Intention

The speech “Selling Our Land” attributed to Chief Seattle explores themes like environmental responsibility and communion with nature in the context of white settlers expanding on the territories inhabited by Native Americans in the 1850s.

The speaker’s purpose is to convince white settlers that they need to assume a more responsible attitude towards the environment and learn to live in communion with nature, instead of exploiting its resources.

To achieve his intentions, the speaker uses antithesis, contrasting the way white settlers treat the environment with the way Native Americans relate to it: “The Earth is not his brother, but his enemy and when he has conquered it, he moves on. (…) His appetite will devour the Earth and leave behind only a desert.” (ll. 7-14); “The...