Our best hope for developing a sustainable global ecosystem lies with approaches that incorporate economic and political reality, the resourcefulness and creativity of the human mind, and a healthy respect for the living world around us. Many primitive cultures, as we call them, had systems of environmental ethics from which our modern society can learn a great deal. There is much in the way of both warning and encouragement in the following excerpt from a letter written by an American Indian chief to the "Great Chief in Washington", President Franklin Pierce, in 1885.
"We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same for him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and 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. ...
One thing we know which the white man may one day discover. Our God is the same God. ...[and]... This earth is precious to him. And to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator. ...Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one day suffocate in your own waste. ...
When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses all tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by the talking wires, where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone. And what is it to say good-bye to the swift and the hunt?... [It is] the end of living and the beginning of survival."
Taken from "Biology: Discovering Life" by J. Levine and K. Miller, 1991.
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