What is man without the beasts? For if all the beast were gone, man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit.
Chief SeattleRead
You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your 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 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.
Interpretation
We must instill in our children a deep respect for the earth and our ancestors' legacy.
Chief Seattle emphasizes the importance of respecting the Earth and recognizing our connection to it through our ancestors. He urges that we teach future generations about the richness of the land and the consequences of our actions upon it, as our well-being is intertwined with that of the planet.
In practice
In an environmental education seminar to stress the importance of conservation.
What is man without the beasts? For if all the beast were gone, man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit.
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children
Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only change of worlds.
All things are connected, like the blood that runs in your family "The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father." 1854 The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. You must give to the rivers the kindness you would give to any brother.
Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.
The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond, the smell of the wind itself cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with pinon pine. The air is precious to the red man, for all things are the same breath - the animals, the trees, the man.
The worst of sleeping out of doors is that you wake up so dreadfully early. And when you wake up you have to get up because the ground is so hard you are uncomfortable. And it makes matters worse if there is nothing but apples for breakfast and you have had nothing but apples for supper the night before.
In the valley of the giants where the stars and stripes explode, the peaches they were sweet and the milk and honey flowed.
The lark that shuns on lofty boughs to build, Her humble nest, lies silent in the field.
To reenchant nature is not merely to gain a new perspective for its integrity and well-being; it is to throw open the doors to a deeper level of existence.
There are unknown forces in nature; when we give ourselves wholly to her, without reserve, she lends them to us; she shows us these forms, which our watching eyes do not see, which our intelligence does not understand or suspect.
We need to respect the oceans and take care of them as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.
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