Autografo di Bill Neidjie all'anteporta

Back in 1853 the Indian, Chief Seattle, of the Puget Sound tribe wrote his reply to "the Great Chief in Washington" who had sought to acquire two million acres of land for $150,000. This reply has been described as "the most beautiful and profound statement on the environment ever made".

In the 1970s Big Bill Neidjie, an Australian Aboriginal, heard the clamour created by the competing demands of Europeans for his lands to be made a national park and to be mined for uranium. In his own way Big Bill began to reply in words remarkably similar to Chief Seattle. From the opposite sides of the Earth these men were making an appeal for the earth, an appeal which awakens in all of us an uneasiness that they also speak for us.

"If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."
- Chief Seattle. 1853.