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Lame Deer Seeker of Visions – John Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes

Even animals of the same kind – two deer, two owls – will behave differently from each other.... .  The leaves of one plant, on the same stem – none is exactly alike.  On all the earth there is not one leaf that is exactly like another.  The Great Spirit likes it that way.  He only sketches out the path of life roughly for all the creatures on earth, shows them where to go, where to arrive at, but leaves them to find their own way to get there.  He wants them to act independently according to their nature, to the urges in each of them.

If Wakan Tanka likes the plants, the animals, even little mice and bugs to do this, how much more will he abhor people being alike, dong the same thing, getting up at the same time, putting on the same kind of store bought clothes, riding the same subway, working in the same office at the same job with their eyes on the same clock and worst of all, thinking alike all the time.

All creatures exist for a purpose.  Even an ant knows what that purpose is.  Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why they exist.  They don't use their brains and they have forgotten the secret knowledge of their bodies, their senses, or their dreams. 

They don't use the knowledge the spirit has put into every one of them; they are not even aware of this, and so they stumble along blindly on the road to nowhere – a paved highway which they themselves bulldoze and make smooth so that they can get faster to the big empty hole which they'll find at the end, waiting to swallow them up.  It's a quick, comfortable super highway, but I know where it leads to.  I have seen it.  I've been there in my vision and it makes me shudder to think about it.