We do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us?

We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumes flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle: these are our brothers. All things are connected like the blood which unites one's family.

How can your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?

What is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around the pool at night?

Your religion was written on tablets of stone, ours on our hearts. 8. We are part of the earth and the earth is part of us.

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 the earth is sacred to my people.

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.