How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us.
If we do not own freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water,
how can you buy them?

The white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they go walk among the stars.
Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is mother of the red man.
We are a part of the earth and it is a part of us.
The perfumed flowers are our sisters, the deer, the horse and the great eagle
are our brothers.
The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man-
all belong to the same family.

So when the Great Chief in Washinton sends word that he wishes to buy the land,
he asks much of us.

The red man has always retreated before the advancing white man,
as the mist of the mountain runs before the morning sun.
We know that the white man does not understand our ways.
One portion of the land is the same to him as the next.....
the earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it,
he moves on.
He leaves his father's graves behind, and he does not care.
He kidnaps the earth from his children...
his appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.

The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath.
The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying
for many days, he is numb to the stench...The air is precious to us, the air
shares its spirit with the life it supports.
The wind gave that gave our grandfather his first breath also recieves his last sigh.

This we know...The earth does not belong to man...man belongs to the earth.

This we know...Whatever befalls the earth...befalls the sons of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web...he does to himself.

Even the white man cannot be exempt from the common destiny. One thing we know,
which the white man may one day discover---
Our God is the same God.
You may think you own him as you wish to own the land
but you cannot.
This earth is precious to the "Great Spirit",
and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.
The whites too shall pass...perhaps sooner than all other tribes.
Continue to contaminate your bed, and one night you will suffocate in your own waste.

Your destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are
all slaughtered, the wild horses tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy
with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires.
The end of living and the beginning of survival>