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.
Chief SeattleThe whites, too, shall pass - perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.
Chief SeattleWhat is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit
Chief SeattleHow 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.
Chief SeattleWill you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. 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. One thing we know: our god is also your god. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.
Chief Seattle