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Who really said it

When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money

Attributed to Alanis Obomsawin Born 1932 · Abenaki filmmaker, National Film Board of Canada
Attributed In copyright

The earliest known instance of this saying is Obomsawin speaking to interviewer Ted Poole in the 1972 collection Who is the Chairman of This Meeting?, and Quote Investigator ↗ tentatively credits her with originating it. But she is not recorded saying these words: her sentence runs “the last fish is caught … the last river is polluted … you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money,” and the tighter popular form is a later paraphrase no primary source pins to her.

Last verified 7 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money” Attributed to Alanis Obomsawin (b. 1932), Abenaki filmmaker. Her recorded 1972 wording: "When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can't eat money." — quoted in Ted Poole, "Conversations with North American Indians," in Who is the Chairman of This Meeting? A Collection of Essays, ed. Ralph Osborne (Toronto: Neewin Publishing Company, 1972), 43. The shorter popular form is a later paraphrase, and it is not a Cree prophecy. Via Quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Alanis Obomsawin, with Ted Poole / Neewin Publishing Company as publisher of the 1972 collection). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Alanis Obomsawin — Abenaki filmmaker, singer and activist · National Film Board of Canada. Theme: "When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The earliest documented source

Source
Who is the Chairman of This Meeting? A Collection of Essays
Chapter
“Conversations with North American Indians” by Ted Poole, pp. 39–43 (quote at p. 43)
Published
Toronto: Neewin Publishing Company, 1972 — edited by Ralph Osborne
Wording
The popular short form is a later paraphrase, not the recorded sentence

Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. … When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money. 1972

This is the wording actually recorded, as quoted in Wikiquote’s sourced entry and in Quote Investigator’s citation of page 43. Compare the circulating version: three clauses instead of four, “eaten” for “caught,” “stream poisoned” for “river is polluted,” and no mention of the air.

Quote Investigator: tracing “you cannot eat money”

How the wording travelled

  • 1972 — the earliest known instance. Obomsawin’s remarks appear in Ted Poole’s chapter “Conversations with North American Indians” at page 43 of Who is the Chairman of This Meeting?, edited by Ralph Osborne; the Stanford library record ↗ confirms the imprint “Toronto, Neewin Pub. Co., 1972.”
  • November 1972 — a near-identical variant. The Mohawk speaker Sakokwenonkwas (Thomas Parker) told a Harvard audience that “once they catch the last fish, once they cut down the last tree, they won’t be able to eat all the money they have in the banks,” reported in The Harvard Crimson of 17 November 1972 and catalogued by Quote Investigator ↗.
  • 1981 — a shortened form in public. Greenpeace protesters unfurled an 80-by-20-foot sign on a smelter smokestack reading “When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can’t eat money…” — an expression that, as QI records it ↗, was not ascribed to anyone in particular. Wikiquote ↗ credits that banner with propagating the paraphrase.
  • 1995 onward — the author disappears. A New York Times letter of 17 August 1995 printed the modern wording and credited the “Cree Indians”; by 2009 the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs was listing it as a Native American saying with an earliest example of 1983 — both recorded on the QI page ↗.
In copyright

The only documented source for this saying is a book first published in 1972 ↗ — four decades after the 1931 United States public-domain cutoff — so Obomsawin’s recorded words and Ted Poole’s chapter remain in copyright. The shorter popular wording is a separate problem: its author is unknown, so no public-domain status can be claimed for it either, and the safe assumption is that the underlying text is protected.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Who it gets credited to instead

Almost every viral posting of this line gets at least one thing wrong — the nation, the century, or the words themselves. The four commonest errors:

An ancient Cree prophecy Most common

A letter to The New York Times in August 1995 gave the modern wording and credited it to the “Cree Indians,” and that framing stuck; Quote Investigator documents the letter ↗ and finds nothing tying the saying to Cree tradition.

An Osage saying

Harvey Wasserman’s America Born and Reborn (1983) labelled it an Osage saying, and that 1983 appearance is the earliest example cited when the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (2009, p. 177) listed the line as a Native American saying — both are catalogued by QI ↗, eleven years after the Obomsawin interview.

Greenpeace Half-right

Greenpeace did not originate the thought, and it put the saying in front of a great many people without naming anyone: QI records an 80-by-20-foot Greenpeace sign in 1981 reading “When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can’t eat money…”, unascribed, and a 1983 Greenpeace advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald that ran the saying with no attribution at all ↗. Wikiquote ↗ credits the 1981 banner with propagating the paraphrase — but propagating a wording is not writing one.

Alanis Obomsawin, verbatim

Even the correct credit is usually attached to the wrong words. What she is recorded as saying is longer and includes a clause the poster version drops — “when to breathe the air is sickening” — and ends “wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money,” per the sourced text on Wikiquote ↗.

The saying is modern, not ancient, and its earliest known appearance is Alanis Obomsawin’s in 1972 — Quote Investigator tentatively credits her ↗ while noting the phrase “seems to have been crafted in relatively modern times.” The famous wording, however, is nobody’s in particular.

Context

How a 1972 interview became an ancient prophecy

This is one of the most-shared environmental lines on the internet, and it almost always arrives stamped “Cree prophecy” — timeless, anonymous, faintly ceremonial. The documented trail is less mystical and rather more interesting: a specific Abenaki woman, talking to a specific interviewer for a small Toronto essay collection in 1972, describing Canada as a country that “operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake.”

What travels, though, is not what she said. Her sentence has four clauses and a sting in the middle about breathing the air; the version on the poster has three clauses and a clean punchline. Wikiquote ↗ credits a 1981 Greenpeace banner — a paraphrased approximation, hung with no attribution — with propagating the shortened form; the exact wording people quote today is on the record by August 1995, when a New York Times letter printed it as a Cree prophecy, per Quote Investigator ↗. And once a wording loses its author, it starts acquiring ancestors.

Once the wording lost its author, it started acquiring ancestors.

The near-misses: an 1890s game report and a Mohawk speaker at Harvard

Quote Investigator notes a thematically similar warning long predating Obomsawin, in a North Dakota state fish and game report covering 1893–94: some men, it complained, “seem willing to destroy the last tree, the last fish and the last game bird and animal, and leave nothing for posterity, if thereby some money can be made.” It is the same argument, but it is not this saying, and no line of descent connects them.

In November 1972 — the same year as the Obomsawin interview — the Mohawk speaker Sakokwenonkwas (Thomas Parker) used a close variant at Harvard, reported by The Harvard Crimson on 17 November 1972: “once they catch the last fish, once they cut down the last tree, they won’t be able to eat all the money they have in the banks.” QI counts Obomsawin and Sakokwenonkwas as the two earliest known users, which is why calling it a “Native American saying” is fair even though calling it ancient is not.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Change Power

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: …You Cannot Eat Moneyquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: the 1972 Obomsawin interview, the 1972 Harvard Crimson variant, the 1981 Greenpeace banner, and the drift to “Cree” and “Osage.”
Alanis Obomsawin — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Prints the full 1972 passage with the page-43 citation, and flags the paraphrased banner version and the “Cree prophesy” misattribution.
Who is the chairman of this meeting? — catalog recordsearchworks.stanford.edu

Stanford library record confirming the imprint: Toronto, Neewin Pub. Co., 1972, viii, 100 pages.
Alanis Obomsawin — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography: born 31 August 1932 near Lebanon, New Hampshire; Abenaki filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada.
Alanis Obomsawin at the NFBwww.nfb.ca

Her official National Film Board director profile: hired as a consultant in 1967, “50 films and counting.”
A.Word.A.Day — Thought for the Day, 8 Oct 2014wordsmith.org

An example of the full 1972 wording being quoted and credited correctly to Obomsawin, rather than to an anonymous prophecy.

The woman behind the prophecy

Who was Alanis Obomsawin?

Alanis Obomsawin

Born 1932 · Abenaki filmmaker, singer and activist · National Film Board of Canada

Alanis Obomsawin was born 31 August 1932 near Lebanon, New Hampshire, and raised largely in Quebec; she is a member of the Abenaki Nation. She came to film through singing and storytelling, was hired by the National Film Board of Canada as a consultant in 1967 ↗, and has since made some fifty documentaries on First Nations life and history, including Incident at Restigouche and Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance. She is among the most honoured Indigenous directors working anywhere — which makes it striking that the words most often put in her mouth are not quite the ones she said.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented source

Alanis Obomsawin, quoted in Ted Poole, “Conversations with North American Indians,” in Who is the Chairman of This Meeting? A Collection of Essays, ed. Ralph Osborne (Toronto: Neewin Publishing Company, 1972), 43. Earliest documented instance per Quote Investigator; the shorter popular wording quoted above is a later paraphrase of undocumented authorship.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/when-the-last-tree-is-cut-down-the-last-fish-eaten-and-the/

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