Chief Seattle Quotes

The most important thing is the indigenous people are not vindictive by nature. We are not here to oppress anybody - but to join together and build Bolivia, with justice and equality.

We owe the Aboriginal peoples a debt that is four centuries old. It is their turn to become full partners in developing an even greater Canada. And the reconciliation required may be less a matter of legal texts than of attitudes of the heart.

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.

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

I have, for many years past, contemplated the noble races of red men who are now spread over these trackless forests and boundless prairies, melting away at the approach of civilization. Their rights invaded, their morals corrupted, their lands wrested from them, their customs changed, and therefore lost to the world; and they at last sunk into the earth, and the ploughshare turning the sod over their graves, and I have flown to their rescue--not of their lives or of their race (for they are "doomed" and must perish), but to the rescue of their looks and their modes, at which the acquisitive world may hurl their poison and every besom of destruction, and trample them down and crush them to death

I think the Conservative Party has a great story to tell when it comes to relationships with First Nations. I want to be part of the solution-identifying process, talking about, 'What are the practical things that we can achieve that the Conservatives can offer?'

If anyone can say 'go back,' it's Native Americans. My Pueblo ancestors, despite being targeted at every juncture - despite facing famine and drought - still inhabit this country today. But indigenous people aren't asking anyone to go back to where they came from.

There are 13 stories in 'The Fencepost Chronicles' about corrupt tribal leaders, trouble on the reserve, survival schemes, and communal drinking.

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

Yet there are thousands of Indigenous people searching for family members.

And Americans realized that native people are still here, that they have a moral standing, a legal standing.

I had often wondered how to best decolonize my people... It must be done one human being at a time. Without that kind of help, Western society does not allow people to come to terms with their feelings. With honesty and therapy, my people can be made whole again.

We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it, that governs it by the virtue of its language and savage culture.

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

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?

Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun.

Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, it means that the dead are living.

The lands granted were in the occupancy of savages and situated in a wilderness, of which the government had never taken possession, and of which it could not with its own citizens ever have taken possession.

Natives had to be made tame, to the gun.

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.

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.

1st, we ask not to put yokes on our necks that we cannot bear, and don't make us do what is against our religion, and don't ask us to pay poll tax forever and ever as long as there is sun and moon, and don't ask taxes for land which are our rights of the Moro people, including all that grows (is planted) in Jolo and its islands.

I acknowledge the traditional owners of this land whose rights extend from the distant past unbroken to this day and into the future, and I renew my commitment to act in support of Aboriginal land rights.

The Americans are not created by the master of life. … I will ask the master of life to cover over the Americans with earth and the Indians shall return to the Earth.

We Beate the Savages outt of the Island burned their howses Ransaked their Temple Tooke down the Corpes of their deade kings from out of their Toambes And caryed away their pearles.... The Salvages still contineweinge their mallice Ageinste us.