"Only after the last tree has been cut down…the last river has been poisoned…the last fish caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Indian ProphesyThe modern market economy will likely be the demise of us all. As an example, it certainly has been the driving force in the collapse of fish stocks all over the world. Just imagine thousands of factory trawler and processing ships scooping everything up in their wakes, running 24-7 for decades now and you get the idea. Plus there are the traditional and small scale fishermen, and poachers, too. Sustainability? What's that? People want sushi and fish sticks and shark fin soup and farmed salmon gotta eat fish meal, you know. We are quite insane, and we will be very hungry when there's only money left to be eaten.
4 comments:
So true.
shit we're even growin corn these days so people can drive their car to sevs to get a big gulp.
all the while shitloads of people are perishing from diarreah beacause they can't get clean water?
we are neither humane nor rational beings
Awesome, awesome, awesome. What a great juxtaposition!
The quote is part of the "Warriors of the Rainbow" prophecy, and was originally spoken by an elder Cree woman, named Eyes of Fire. I'm not sure exactly when she said this, but some interesting things happened to the Cree peoples during the fur trade in American/Indian history. As the region was getting trapped out and different European and Indian tribal groups were either bonding or fighting together, many of the French male fur traders took up with the Cree women. They started their own society and branched out. This improved relations and survival rates for both groups. They are now called the Metis (but there are less than a 1000 of them today). They created their own complete language, called Metchif (or Michif), which is one of a handful of languages of its type– belonging to two completely separate language families at once(which is especially rare and impressive when you consider that there are over 6500 languages spoken today and 99.99% of them formed by branching off of singular lines).
This is the kind of stuff we studied in one of my linguistics classes at Cal. I mention it because it is a good example of positive things (quotes, widsom, language, culture, nations) arising out of desperate times. The fur trapping situation of North American history in a lot of ways is not unlike our struggles for resources and preservation or propogation of culture.
They were indeed on to something.
Thanks Kim for the Cree info - I've read about a number Native American tribes but didn't know much about the Cree. One thing's for sure, that quote is spot on.
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