Firing the environmental consciousness of a generation:

Seattle, great leader and a man of his word

By Amal Hewavissenti

Chief Seattle's epoch-making speech can be considered a valuable document in support of environmental protection. This world famous environment declaration directed to Franklin Piers the president of America in 1854 exerted a compelling influence on environmentalists, nature lovers and the general public imbued with a breathless enthusiasm to protect nature.

Seattle's speech is a clear manifestation that he had great insights into the relationship between the nature and living beings even before Charles Darwin put forward his theory of evolution. His historic speech underlines many ideas which are of intrinsic value to the Red Indians and the main idea expressed is the affinity the Red Indians felt to nature.

Seattle gives the most remembered lines which contrast. White man's attitude to nature with that of the native Red Indians. His words show that Chief Seattle was a remarkable man whose interests spanned almost every aspect of nature and environmental conservation. In fact his words and ideas have the potential to fire the environmental consciousness of an entire generation and generations to come.

Sacred

"Every part of the earth is sacred to my people...." we are part of the earth and it is part of us..." The water that moves in the streams and rivers is the blood of our ancestors" .... The Red Indian chief appears to believe that the white men are never prepared to treat the earth as their brother and they keep slaughtering the animals, destroying the hills and do not love the earth as the red man does.

Who is Seattle?

With the discovery of America by Amerigo Vespushi, European settlements began to be established in America. These settlements gradually invaded the lands of native Red Indians and demanded large scale development through modernisation and industrialisation.

The Europeans did much to obliterate the culture of native American Indians and built cities by destroying forests. Seattle, the Red Indian chief of Duarmsh tribal origin represented the rights and identity of native Red Indians from 1780 to 1866.

President Franklin Pierse took measures to curb the harassment on Native Americans by European settlers. In an exclusive letter directed to the Red Indian chief, the American president requested him to make arrangements to sell the lands occupied by native Red Indians to Europeans. The letter further spelled out that this action would assuredly avert further harassment and coercion.

In response to the letter, Chief Seattle wrote a letter which is considered the most philosophical but profoundly simple writing ever made regarding the protection of mother earth. It is really a profound final analysis of man's symbiosis with nature.

Ideals

Chief Seattle emphasises that the Red Indians kill animals only to satisfy their hunger and he claims to have witnessed thousands of rotting buffaloes on the prairie left by the white men who shot them from running trains.

He says "I am a savage but I cannot understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive."

Chief Seattle compares the white man to a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. To him (white man) the earth is not his brother but his enemy.

To Seattle, the idea of a sacred land is of paramount importance because the Red Indians protected and preserved it.

It generated a very harmonious lifestyle because there was brotherhood among men and animals, rivers, trees and flowers. The mechanical civilisation created by the white man disrupted the balance of nature.

To the Red Indian, land is of permanent value because land keeps their ancestors buried in it. To Seattle man is only a strand in the universe whereas land is permanent. The Indians admire nature and its gifts whereas white man only exploits them.

Seattle says that the Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond, the wind cleaned by the rain or scented by the pinion pine.

Chief Seattle, is a great leader and a born environmentalist who proved his ability to perceive the truth and reality of the modern civilisation. To Seattle, white men's actions are "the end of living and the beginning of survival" and "the white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars...."

"We are part of the earth and it is part of us". But white men flatly disregard this view of perfect equilibrium of the environment and give primary to civilisation and commercialisation in their worship of materialism.

Seattle is wholly contemptuous of the white man's civilisation which has stripped the earth of the vegetarian leading to modern environmental crises such as soil erosion, diseases and global warming.

Modernisation

According to the Red Indian Chief, the white men's modernisation deprived the red men of their age old age old tribal lifestyle and there is a culture conflict due to colonisation.

The white men have failed in their obligation to secure a rich heritage for their future generations and thus they have deprived their posterity of a right to live a full life.

The lack of gratitude to nature contrasts dramatically with the noble qualities of the Red Indians.

Chief Seattle was a great tribal leader who was well conscious of the environment and had a healthy attitude to animals and plants - a part of the Red Indian Philosophy.

On the tombstone of his grave are carved these words: " SETTLE - Chief of the Suguampsh and Allied tribes. Died June 7, 1866. For him the City of Seattle was named by its founders ."