shanu asked 7 years ago
How is the God of Red Children different from the God of White people as stated in Chief Seattle’s Speech?
Or, How does Chief Seattle prove that White man’s god is not the god of the natives/ Red Indians?
The God of both the races are quite different from each other. The God of the White men love them and hate the Red men. He protects his paleface children like a caring father, guides them as a father guides his infant son with gentle care and love. God provides them everything – laws to live abiding by, intelligence, strength and power. He strengthens them from time to time.
But the God of the Native Americans or the ‘Great Spirit’ is not so. He was with them when they were strong, abundant, and flourishing but now when they are weak and they need Him, He has forsaken them. The White’s God had visited them directly, but the Native’s God came to them as visions, dreams and as nature.
However, both the Gods cannot be called theirs because one God has forsaken them and the others’ God is partial to the White. Both are not helping them in their pitiful condition. No God is inducing hope, giving them protection, strengthening them or inspiring them.
Chief Seattle in his speech complains that the God of White people are more kind to them than the tribal people. He loves the white people, protects them with His loving arms, makes them stronger with time and gives them their laws.
But the God of Red Children does not even visit them, for He hates the Red people. They are weaker with no one to protect them, as their God seems to have forsaken them. Their race is now “ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return”.
If the White and Red people have a ‘common Heavenly Father’ — a common God — He must have been partial to have shown all his love to the white people.
The god of red children is different from the god of whites as the god of whites never helped the red children, never protected them, never made them stronger. It seems that god of red children have forgotten them. Everything was fair to the whites and everything was unfair to the red.
The red men have started considering themselves as orphans and chief Seattle also said: “our people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return“.