I adapted this text from a quote in a documentary I just watched:
"How can you buy or sell the sky? The warmth of the land? . . . If we do not own the freshness of the air, and the sparkle of the water, how can [we] buy them? We don't own them. Every part of this earth . . . is sacred. Every shining pine needle, every humming insect. The earth is . . . our mother. We are a part of the earth and it is a part of us. The rivers are our brothers. We give the rivers the kindness we would give to any brother.
"But the white man does not understand . . . He is a stranger who takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother but his enemy. And when he has conquered it, he moves on. He kidnaps the earth from his children. And he does not care."
——The Native American Chief of Seattle, 1854, in reply to an offer from the US government to buy a large area of Indian land.
