Question: Does the white man attempt to care for or respect the earth?
Claim: Indians share common thoughts on different aspects of the earth on how the white man does not care for or respect it.
From the beginning of time, we have been in confrontation with the American Indians. In most of the confrontations the white man is to blame. From the beginning we have been trying to take advantage of the Indians in many different ways. Most obviously it has been in the aspect of taking advantage of there land and not respecting the earth. The following three exerts, Chief Seattle's speech, Sitting Bull's speech and the passage of Land of the Spotted Eagle, pertain to the fact that we do not respect the land that the Indians live on. Of these three pieces, the first two take place in the 1850's to 1870's. The passage of The Land of the Spotted Eagle takes place at a later time in the 1930's.
Chief Sitting Bull
Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill, 1885
Chief SeattleThere is also agreement of the three in the spiritual sense of the land.
In Chief Seattle's speech, he talks in more of the spiritual sense of the land. But it is in direct relationship to the abuse that the White Man exerts on the land. He makes many references towards the Indian Spiritual being, that he is very different from that of the White Man. He makes many analogies towards that of the spiritual importance of the burial grounds and the worshipping grounds towards the after life. 'To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground.' And he also says, 'Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander way...