I borrowed this from Jackie, who is still blogging away (much more faithfully than I, I'm afraid) at Walking With Hope.
Memes being what they are, I honestly can't say for certain whether Dan George actually uttered or wrote these words.
We tend to ascribe hyper-nobility to Native Americans (actually, George was born in Canada, so that would make him "First Nations".) I'm not sure the humans indigenous to North America were any less...human...than the Europeans who exploited and ultimately destroyed them. Perhaps their saving grace was that they were not as "civilized" as the Europeans when the two groups embarked upon their disastrous relationship. "Civilization" encourages all the worst aspects of the human spirit...greed, selfishness, and the compulsion to dominate EVERYTHING being chief among those. It seems the farther a culture is from what we think of as civilized, the less it is controlled by the mad drive to gather all the "goodies" for oneself and beat the snot out of any challenger. Still, it's not as if the indigenous people were strangers to the concepts of "enemies" and "war" before the Europeans invaded. They just hadn't taken those concepts to the same level of mass destruction that the Europeans had (and would.)
So I guess I call bullshit on the concept of all-good, all-loving and all-peaceful Native Americans. Let's not romanticize them into something they were not. Human beings are human beings.
However, all that doesn't really change the sentiment of the quote. No matter who said it or invented it, it's beautiful and valid. And is infinitely more worthy of spreading around than 99.99% of the garbage disseminated on the internet these days.
Can't hurt to spread a little love, can it?
Haven't found all of this one but it is similar to the quote with Chief Seattle's name attached to it. If you haven't read it I recommend Braiding Sweet grass by Robin Kimmerer. She is either a poet who is also a botanist or the other way around. Also a Potowatami. Some of us look at the world and divide; humans and the rest of Creation ripe for exploitation. And there are ones who find themselves in a world full murmerings. The deer, salmon, even the streams and stones are alive in some way. Here we go again. I have the puzzle pieces wish I knew what the final picture looks like. 🙂 If you are reading any good stuff let us know.
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