Elijah Harper Quotes

This is one victory that Canada cannot deny to aboriginal people.

Australians have made a lot of mistakes, we have treated Aboriginal people very badly, and we have our share of racists and bigots.

I hope that I am helping to create an understanding and an awareness of what happened to the Aboriginal people.

As nations we should also commit afresh to righting past wrongs. In Australia we began this recently with the first Australians - the oldest continuing culture in human history. On behalf of the Australian Parliament, this year I offered an apology to indigenous Australians for the wrongs they had suffered in the past.

Canada, Australia and New Zealand have apologised for their treatment of native peoples.

The direction is going the right way for respect for aboriginal people in North America, and all we can do is stand up and say, 'Please do it faster.'

We owe the Aboriginal peoples a debt that is four centuries old. It is their turn to become full partners in developing an even greater Canada. And the reconciliation required may be less a matter of legal texts than of attitudes of the heart.

The biggest of all Indian problems is the white man.

It's time to bring dignity, honor, self-reliance, and self-government to people that have been held, not necessarily in bondage, but certainly as supplicants under an Indian Act that is archaic.

I have asked some of the great white chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They can not tell me.

They are like any other class of people. They like to defend their rights. I think the Indians have been more sinned against than they have sinned.

[There is] no Indian problem as created by the Indian himself. Every problem that exists today in regard to the Indian population is due to the white man’s cast of mind.

Australia's treatment of her Aboriginal people will be the thing on which the world will judge Australia and Australians - Not just now, but in the greater perspective of history.

You can't put civil rights on the ballot.

And Americans realized that native people are still here, that they have a moral standing, a legal standing.

The liberal psyche wants to protect minorities, to apologize for imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and the appalling treatment of black people during the civil rights movement. At the same time, they want to continue to defend the rights of individuals.

We of Africa protest that, in this day and age, we should continue to be treated as lesser human beings than other races.

We cannot consent to purchase a shameful peace by leaving the coloured population in a position in which they stood before the war with not even the ordinary civil rights which the government of the Cape Colony has long conceded.

From the Indian point of view, French and English both have the same title to land—conquest.

The white man believes in equality, but apparently believes the white man is more equal than the Indian.

There is a perception of the general irrelevance of aboriginal culture….We haven't gone anywhere. We still exist. …. Get the hell out of our lives and give us our land back.

The proper treatment of the original occupants of this land—the Indians is one deserving of careful study. I will favor any course toward them which tends to their civilization and ultimate citizenship.

Don't knock a man down and then ask him why he lives in the dirt.... Don't filch a man of his authority, his right to rule his home, his dignity as a man, and then ask him why his culture is substandard.

You will be emancipated from tyranny and oppression …

Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement.