A Very Good Trade

Christopher R.W. Nevinson — A Studio in Montparnasse, 1926.

“Indigenous children are not educated, they are guided. (They) don’t learn to be winners, because in order for some to win, others must lose. Learn to share where you live and what you have to eat. You have an example of a life where the individual counts less than the collective. This is indigenous mystery, a legacy that passes from generation to generation. What our children learn early is by the heart in the rhythm of the Earth. “

— Ailton Krenak

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You must treat animals like your brothers….everything that happens to animals will soon happen to humans. Everything is related.

— Chief Seattle -1854

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“Crowfoot stood and watched as the white man spread many one dollar bills on the ground.
“This is what the white man trades with; this is his buffalo robe. Just as you trade skins, we trade with these pieces of paper.”
When the white chief had laid all his money on the ground and shown how much he would give if the Indians would sign a treaty, Crowfoot took a handful of clay, made a ball out of it and put it on the fire.
It did not crack.
Then he said to the white man, Now put your money on the fire and see if it will last as long as the clay.
The white man said, No….my money will burn because it is made of paper.
With an amused gleam in his eyes the old chief said, Oh, your money is not as good as our land, is it?
The wind will blow it away; the fire will burn it; water will rot it. But nothing will destroy our land.
You don’t make a very good trade.

— Chief Crowfoot : Blackfoot Confederacy

There’s a lot of beauty in our culture, a lot to admire, but we’re somehow lost in a general blindness. The ones who see beauty and create it are working at cross purposes with the larger culture. Their work is often a commentary on the ugliness and stupidity of the society they are in. They are attempting, in their eccentric ways, to deal with the overwhelming challenge of living in a giant game of blind man’s bluff. The rules of the game seem senseless and unnecessarily cruel to those of us who were given an extra dose of…