Belonging

Belonging is a human need; it is what bonds an infant to its mother. It is manifest in many cultures by their reverence for and care of the land. The land is a binding force that unites a people and their ways of being. In that light, I found pathos in Chief Seattle’s speech; to preserve the remnant of his once proud and mighty people, he is preparing to concede what is truly part of him and his people—the land.

    His reference to the things of nature such as the sky shedding tears, and the comparison between the white people being as numerous as the grass on the vast prairie while his are now as the scattered trees on the plain illustrates the bond with nature that is so important to the native people. They are being swept off and dispossessed as the imperialistic mindset takes hold in the United States. He acknowledges that they are without rights, and though angered, have everything to lose and nothing to gain by fighting. It is peace that might be considered “just” by the whites for the “greater good”, or utilitarianism, but flies in the face of the liberal and democratic principles on which the new nation was founded. It is principle without practice, empty rhetoric that rings hollow in his ears but before which he is powerless.

    His summary of the differences between the white man and the red, done through comparisons of belief, attitude and behavior, ends with the thought that there may yet await a common destiny in that all will die. It is perhaps also an unspoken statement that though the spirits of his people live on in the land, the white man may not be so fortunate as to inherit or possess it in the hereafter. The echoes of his people will linger no matter what the white man may do; their destiny ultimately lies in other hands.