Luther Standing Bear was a chief of the Lakota people; his childhood was spent on the plains, his youth at the Carlisle boarding school in Pennsylvania.
In the book he wrote in 1933, he describes the old Lakota upbringing.

The sentence goes on: lack of respect for growing, living things soon leads to lack of respect for people.
That is why the young were kept close to the softening influence of the earth.

Here, the hardness of the heart is a matter of distance.
The hand that touches the earth touches people differently too.