SURVIVE OR LIVE
Speech of the Seattle Indian Chief (*) to millions of men and women marching
for a better future (December 1995)
How can you agree to sell your strength to chiefs who despise you and treat
you like slaves? The idea seems strange to me. How can you give your enemy
the duty of feeding those you love?
How can one teach dignity to children by imposing absurd laws on them and by
offering them each day the spectacle of renunciation and submission? I
really do not understand. Maybe it is because the red man is a savage.
Today, in your millions, you are answering the call to rebellion. The
railway line is deserted; nobody is taking messages from one region to
another; many young people are refusing to sit down to listen to the hollow
speeches of their masters; as for those men who are extracting the burning
rock from the soil, they have fought against the soldiers. The whole life of
your people has been changed.
However, you seem ashamed of your strength. You feel a need to justify every
gesture of your anger by a fault in your adversaries. You seem to fear that
they will suspect you of wishing to destroy this world where money and
material goods are more important than that which is human! I do not
understand: is it not the only thing to do, if you do not wish to see
disappear once and for all what remains of the pure water, the forests, the
wild animals and even the towns from whence the poor have been chased as my
people have been chased from their lands?
Can you believe that a change of chief, a signature at the foot of a treaty
will suffice to create a future for your children?
My people have fought and we have learnt the meaning of the word treason. It
is the chiefs in Washington who have taught us and many of our people have
died from the bullets of the military or have been vanquished by cold and
hunger in the reservations where they have been parked. It seems people are
still dying of cold and hunger in our towns! What crimes have they commited
those you have allowed to be banished whilst every one of your masters
lives in luxury and goes around driven by five horses?
You also have your ancestors, who fought for their freedom and for yours.
Those who today would put you on your guard against revolutionnary hope are
the same who, 200 years ago were happy to replace the nobility with the
bourgeoisie, dukes with lawyers whilst the people remained slaves! Can you
not be worthy of what your ancestors dreamt of, as you yourselves dream of
creating a better future for your children in the next millenium?
The sons and daughters of the earth live upright. They only lie down to
sleep and make love. I know no other way of living. If this was good for
savages then that is what I am!
There is one other thing I don't understand: some of you, most often the
young, show great courage and anger when facing the soldiers. Given their
age perhaps it is temerity, but what of it! Perhaps they use their
impetuosity against false targets - the aims of life do not shine in the
cages of glass, but what of it! How can you abandon to their fate their
outstretched hands? Do you wish to smash the dreams they have?
See what you have already done and learn what you are capable of! You can
stop in its steps this world which destroys man in the way you stop trains.
In the struggle forgotten fraternity is reborn, the smile of shared hope,
the courage to want.
The end of survivval and the beginning of life.
(*) In 1854 in Seattle the Chief of the Dwamish tribe on the North West
coast of America replied to the Washington government which was promising
them a reservation in exchange for the 'purchase' of land from its people in
a text that was translated into French by the title The end of life and the
beginning of Survival.
FREEDOM PRESS
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