Red Cloud Quotes

Since its inception, the government has broken and coerced treaties with hundreds of Native American tribes. And this is even worse when you realize that the native peoples of this land are negotiating for land that is, by all common sense and elementary school logic, their land.

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

This land was our land; it was taken from us illegally …. John Smith did not bring a civilization here. There was already civilization here…. We should have burned the boat and killed them. all.

If you have got to wear golden slippers to enter the white man's heaven no Indian will ever get there, as the whites have got the Black Hills and with them all the gold.

I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

I am one of the forgotten (in this land), one of the faceless ones, a Native American. I am One from whom this Land was stolen through the use of Deceit, through Lies, through Ravage, through Rape, through Pillage. I am one of those who knows the degradation continues...

The whites didn’t really steal the land, because the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves

I hear Republicans and Libertarians and so forth talking about property rights, but they stop talking about property rights as soon as the subject of American Indians comes up, because they know fully well, perhaps not in a fully articulated, conscious form, but they know fully well that the basis for the very system of endeavor and enterprise and profitability to which they are committed and devoted accrues on the basis of theft of the resources of someone else. They are in possession of stolen property. They know it. They all know it. It's a dishonest endeavor from day one.

If I agree to dispose of any part of our land to the white people I would feel guilty of taking food away from our children's mouths, and I do not wish to be that mean.

Canada, Australia and New Zealand have apologised for their treatment of native peoples.

In the end, there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will be determined by the government that has been responsible for doing everything in its power to destroy Native American cultures.

You get people talking about being worried about their art, and dances... their culture being wiped out or taken over, and yet these same people are taking advantage of their people to use them as cheap labour.

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.

Plans are all based on the assumption that the land belongs to the white man and that the native was designed to be the settler’s servant.

The white man expelled the Indian, took his possessions, developed the unexplored resources, and now he devotes a portion of his accumulations to establish institutions where the red man learn the secret and method of his power.

[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.

The only good Indian is a dead Indian.

I once thought that I was the only man who persevered to be the friend of the white man, but since they have come and cleaned out our lodges, horses, and everything else, it is hard for me to believe the white man anymore.

It was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practiced discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us.

I'm so sorry - we had this cottage up in Lake Maxinkuckee, in Culver. I've thought so often of the poor Pottawattomies we took this land away from. They must have loved it so.

The Mohawks have on all occasions shown their zeal and loyalty to the Great King; yet they have been very badly treated by his people.

The white people should go back to Europe, and the country should be returned to the American Indians. This is the future I would like to see for the so-called United States.

When you start to look at Native American history, you realize that, very far from being a peaceful, morally superior people, Native Americans were not that different from Europeans.

When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?

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