"The white people, are trying to make us over into their image,
they want us to be what they call "assimilated," bringing the
Indians into the mainstream and destroying our own way of life
and our own cultural patterns. They believe we should be
contented like those whose concept of happiness is materialistic
and greedy, which is very different from our way. We want
freedom from the white man rather than to be intergrated. We
don't want any part of the establishment, we want to be free to
raise our children in our religion, in our ways, to be able to hunt
and fish and live in peace. We don't want power, we don't want to
be congressmen, or bankers... we want to be ourselves. We want to
have our heritage, because we are the owners of this land and
because we belong here. The white man says, there is freedom and
justice for all. We have had "freedom and justice," and that is why
we have been almost exterminated. We shall not forget this."

"What treaty have the Sioux made with the white man that we
have broken? Not one. What treaty have the white men ever made
with us that they have kept? Not one. 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? What law have I
broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me
because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux; because I was born
where my father lived; because I would die for my people and my
country?"

"Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last
river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find money cannot be eaten."

"Look at the faces of my people. You will find expressions of love
and despair, hope and joy, sadness and desire, and all the human
feelings that live in the hearts of people of all colours. Yet, the
heart never knows the colour of the skin."

"Remember that your children are not your own, but are lent to
you by the Creator."

"Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the
other. Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth
for the other. Now there is no more loneliness, for each of you
will be companion for the other. Now you are two persons, but
there is only one life before you. Go now to your dwelling, to
enter into the days of your life together. And may your days be
good, and long upon the earth."

"Wisdom comes only when you stop looking for it and start living
the life the Creator intended for you."

"As you go through life, act in a way as to not deprive others of
happiness. Avoid giving sorrow to your fellow man, but to the
contrary, see that you give him joy as often as you can."

"For us, warriors are not what you think of as warriors. The warrior
is not someone who fights, because no one has the right to take
another's life. The warrior, for us, is one who sacrifices himself for
the good of others. His task is to take care of the elderly, the
defenseless, those who cannot provide for themselves, and above
all, the children, the future of humanity."

"There can never be peace between nations until it is first known
that true peace is within the souls of men."

"No tribe has the right to sell, even to each other, much less to
strangers... sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as
well as the earth? Didn't the Great Spirit make them all for the use
of his children? The way, the only way to stop this evil is for the
red man to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the
land, as it was first, and should be now, for it was never divided.
We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game, and
in return what did they give our warriors and our women? Rum,
trinkets, and a grave."

"After the devastation of tribal economies and the deliberate
creation of tribal dependence on the services provided by this
agency, this agency set out to destroy all things Indian... This
agency forbade the speaking of Indian languages, prohibited the
conduct of traditional religious activities, outlawed traditional
government, and made Indian people ashamed of who they were.
Worst of all, the Bureau of Indian Affairs committed these acts
against the children entrusted to its boarding schools, brutalizing
them emotionally, psychologically, physically, and spiritually...
The trauma of shame, fear and anger has passed from one
generation to the next, and manifests itself in the rampant
alcoholism, drug abuse, and domestic violence that plague Indian
country. Many of our people live lives of unrelenting tragedy as
Indian families suffer the ruin of lives by alcoholism, suicides made
of shame and despair, and violent death at the hands of one
another. So many of the maladies suffered today in Indian country
result from the failures of this agency. Poverty, ignorance, and
disease have been the product of this agency's work."

"If you talk to the animals they will talk with you, and you will
know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know
them, and what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears,
one destroys."

"Everything on the earth has a purpose, every disease an herb to
cure it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of
existence."

These were the words given to my great-grandfather by the Master
of Life: "At some time there shall come among you a stranger,
speaking a language you do not understand. He will try to buy the
land from you, but do not sell it; keep it for an inheritance to
your children."

"Martin Luther King said, 'I have a dream.' But we Indians didn't
have a dream. We had a reality."

"The white people never cared for the land or deer or bear. When
we Indians kill meat, we eat it all up. When we dig roots, we make
little holes. When we build houses, we make little holes. When we
burn grass for grasshoppers, we don't ruin things. We shake down
acorns and pinenuts. We don't chop down the trees. We only use
dead wood. But the white people plow up the ground, pull down
the trees, kill everything. The tree says, "Don't. I am sore. Don't
hurt me." But they chop it down and cut it up. The spirit of the
land hates them. They blast out trees and stir it up to its depths.
They saw up the trees. That hurts them. The Indians never hurt
anything, but the white people destroy all. They blast rocks and
scatter them on the ground. The rock says, "Don't! You are
hurting me." But the white people pay no attention. When the
Indians use rocks, they take the little round ones for their
cooking. How can the spirit of the earth like the white man?
Everywhere the white man has touched it, it is sore."

An American Indian elder described his own inner struggles this
way: "Inside of me there two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and
evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all
the time." When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment
and replied, "The one I feed the most."

"We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and
has been handed down to us... their children. It teaches us to be
thankful, to be united, and to love one another! We never quarrel
about religion."

"The West didn't get wild until the white people got there. There's
no such word as wild in the Indian languages. The closest we can
get to it is the word free. We were free people."

"If today I had a young mind to direct, to start on the journey of
life, and I was faced with the duty of choosing between the
natural way of my forefathers and that of the... present way of
civilization, I would, for its welfare, unhesitatingly set that child's
feet in the path of my forefathers. I would raise him to be an
Indian!"

"Many people ask why we fight the white man's war. Our answer is
that we are proud to be Americans. We're proud to be American
Indians. We always stand ready when our country needs us."

"Our treatment of Indians, still affects the national consciousness.
It seems a basic requirement to study the history of Indian people.
Only through this study can we as a nation do what must be done
if our treatment of the American Indian is not to be marked down
for all time as a national disgrace."

"It is difficult to comprehend the magnitude of the atrocities -
intentional, neglectful, or accidental - perpetuated on Indian
people by the conquering culture, and later by the very
government that assumed responsibility for their protection."

"The Earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All
things are connected, like the blood which unites us all."

"Will you ever begin to understand the meaning of the very soil
beneath your feet? From a grain of sand to a great mountain, all is
scared. Yesterday and tomorrow exist eternally upon this
continent. We natives are guardians of this scared place."

"The Great Spirit is in all things, he is in the air we breathe. The
Great Spirit is our Father, but the Earth is our Mother. She
nourishes us, that which we put into the ground she returns to
us."

"I was hostile to the white man. We preferred hunting to a life of
idleness on our reservations. At times we did not get enough to
eat and we were not allowed to hunt. All we wanted was peace and
to be let alone. Soldiers came in the winter and destroyed our
villages. Then Long Hair (Custer) came. They said we massacred
him, but he would have done the same to us. Our first impulse was
to escape but we were so hemmed in we had to fight. After that I
lived in peace, but the government would not let me alone. I was
not allowed to remain quiet. I was tired of fighting. They tried to
confine me and a soldier ran his bayonet into me. I have spoken."

"Our land is everything to us... I will tell you one of the things we
remember on our land. We remember that our grandfathers paid
for it - with their lives."

"I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white
man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your
heart certain wishes and plans, in my heart he put other and
different desires. Each man is good in his sight. It is not necessary
for Eagles to be Crows. We are poor but we are free. No white man
controls our footsteps. If we must die... we die defending our
rights."

"Once I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house. They told me
it was a bank and that the white men place their money there to
be taken care of, and that by and by they got it back with interest.
We are Indians and we have no such bank; but when we have
plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs
and people, and by and by they return them with interest, and our
hearts feel good. Our way of giving is our bank."

"When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are
filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep
and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a
different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going
home."

"The land is sacred. These words are at the core of your being. The
land is our mother, the rivers our blood. Take our land away and
we die. That is, the Indian in us dies."

"I love this land and the buffalo and will not part with it. I want
you to understand well what I say. Write it on paper... I hear a
great deal of good talk from the gentlemen the Great Father sends
us, but they never do what they say. I don't want any of the
medicine lodges (schools and churches) within the country. I
want the children raised as I was. I have heard you intend to settle
us on a reservation near the mountains. I don't want to settle. I
love to roam over the prairies. There I feel free and happy, but
when we settle down we grow pale and die. A long time ago this
land belonged to our fathers, but when I go up to the river I see
camps of soldiers on its banks. These soldiers cut down my timber,
they kill my buffalo and when I see that, my heart feels like
bursting."

"If you really want a flag that represents slavery and oppression, fly
the U.S. Flag. We've killed Indians with that flag. This country has
done all kinds of things wrong and hidden behind that flag. No
one says a thing."

"Grown men can learn from very little children for the hearts of
the little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show
to them many things which older people miss."

"When the Earth is sick, the animals will begin to disappear, when
that happens, The Warriors of the Rainbow will come to save
them."

"In 1868, men came out and brought papers. We could not read
them and they did not tell us truly what was in them. We
thought the treaty was to remove the forts and for us to cease
from fighting. But they wanted to send us traders on the Missouri,
but we wanted traders where we were. When I reached
Washington, the Great Father explained to me that the
interpreters had deceived me. All I want is right and just. I am
poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want
riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do
us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world.
We do not want riches. We want peace and love."

"How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can
make right look like wrong, and wrong like right."

"Being Indian is an attitude, a state of mind, a way of being in
harmony with all things and all beings. It is allowing the heart to
be the distributor of energy on this planet; bringing aliveness up
from the earth and down from the sky, putting it in and giving it
out from the heart."

"In early days we were close to nature. We judged time, weather
conditions, and many things by the elements - the good earth,
the blue sky, the flying of geese, and the changing winds. We
looked to these for guidance and answers. Our prayers and
thanksgiving were said to the four winds. To the East, from
whence the new day was born; to the South, which sent the warm
breeze which gave a feeling of comfort; to the West, which ended
the day and brought rest; and to the North, the Mother of winter
whose sharp air awakened a time of preparation for the long days
ahead. We lived by God's hand through nature and evaluated the
changing winds to tell us or warn us of what was ahead. Today we
are again evaluating the changing winds. May we be strong in
spirit and equal to our Fathers of another day in reading the signs
accurately and interpreting them wisely. May Wah-Kon-Tah, the
Great Spirit, look down upon us, guide us, inspire us, and give us
courage and wisdom. Above all, may He look down upon us and
be pleased."

"Thoughts are like arrows; once released, they strike their mark.
Guard them well or one day you may be your own victim."

"The ground on which we stand is sacred ground. It is the blood
of our ancestors."

"Grandfather, Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean
to hear my feeble voice. You lived first, and you are older than all
need, older than all prayer. All things belong to you - the two-
legged, the four-legged, the wings of the air, and all green things
that live. You have set the powers of the four quarters of the earth
to cross each other. You have made me cross the good road and
road of difficulties, and where they cross, the place is holy. Day in,
day out, forevermore, you are the life of things."

"If people are genuinely interested in honoring Indians, try getting
your government to live up to the more than 400 treaties it
signed with our nations. Try respecting our religious freedom
which has been repeatedly denied in federal courts. Try stopping
the ongoing theft of Indian water and other natural resources. Try
reversing your colonial process that relegates us to the most
impoverished, polluted, and desperate conditions in this country.
Try understanding that the mascot issue is only the tip of a very
huge problem of continuing racisim against American Indians.
Then maybe your "honors" will mean something. Until then, it's
just so much superficial, hypocritical puffery. People should
remember that an honor isn't born when it parts the honorer's
lips, it is born when it is accepted in the honoree's ear."

"I have carried a heavy load on my back ever since I was a boy. I
realized then that we could not hold our own with the white men.
We were like deer. They were like grizzly bears. We had small
country. Their country was large. We were contented to let things
remain as the Great Spirit Chief made them. They were not, and
would change the rivers and mountains if they did not suit them.
I am tired of fighting from where the sun now stands, I will fight
no more. Our fathers gave us many laws, which they had learned
from their fathers. These laws were good. They told us to treat all
people as they treated us; that we should never be the first to
break a bargain; that it was a disgrace to tell a lie; that we should
speak only the truth; that it was a shame for one man to take
from another... his wife or his property without paying for it. We
were contented to let things remain as the Great Spirit made
them. Suppose a white man should come to me and say, "Joseph, I
like your horses. I want to buy them." I say to him, "No, my
horses suit me; I will not sell them." Then he goes to my neighbor
and says, "Pay me money, and I will sell you Joseph's horses." The
white man returns to me and says, "Joseph, I have bought your
horses and you must let me have them." If we sold our lands to
the government, this is the way they bought them. I am not a
child, I think for myself. No man can think for me. If the white
man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace.
Treat all men alike. Give them a chance to live and grow. All men
were made brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all
people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect
the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born free
should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go
where he pleases. If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect him
to grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth, and
compel him to stay there, he will not be contented, nor will he
grow and prosper. The earth and myself are of one mind. We were
taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything,
and that he never forgets, that hereafter he will give every man a
spirit home according to his deserts; If he has been a good man, he
will have a good home; if he has been a bad man, he will have a
bad home. This I believe, and all my people believe the same. Good
words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words
do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country,
now overrun by white men. They do not protect my father's
grave. They do not pay for all my horses and cattle. Good words
cannot give me back my children. Good words will not give my
people good health and stop them from dying. Good words will
not get my people a home where they can live in peace and take
care of themselves. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It
makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all
the broken promises. There has been too much talking by men
who had no right to talk. It does not require many words to speak
the truth. We do not want churches because they will teach us to
quarrel about God, as the Catholics and Protestants do. We do not
want that. We may quarrel with men about things on earth, but
we never quarrel about the Great Spirit. I believe much trouble and
blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. I will tell you
in my way how the Indian sees things. The white man has more
words to tell you how they look to him, but it does not require
many words to seek the truth. Too many misinterpretations have
been made, too many misunderstandings. The Great Spirit Chief
who rules above all will smile upon this land. And this time the
Indian race is waiting and praying. I am tired of talk that comes to
nothing."

"The Indian survived our open intention of wiping them out.
And since the tide turned they have even weathered our good
intentions toward them, which can be more deadly."

"We will be known by the tracks we leave behind."

~ DAKOTA PROVERB ~