There is something in the words The Colors of the Wind that really move me....
You think i'm an ignorant savage
you've been so many places i guess it must be so
but still I cannot see that the savage one is me
how can there be so much that you don't know
You think you own whatever land you land on
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name
You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew you never knew
Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest
Come taste the sunsweet berries of the Earth
Come roll in all the riches all around you
And for once, never wonder what they're worth
The rainstorm and the river are my brothers
The heron and the otter are my friends
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends
Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
Or let the eagle tell you where he's been?
Can you sing with all the voices of the moutnain
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind
How high will the sycamore grow?
If you cut it down, then you'll never know
And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
For whether we are white or copper skinned
We need to sing with all the voices of the mountains
We need to paint with all the colors of the wind
You can own the Earth and still
All you'll own is Earth until
You can paint with all the colors of the wind
The song started to make me think, how did I come to live in this house in Utah? It made me think about the destruction and the pain that was caused to get us where we are today. It is something people generally try to avoid thinking about. However, the song brought me to tears because there is such a horrific truth to this innocent Disney song.
We are the savages...we claimed a land that was not ours. We destroyed it and still today we are destroying it. We took the land from people who did not even claim that it belonged to them, they believed that the land was sacred so fought to protect it from us. Now the Native American people today - the so called savages that we tried to civilize!! a whole other story!!!
This quote comes from Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. Highly recommend this book, it is a history of the American Indians - brutal, but true!
" They (us) may learn something about their own relationship to the earth from a people who were true conservationists. The Indians knew that life was equated with the earth and its resources, that America was a paradise, and they could not comprehend why the intruders fron the east were determined to destroy all that was Indian as well as America itself."
Dee talks about what we can receive from reading this book, which I think coincides with what we can take from the words of the song.
It is hard to say that there is no conclusion to this thought... it is something I suppose that is just a part of history something that shaped America. It is interesting to think how we would feel if we were sitting on a bench in a park and somebody came over to us and said 'I have claimed this park bench as mine - you must move on to some other bench'. How would that make us feel? multiply that feeling by 100% and maybe we can slightly empathise with the American Indians.
Something to think about..........
