Tribal Relations Quotes

In the multitude of cares claiming my constant attention I have been unable to examine and determine the exact treaty relations between the United States and the Cherokee Nation.

The Democratic Party has learned from the terrible mistakes of the past. Our platform requires that we honor, fulfill, and strengthen the federal government's trust responsibility to American Indians. We take this responsibility seriously.

I thought I was benefiting the Indians as well as the government, by taking them all over the United States, and giving them a correct idea of the customs, life, etc., of the pale faces, so that when they returned to their people they could make known all they had seen.

No tribe unites with another of its own free will.

As governor, I work in hand in hand with tribal leaders on everything from disaster response to economic development. Tribal governments are important partners to our state government, and I value the good relationships my administration has cultivated with them.

We have a government-to-government relationship with tribes, and they should have that opportunity to weigh in on important decisions that affect them.

There is great good will on Capitol Hill for the tribes but virtually none for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

It will be my sincere and constant desire to observe toward the Indian tribes within our limits a just and liberal policy, and to give that humane and considerate attention to their rights and their wants which is consistent with the habits of our Government and the feelings of our people.

Our relations with the various Indian tribes continue to be of a pacific character.

The neighboring tribes are becoming daily less warlike, and more helpless and dependent on us … They have, in a great measure, ceased to be an object of terror, and have become that of commiseration.

I see no reason why Indians who can give satisfactory proof of having by their own labor supported their families for a number of years, and who are willing to detach themselves from their tribal relations, should not be admitted to the benefit of the homestead act and the privileges of citizenship, and I recommend the passage of a law to that effect. It will be an act of justice as well as a measure of encouragement.

Measures calculated to insure a continuance of the friendship of the Indians and to preserve peace along the extent of our interior frontier have been digested and adopted. In the framing of these care has been taken to guard on the one hand our advanced settlements from the predatory incursions of those unruly individuals who can not be restrained by their tribes, and on the other hand to protect the rights secured to the Indians by treaty - to draw them nearer to the civilized state and inspire them with correct conceptions of the power as well as justice of the Government.