Tony Abbott Quotes

Most Canadians previously had no idea what went on in the residential schools. You tell Canadians the last one closed in 1996, they are appalled. So now that Canadians are aware of residential schools, you'd think there would be a huge impetus for progress. It hasn't, and that's amazing.

Issues that have relevance to the tribal community have routinely been minimized and ignored.

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] 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.

Yes, as an oppressed people, American Indians have this epic burden, but first and foremost, they're human: sometimes a mess, sometimes funny or sad, at times very wise, and other times not wise at all - a lot like me.

Issues affecting tribal communities have routinely been minimized and ignored.

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.

'Indian policy' has now been brought down upon the American people, and the American people are the new Indians of the 21st Century.

My obsessions stay the same - historical memory and historical erasure. I am particularly interested in the Americas and how a history that is rooted in colonialism, the language and iconography of empire, disenfranchisement, the enslavement of peoples, and the way that people were sectioned off because of blood.

We are seeing healing among the stolen generations, and initiatives which are enabling Indigenous people to make their distinctive contribution to our national life.

Solutions will not be found while Indigenous people are treated as victims for whom someone else must find solutions.

What white man can say I never stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say that I am a thief.

The majority of Aboriginals do not want handouts because they realise that welfare is killing them.

If we had, we would have realised sooner that Indigenous organisations are sometimes not the appropriate channel for programmes to help the stolen generations, because many of them play little part in Indigenous associations.

But we must not try to drive the Indians too fast in effecting these changes.

Well, I think indigenous peoples have ways of living on the Earth that they've had forever. And they've been overrun by organized religion, which has had a lot of money and power.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

These white people think this country belongs to them—they don't realize that they are only in charge right now because there's more of them than there are of us. The whole country changed with only a handful of raggedly-ass pilgrims that came over here in the 1500s. And it can take a handful of raggedy-ass Indians to do the same, and I intend to be one of those raggedy-ass Indians.

The only good Indian is a dead Indian.

Canada can't be preaching about human rights and democracy elsewhere until it starts dealing with its aboriginal people in Canada.