Tenoughan Quotes

The biggest of all Indian problems is the white man.

Remember that our Spanish conquerors, for their own benefit, deliberately created an oppressed underclass whose collective psyche became rooted in passivity and underachievement.

…if you suffer the Englishmen to dwell in your midst, their diseases and poisons shall destroy you utterly and you shall die.

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

It seems as though you white folks bring poison to us Indians. Sickness comes with you, and hundreds of us die.

We eat the white man’s food, and it makes us soft: we wear the white man’s heavy clothing and it makes us weak…Yes – we know when you come, we die

The pressure that has been brought to bear upon the native people, since the cessation of armed conflict, in the attempt to force conformity of custom and habit has caused a reaction more destructive than war, and the injury has not only affected the Indian, but has extended to the white population as well.

The Europeans liked to believe it was their valor, superior weapons and culture that won the New World. The real conquistadors were the armies of pathogens that raced on ahead to infect and kill 9 out of 10 of all the Indians of North, Central, and South America. The civilizations of the New World crumbled under the onslaught of invading microbes. Without this invisible army, Cortez and those who followed might never have stood a chance.

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

Issues affecting tribal communities have routinely been minimized and ignored.

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

We all know the Indians were colonized by the Europeans, but every colonized Indian has been colonized by the Indian reaction to colonization.

A matter that seems to be very clear in terms of the alternative view, is what do you expect to happen in Africa with regard to immune systems, where people are poor, subject to repeat infections and all of that. Surely you would expect their immune systems to collapse.

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.

My father was the first to see through the schemes of the white man.

Like all of Latin America, Mexico after independence in 1821 turned its back on a triple heritage: on the Spanish heritage, because we were newly liberated colonies, and on our Indian and black heritages, because we considered them backward and barbaric. We looked towards France, England and the U.S., to become progressive democratic republics.

Why didn't we recognize how much it bothered them spiritually and politically?

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.

The name 'reservation' has a negative connotation among Native Americans - an intern camp of sorts.

Flagrant injustice, cruelty and oppression…if left unchecked will so multiply that the whole of the native border tribes will be provoked into a battle of dangerous exasperation.

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.

Thou deputy of Pleimont and Boston, paint our words on paper and send them to those on whom thou art dependant; and say to them that all the allied Savages dwelling on the river Kenebek hate firewater…; and that if the English have any more of it brought hither to sell to the Savages, the latter will believe the English wish to exterminate them.

The white people brought whiskey into our village, made our people drunk, and cheated them out of their horses, guns, and traps!...I visited all the whites and begged them not to sell whiskey to my people. One of them continued the practice openly. I took a party of my young men, went to his house, took his barrel and broke in the head and turned out the whiskey.

They seem to me to leave the Indians in a worse condition than they found them in.

To look upon the massacre of our fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers, and if we speak we are called savages ….