Mother Earth is slowly dying, and we are too greedy to stop it. That seems to be the view of Henry Lickers in “Talking to My Granddaughter”. In “Talking to my Granddaughter”, Henry Lickers thinks about what his granddaughter would ask him about “our times”, and proposes that we must respect, and nurture the Earth, which in turn will maintain our survival for generations to come. The poem “My Heart Soars”, by Chief Dan George has a similar message, as it talks about the importance of nature and how we must treat it better. Both these literary pieces are similar in many ways, but there are also differences that make each of their messages more unique.
“Talking to My Granddaughter” uses the first person perspective of Henry Lickers, as he examines all that the environment has been through, all the way from the arrival of the Europeans up to present day. He talks about the way the land was simply taken away from his people, and how they somehow “developed” the land by stripping it of its ores, its plant life, and its animal life (“The land was tamed for agriculture, minerals and ores…and all manner of animal and plant life were used to feed their consumption”). The settlers grew in population and “wealth”, which in turn put even more strain on the land. They ignored the warning of the Houdenosaunee people, and instead chose to chase further wealth in exchange for the desecration of the land. “My Heart Soars” talks about the enormous spiritual potential of nature, and how Western Civilization refuses to listen to this spiritual heartbeat. Both of these writings have a similar message about the Earth, and its importance to us all.
Henry Lickers talks a lot about the fact that the Native people of both Canada and America were ignored many times when they were attempting to warn the government of their folly, and its devastating consequences. Unfortunately, the government was less than compliant, and in some cases even persecuted the Mohawk people. In due time of course, they realized their mistakes, but it was, predictably, far too late. Chief Dan George also laments the past of his people, and how much they’ve suffered & lost (“We have diminished in numbers and paid for our past with sorrow and pain… We have suffered much, now we stand to lose it all”). Western civilization seen through the eyes of someone who really sees the way we are destroying our Earth, is the real brilliance of these pieces of literature.
The only real differences between these writings, is the method through which they each propose to fix things. Henry Lickers seems to have a more practical approach, in that he wants very specific things changed to start the process of big change around the world. He also gives specific examples of how things have gone wrong in the past, and what we can do to avoid these situations in the future (“Western society is now beginning to understand that it cannot borrow from the future without destroying the future”). Chief Dan George on the other hand has a more spiritual approach in his writing, and speaks of the “throb of life”, and how “the earth is holy, [and] the feet that walk on it are blessed”. Chief Dan George also believes that the best way to solve the problem is by getting the written word out there, because “the spoken word is not enough… It is harder to find someone who will listen, but everybody reads”.
Indeed after reading both of these texts, I am inclined to agree with this last statement of Chief Dan George’s. Western society tends to put a lot of faith in things that have been written down, or recorded in a form other than verbal and considering how much of Native culture and history is passed verbally, it does not help their position of trying to make us see sense. If we let ourselves be educated by the Mohawks, or the Houdenosaunee, Earth would no doubt be in a much position than it is currently. Both agree that Earth is vital to our survival, both spiritually (in the case of Chief Dan George) and practically (according to Henry Lickers). Either way, it is certainly clear that we will gain no benefits in destroying the very environment we live in.
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