Donovan D. Brown Quotes

[Tribal] Sovereignty is just a means to an end. The end is healthy, happy and safe communities.

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 disapprove... of the proposal to subject the Indians to our laws without their consent,... It is so little in concord with our principles of government.

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

The natives of the islands ... shall he afforded the opportunity to manage their own local affairs to the fuIIest extent of which they are capable, and ... which a careful study of their capacities and observation of the workings of native control show to be consistent with the maintenance of law, order, and loyalty.

At the time the Constitution was framed, the idea of appealing to an American court of justice for an assertion of right or a redress of wrong had perhaps never entered the mind of an Indian or of his tribe. Their appeal was to the tomahawk, or to the Government.

While Indians were in a state of at least semi-independence, there did not seem to be any great necessity for interference.

The United States is unused to Colonial rule and lacks a trained body of colonial administrators and civil servants.

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

Whether or not our system of Indian management has been a success during the past ten, fifty, or hundred years is almost answered in the asking.

The American War of Independence is the expulsion of the intrusive elements, alien to the American essence. If American reality is the reinvention of itself, whatever is found in any way irreducible or unassimilable is not American.

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.

The idea that this country may acquire territories anywhere upon the earth, by conquest or treaty, and hold them as mere colonies or provinces, the people inhabiting them to enjoy only such rights as Congress accords them, is wholly inconsistent with the spirit and genius as well as with the words of the Constitution

Hungary together with her annexed territories is independent and should be governed and administered according to her own laws and customs and not as other provinces are.

The constitution shall be made, or we will cease to be

I think that he was responsible for putting the flesh and bones on the Constitution.

The framers of the constitution were very literate men and they could write very well. When they wrote that “Congress shall make NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” they meant NO LAW. If they had wanted to have some laws or an emergency law, they would not have written, “NO LAW.” They were expert at the English language.

The Constitution is not the only way we preserve rights in America. We have the common law and political action.

We do not want to be anybody's pawns. We are an ancient people. We want our autonomy. We want sarbasti—freedom. I do not know who will take my place one day. But they cannot crush us.

The rule of liberty that all government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of self government. We govern the Indians without their consent, we govern our territories without their consent, we govern our children without their consent.

The United States will never ask for your land there. This I promise you in the name of your great father, the President. That country he assigns to his red people, to be held by them and their children's children forever.

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.

There will be no annexation of ourselves or our territory to an independent Quebec without our consent.

People seem to be concerned about the Constitution of the United States only when it pertains to something that is of concern to them.

There is no good behavior clause in the Constitution.