Isabella Bird Quotes

I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle.

I hope to God you will not ask me to go to any other country except my own. It may turn out to be another Bosque Redondo.

A collection of huts surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and in the huts lived 500 of the original inhabitants of our area. And so it went with many country towns around Australia.

The draft is white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from red people.

The native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity.

The soldiers never explained to the government when an Indian was wronged, but reported the misdeeds of the Indians.

They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it.

The settlement of what is now South Africa was a joint enterprise, but one in which the blacks had precedence over the whites; and there seems to be no logical reason why intruders coming by sea should be any more blameworthy than those arriving by land. The persecuted Bushmen did not distinguish between their black and white oppressors.

The whites introduced among them [the Indians] the fatal and exterminating conditions of modern life.

For the good of the souls of said cannibals … the greater the number sent over to Spain the better … They [the Caribe Indians] are a wild people, fit for any work, well proportioned and very intelligent, and who … will be better than any other kind of slaves.

All preceding experiments for the improvement of the Indians have failed. It seems now to be an established fact that they cannot live in contact with a civilized community and prosper.

A Century of Dishonor

The United States has always had little sympathy for the native and has always seen settlements as a positive and civilizing force….they saw the native as a squatter with no rights.

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.

These tribes cannot exist surrounded by our settlements and continual contact with our citizens. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement. They must necessarily yield to the force of circumstance and, ere long, disappear.

In the past 190 years, the U.S. government has tried every possible way to get rid of the troublesome Indian problem he feels he has on his hands. First the government tried extinction through destruction – where money was paid for the scalps of every dead Indian. Then the government tried mass relocation… Then the government tried assimilation… The termination was tried by issuing forced patents in fee to Indian land owners – land was taken out of the trust relationship with the U.S. government and an unrestricted patent in fee was issued to the Indian whether he wanted it or not or whether he understood it or not.

Though the civilized man may be truly said to have been the greatest enemy of the Indian, yet he has not always been so wilfully, and, in many instances, he has endeavored to be his benefactor. But, though his endeavors may occasionally, for a time, have arrested the progress of the evil, they have never altogether removed it, or been of permanent advantage.

The European destruction of African civilization was done under the guise of "saving souls.

Civilization or death to all American savages!

This present race of Indians will never be converted. It mattereth not whether they kill one another off or if somebody else does it. And as for our sending missionaries among them to convert them, it is of no use

No one who knew the true nature of the Indian felt any regret that they were driven off their hunting grounds. This attitude was found wherever the Whites came in conflict with them and explains why they were scarcely regarded as human beings.

The darkest aspects of imperialism are still very much prevalent in many cultures around the world; hundreds of years later, and we have a collective responsibility to encounter the deeds of our past.

The Zionists indeed learnt well from the Nazis. So well that it seems that their morally repugnant treatment of the Palestinians, and their attempts to destroy Palestinian society within Israel and the occupied territories, reveals them as basically Nazis with beards and black hats.

The conquistadors and their followers were very rough people, and they were fixated on gold and silver. They were oblivious to the astonishing achievements of the Inca civilisation.

The Cherokees tried to do everything within the law and wished only to live in peace on their own lands. Yet they were cheated out of their birthright and treated as if they were less than human.