Andrew Scheer Quotes

Canada has some very, very dark histories, from internments to turning away the St. Louis and the Komagata Maru, but none is darker than our abject failure to respect rights, the spirit and intent of the original treaties with First Nations, Métis Nation, and Inuit peoples. We have to transform that relationship.

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

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.

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.

The First Nations Financial Transparency Act insulted the integrity of the very people in our communities who guide our economic policy and act as our mediators with provincial and federal governments.

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.

[Let us] Hope that no unjust means are used to deceive and mislead the Indians in a matter of so much interest to them.

The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards Indians; their land and property shall never be taken from them without their consent

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

You have to look at what the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous people says which is free and prior informed consent. Now, if you say 'we're going to build a pipeline, what does it take for us as the colonial power of Canada to make you agree?' That's not free, prior and informed consent, that's coercion.

Native American activists have been present as long as the Europeans have been working to colonize us.

I'm a member of the American Indian Movement, and I'm from the indigenous nations of the Western Hemisphere.

When the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among the white men shall have become a myth, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless.

I had often wondered how to best decolonize my people... It must be done one human being at a time. Without that kind of help, Western society does not allow people to come to terms with their feelings. With honesty and therapy, my people can be made whole again.

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.

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.

We must not try to force him to take civilization immediately in its complete form, but under just laws, guaranteeing to Indians equal civil laws, the Indian question, a source of such dishonor to our country and of shame to true patriots, will soon be a thing of the past.

There must be a just native policy or the white man would go under in South Africa.

Convinced of its soundness, I feel it consistent with pure morality to lead the Indians towards becoming citizens, to familiarize them to the idea that it is for their interest to cede lands at times to the United States, and for us to procure gratifications to our citizens from time to time by new acquisitions of land

We make to the Indians this solemn declaration of our unalterable determination, that we wish them to live in peace with all nations as well as with us, and we have no intention ever to strike them or to do them an injury of any sort, unless first attacked or threatened

1st, we ask not to put yokes on our necks that we cannot bear, and don't make us do what is against our religion, and don't ask us to pay poll tax forever and ever as long as there is sun and moon, and don't ask taxes for land which are our rights of the Moro people, including all that grows (is planted) in Jolo and its islands.

They [the American Indians] have claims on the magnanimity and, I may add, on the justice of this nation which we must all fill. We should become their real benefactors; we should perform the office of their Great Father, the endearing title which they emphatically give to the Chief Magistrate of our Union.

It is the object of this Government to be on terms of peace with you, and with all of our red brethren. We make treaties with you and we try to observe them; and if our children should sometimes behave badly, and violate these treaties, it is against our wish.

I would rather die as an Indian than live as a white man.