The American Dream

Your religion was written on tables of stone by the iron finger of your God so that you could not forget. The Red Man could never remember it nor comprehend it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors-the dreams of our old men, given to them in the solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit...and is written in the hearts of our people.

Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being...

When the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the white man, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, or the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone...At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted , they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and that loved this beautiful land.

The dead are not powerless. Dead-I say? There is no death. Only a change of worlds.
---Chief Seattle.

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We did not think of the great open plains , the beautfil rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth, as "wild." Only to the white man was nature a "wilderness" and only to him was the land "infested" with "wild" animals and "savage" people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery...When the very animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was for us that the "Wild West" began.

----Chief Standing Bear.

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Brother, continue to listen. You say that you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great spirit agreeable to his mind..you say that you are right, and we are lost. How do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a book. If it was intended for us as well as you, why has not the Great Spirit given to us-and not only to us, but to our forefathers-the knowledge of that book? We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people?

Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agree, as you can all read the book?

We worship in that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favours we receive; to love each other, and be united. We never quarrel about religion, because it is a matter which concerns each man and the Great Spirit.

Brother, you have now heard our talk and this is all we have to say at present. As we are going to part, we will come and take you by the hand , and hope the Great Spirit will protect you on your journey, and return you safely to your friends.

---Red Jacket.

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A few points. Compare this to "America owns the skies" and the sheer emphasis on exclusive property rights and legal wrangling, the resounding use of the word "my"...

As Hugh Brody points out in his fascinating book, it is actually the agriculturalists and settlers who are the restless ones, not the "nomads". It is they who see nature and its inhabitants as "mere extension", something abstract, something to be dominated, subdued..a resource (compare this to the Islamic perspective: "they are communities like you").

And don't get me started on missionaries-muslim or christian. Always the same bad faith, the same mean-spiritedness and self-righteousness.

The American dream was built on the nightmare of the destruction of the Red Man and the enslaving and segregation of black people. Guns and religion, gold and silver...we've heard it all before.