April 22: Earth Day — April 29: Arbor Day

Usually this column is used to provide you with useful information about caring for our planet. In this issue, we would like to provide you with some thoughts about “Earth Care” from one whose ancestors lived closely with the land.

Born in 1868, Chief Luther Standing Bear spent his early years on the pains of Nebraska and South Dakota. At the age of 11, he was one of the first students to enroll at the Indian school at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which was established in 1879. After four years at the school, he became a teacher and taught at the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. He joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show as an interpreter in 1898 and spent his later years lecturing and writing. In his statement, Chief Standing Bear speaks of the Lakota, which is the tribal name of the western bands of Plains people now known as the Sioux (the eastern bands call themselves the Dakotas). Lakota tends to be used interchangeably with Dakota.

The Lakota was a true naturist – a lover of nature. He loved the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest upon the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing.

That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie. upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him…

Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle. For the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them and so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue.

The old Lakota was wise. He knew that Man’s heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. So he kept his youth close to its softening influence.

From: Touch the Earth, compiled by T.C. McLuhan