The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But 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 this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, and every humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the tree carries the memories of the red man.

The white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. We never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the earth, and it is part of us.

The perfumed flowers are our sisters, the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices of the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man - all belong to the same family.

So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us. The rivers are like our brothers; they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes and feed our children. If we sell you our land, you must remember this, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.

We know that white people do not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to them as the next, for they are strangers who come in the night and take from the land whatever they need. The earth is not their brother or their sister but their enemy, and when they have conquered it, they move on. They leave their ancestors' graves behind, and they do not care. They kidnap the earth from their children. They do not care. Their parents' graves and their children's birthright are forgotten. They treat their mother, the earth, and their brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. Their appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.

There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring or the rustle of insects' wings.

But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is thereto life if one cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night?

I am a savage, and I do not understand any other way. I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by whites who shot them from a passing train: I am a savage, and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.

Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. If we spit upon the ground, we spit upon ourselves.

This we know. The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. We did not weave the web of life; we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.

Even white people, whose God walks and talks with them as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. One thing we know, which the white race may one day discover - our God is the same God. You may think now that you own God as you wish to own our land, but you cannot. God is the God of all people, and God's compassion is equal for the red and white. This earth is precious to God, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator.

When the last red man has vanished from this earth, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, these shores and forests will still hold the spirits of my people. They love this earth as the newborn loves its mother's heartbeat.

If we sell you our land, love it as we've loved it. Care for it as we've cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you take it. With all your strength, with all your mind, with all your heart, preserve it for your children, and love it as God loves us all.