BRIGHTENING GLANCE
WE ARE ALL ONE
All things share the same breath,
the beast, the tree, the man,
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
~ Chief Seattle, Suquamish Chief
Marble Quarry, Turkey
When all the trees have been cut down,
when all the animals have been hunted,
when all the waters are polluted,
when all the air is unsafe to breathe,
only then will you discover you cannot eat money.
~ Cree Prophecy
The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.
~ Sioux
To touch the earth is to have harmony with nature.
~ Oglala Sioux
I do not see a delegation for the Four Footed. I see no seat for the Eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior. But we are after all a mere part of Creation. And we must consider to understand where we are. And we stand somewhere between the mountain and the Ant. Somewhere and only there as part and parcel of the Creation.
~ Chief Oren Lyons, Oneida, in an address to the Non-Governmental Organizations of the United Nations, Geneva, Switzerland, 1977
The old Indian teaching was that it is wrong to tear loose from its place on the earth anything that may be growing there. It may be cut off, but it should not be uprooted. The trees and the grass have spirits. Whatever one of such growth may be destroyed by some good Indian, his act is done in sadness and with a prayer for forgiveness because of his necessities...
~ Wooden Leg, Cheyenne
"If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them and what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears, one destroys."
~ Chief Dan George, Tsleil-Waututh Nation, British Columbia, Canada
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
~Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator
When we Indians kill meat, we eat it all up. When we dig roots, we make little holes. When we build houses, we make little holes. When we burn grass for grasshoppers, we don't ruin things. We shake down acorns and pine nuts. We don't chop down the trees. We only use dead wood. But the white people plow up the ground, pull down the trees, kill everything. ... the White people pay no attention. ...How can the spirit of the earth like the White man? ... everywhere the White man has touched it, it is sore.
~ Wintu Woman, 19th Century
James (Cem) Ryan
Istanbul
27 April 2014
Future Hydro-electric Power Station, Turkey