Pinsky attributed this line to Chief Seattle, the Suquamish Indian leader, whose legendary speech to the white conquerors was a centerpiece of Pinsky's address. Seattle had contrasted how his people and the newcomers treated their dead: 'To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without regret.' Pinsky found in Seattle's words a challenge specifically relevant to America: 'I associate his saying that the dead are not powerless with the nature of American memory — our particular national ways of honoring the old ones.' He connected this to his own childhood memory of watching industrial films in grade school and being certain that 'when the grownups who worked in those factories and laboratories died, it was all going to fall apart.' Of course it didn't — because the chain of transmission held. The dead were not powerless because their knowledge lived on in those who came after.