Month: January 2022

“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.

Then with a smile, Crowfoot picked up a handful of sand from the river bank, handed it to the white man and said, You count the grains of sand in that while I count the money you give for the land.
The white man said, I would not live long enough to count this, but you can count the money in a few minutes.

Very well, said the wise Crowfoot, our land is more valuable than your money. It will last forever.
It will not perish as long as the sun shines and the water flows, and through all the years it will give life to men and animals, and therefore we cannot sell the land.

It was put there by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because it does not really belong to us.
You can count your money and burn it with a nod of a buffalo’s head, but only the Great Spirit can count the grains of sand and the blades of grass on these plains.

As a present we will give you anything you can take with you, but we cannot give you the land.”

Chief Crowfoot, Blackfoot Confederacy

People coming out of university with a Masters degree or a PhD, you take them into the field and they literally don’t believe anything unless it’s a peer-reviewed paper. That’s the only thing they accept.

And you say to them, “Let’s Observe, let’s think, let’s discuss.” they don’t do it. It’s just, “Is it in a peer-reviewed paper or not?” That’s their view of science. I think it’s pathetic!

(They have) gone into universities as bright young people they have come out of it brain dead, not even knowing what science means. They think it means peer-reviewed papers etc. No. That’s academia and if a paper is peer reviewed it means everybody thought the same therefore they approved it. An unintended consequence is that when new knowledge emerges, new scientific insights, they can never, ever be peer-reviewed so we’re blocking all new advances in science that are big advances.

If you look at the breakthroughs in science, almost always they don’t come from the center of that profession, they come from the fringe. The finest candlemakers in the world couldn’t even think of electric lights. They don’t come from within, they often come from outside the breaks.

We’re going to kill ourselves because of stupidity.

Wise words from Allan Savory, Ecologist.

And he is not alone in his view. Reuben Blades said succinctly, “I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance.”