.
We will consider your offer.
What is it
that the white man wishes to buy,
my people ask me?
The idea is strange to us.
How can you buy or sell the sky,
the warmth of the land,
the swiftness of the antelope?
How can we sell these things to you
and how can you buy them?
Is the earth yours to do with as you will,
merely because the red man
signs a piece of paper
and gives it to the white man?
If we do not own the freshness of the air
and the sparkle of the water,
how can you buy them from us?
Can you buy back the buffalo,
once the last one has died?
But we will consider your offer.
In his passing moment of strength,
the white man thinks that he is a god,
who can treat his mother(the earth),
the rivers(which are his sisters),
and his red brothers, as he wishes.
But the man who would buy and sell his mother,
his brothers, and sisters
would also burn his children
to keep himself warm.
So we will consider your offer to buy our land.
Day and night cannot live together.
Your offer seems fair,
and I think my people will accept it
and go to the reservation you have for them.
We will live apart, and in peace.
Tribes are made of men, nothing more.
Men come and go,
like the wave of the sea.
The whites too shall pass;
perhaps sooner than all other tribes.
Continuing to contaminate his own bed,
the white man will one night suffocate in his own filth.
But in his perishing the white man will shine brightly,
fired by the strength of the god
who brought him to this land
and for same special purpose gave him
dominion over this land.
That destiny is a mystery to us,
for we do not understand what living becomes
when the buffalo are all slaughtered,
the wild horses all tamed,
the secret corners of the forest are 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.
And what is it to say goodbye
to the swift pony and the hunt?
The end of the living and the beginning of survival.
The white man’s god gave him dominion
Over the beasts, the woods, and the red man,
for same special purpose,
but that destiny is a mystery to the red man.
We might understand if we knew
what it was that the white man dreams,
what hopes he describes to children
on long winter nights,
what visions he burns onto their eyes
so that they will wish for tomorrow.
The white man’s dreams are hidden from us.
And because they are hidden,
we will go our own way.
So we will consider your offer to buy our land.
If we agree, it will be to secure the reservation
you have promised.
There, perhaps, we may live out our brief days
as we wish.
There is little in common between us.
If we sell you our land,
it will be filled with the bold young men,
the warmbreasted mothers,
the sharp-minded women,
and the little children
who once lived and were happy here.
Your dead go to walk among the stars,
but our dead return to the earth they love.
The white man will never be alone unless,
in some distant day,
he destroys the mountains,
the trees, the rivers, and the air.
If the earth should come to that,
and the spirits of our dead,
who love the earth,
no longer wish to return
and visit their beloved,
then in that noon glare that pierces the eyes,
the white man will walk
his desert in great loneliness.

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