Taylor Sheridan Quotes

The Violence Against Women Act didn't have specific provisions for Indian country until 2013, which is really sad. It's Native women who are the most vulnerable.

I represent nine sovereign Sioux tribes. In South Dakota, some of the tribes are in the most remote, rural areas of the country. They lack essential infrastructure. Some communities don't even have clean drinking water.

When I first came to Harvard, I thought to myself, 'What kind of an Indian am I?' because I did not grow up on a reservation. But being an Indian is a combination of things. It's your blood. It's your spirituality. And it's fighting for the Indian people.

Under Howard, federal government support for black Australia slowly dried up. Services were slashed, native title restricted.

You'd never have a motorcycle policeman out on the Indian reservation.

I'm Lakota Sioux.

In recent years, the choice of drugs on these reservations and throughout my district has been methamphetamines. It has destroyed the rule of law among the reservation people. It is killing our tribal youth in this country.

On the Native American front, we have turned a new page in the 400-year history of the interface between the American settlers of this country and the nation's first Americans. That's included a new relationship where the sovereignty of tribes is in fact recognized.

We owe an historic debt to American Indians. They have a unique set of concerns that haven't been addressed, and I'd like to stand with them. Also, I'd like to get their views on immigration.

They want us to give up another chunk of our tribal land. This is not the first time or the last time.

The more I heard, the more I've learned, and the more I saw, the more resolved I became about helping to address the challenges that plague the Native American community.

The white people brought whiskey into our village, made our people drunk, and cheated them out of their horses, guns, and traps!...I visited all the whites and begged them not to sell whiskey to my people. One of them continued the practice openly. I took a party of my young men, went to his house, took his barrel and broke in the head and turned out the whiskey.

Tribal sovereign immunity is an anachronism in today’s world.

I am afraid that the talk of "freeing" Indians and making them full citizens is a cloak to make it possible to take a little more away from them. Indians are citizens! They have a right to vote! They serve in the armed forces, and they pay income taxes and other taxes except on their land. This land-tax exemption is usually part of the agreed price received from the Federal government for larger areas given up. All the Indians ask is that they be consulted and that they give their consent as to the proper time for "termination" of certain agreements, and that each tribe be consulted separately.

… those white people who live closest to Indians are always the most prejudiced against them and the most desirous of obtaining their lands. We have always had a better chance of obtaining justice from Washington than from the state or local government…. our treaties are with the United States.

The Indians are acknowledged to have an unquestionable … right to the lands they occupy.

We, as Indian tribes, should be able to prosecute non-Indians on tribal lands. But on Indian land, we have no ability to prosecute anyone but another Indian. American Indians having status as a foreign nation is good for us, but it's not good in some ways if we don't have the jurisdictional power that the federal government claims.

I'm half Native American and half Mexican and I support all native peoples around the world.

Native women and girls experience violence at far higher rates than any other female population in the country - a crisis that has devastated our communities and has been neglected for too long.

Tribes don't need Congressmembers' sympathy. What tribes need is for us to properly exercise our duty.

The federal government needs to make it clear that recognition of Indigenous rights means that when Indigenous bands and their leadership approve projects, we listen.

United States Government needs to acknowledge and respect our sovereignty, treaties, traditional Native American values, and our human rights as a people, which under the law as written we deserve, and which should be protected.

There's no doubt that when it comes to our treatment of Native Americans as well as other persons of color in this country, we've got some very sad and difficult things to account for. I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged. I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds.

I think any time you deal with humans and the way they exploit one another and cause pain you are in the realm of politics, on some level.

Standing Rock is a moment in history. We really have to grab it and go with it.