“Nobody asks to be a hero, it just sometimes turns out that way.”

A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt. He said, ‘I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart.

Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away

No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion.

The white men speak bad of the Indian, and look at him spitefully. But the Indian does not tell lies; Indians do not steal.

What, do y’all think you’re heroes?’ I didn’t know what to say at the time, but if he asked me again, I’d say no. I’d say there’s no way in hell. Nobody asks to be a hero. It just sometimes turns out that way.

If you treat a sick child as an adult and a sick adult as a child, it usually works out pretty well.

I got my best foot forward onto greener grass, cause there ain’t no future living in the past.

[Black Hawk] has fought for his countrymen, the squaws and papooses, against white men, who came year after year, to cheat them and take away their lands.

My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon. So long as they occupy and cultivate it, they have a right to the soil.

When I get home and people ask me,’Hey, Hoot, why do you do it, man? What are you? Some kind of war junkie?

The white men despise the Indians, and drive them from their homes. But the Indians are not deceitful.

Later, a large band of Christians mounted an attack on this native lord, butchering him along with vast numbers of his people and taking all the survivors into slavery, where they duly perished,

I played Mary at the age of seven in my first nativity play, and I loved it – there is something so fascinating about embodying someone else.

Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view and demand that they respect yours.

Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.

No tribe has the right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers….

Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pcanet, and other powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and oppression of the white man, as snow before the summer sun.

Brothers, we must be united; we must smoke the same pipe; we must fight each other’s battles; and more than all, we must love the Great Spirit.