"They're the only wild animal that's not afraid of you.
They're not afraid of anything and they've got no reason to be.
They're big enough to take care of themselves and they do."

~Jesse Stovall~

 

 

 

"A people without a history is like wind on

the buffalo grass"

~Crazy Horse~

 

 

"Will you teach your children what we have taught our

children?  That the earth is our mother?  What befalls

the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.  This we know:

the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.

~Chief Seattle~

 

 

"Healthy feet can hear the very heart of Holy Earth."

~Chief Sitting Bull~

 

 

What is life?

"It is the flash of the firefly in the night.

It is the breath of the buffalo in the winter time.

It is the little shadow which runs across the

grass and loses itself in the sunset."

~Blackfoot~

(On his death bed, 1890)

 

 

"If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian...

we can live in peace.  There need be no trouble. Treat all

men alike...give them all the same law.  Give them all an

even chance to live and grow. All men are made by the

same great Spirit Chief.  They are all brothers.  The earth

is the mother of all people, and all people should have

equal rights upon it.  Let me be a free man, free to travel,

free to stop, free to work, free to trade... where I choose

my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my

 fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself, and I

 will obey every law, or sumit to the penality."

~Chief Joseph~

 

 

"Trace your walk...Feel satisfaction in knowing the

end of the rainbow you have looked for can be found

at the toe of your moccasin after realizing who

we are... and what we have."

 

~John "Eagle Spirit" Campbell, Chief~

 

 

"One thing we know:  Our God is also your God.  The

earth is precious to Him and to harm the earth is to

heap contempt on it's Creator."

~Chief Seattle~

 

 

From The 1927 Grand Council of American Indians

"The white people, who 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.

 

 

"...I am getting old and have witnessed for many years your increase  in wealth and power while the steady consuming decline of my tribe admonishes me that extinction is inevitable."

~ Waun-na-con ~ a.k.a. John Quinney (Mahican)

 

 

"When we were created, we were given our ground to live on and from this time these were our rights. This is all true."

 ~ Wininock~ (Yakima)

 

 

"He wanted to make a treaty with us, and to give us presents, blankets, and guns, and flint, and steel and knives...We do not want your presents, and do not want you to come into our country."