Quotessence
Home / Topics / Aboriginals Quotes

Aboriginals Quotes

Browse 21 quotes about Aboriginals.

Aboriginals Quotes

“The bureaucrats were accountable to their political masters, not accountable to the people whom they were overseeing. And putting it as bluntly as possible, no government ever won votes by spending money on Indians.”

ChildrenPoliticsCanadaColonialismIndigenousDecolonizationAboriginalsResidential SchoolsIdle No MoreIndian Affairs
Book:Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada's Lost Promise and One Girl's Dream
Create image

“... the government had spent more than four times the amount on lawyers [fighting a First Nations family's request for medical treatment] than would have been required to actually do the surgery.”

ChildrenPoliticsCanadaColonialismIndigenousDecolonizationAboriginalsResidential SchoolsIdle No MoreIndian Affairs
Book:Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada's Lost Promise and One Girl's Dream
Create image

“[The federal government memo documents] imply a feeling of bureaucratic effrontery as though this child, who hovered between life and death, was some kind of chiseller to the taxpayer.”

ChildrenPoliticsCanadaColonialismIndigenousDecolonizationAboriginalsResidential SchoolsIdle No MoreIndian Affairs
Book:Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada's Lost Promise and One Girl's Dream
Create image

“From when she was young, Molly had learned that the fence was an important landmark for the Mardudjara people of the Western Desert who migrated south from the remote regions. They knew that once they reached Billanooka Station, it was simply a matter of following the rabbit-proof fence to their final destination, the Jigalong government depot; the desert outpost of the white man. The fence cut through the country from south to north. It was a typical response by the white people to a problem of their own making. Building a fence to keep the rabbits out proved to be a futile attempt by the government of the day. For the three runaways, the fence was a symbol of love, home and security.”

TrumpPresident TrumpAboriginal CultureAustralian HistoryAboriginalsAboriginal HistoryStolen Generation
Book:Rabbit-Proof Fence
Create image

“Whose voice was first sounded on this land? The voice of the red people who had but bows and arrows. [...] What has been done in my country I did not want, did not ask for it; white people going through my country. [...] When the white man comes in my country he leaves a trail of blood behind him. [...] I have two mountains in that country--the Black Hills and the Big Horn Mountain. I want the Great Father to make no roads through them.”

HistoryGenocideUs HistoryAboriginalFirst NationsU S HistoryNativesAboriginalsFirst PeopleNative People
Author:Red Cloud
Create image

“If the Texans had kept out of my country, there might have been peace. But that which you now say we must live on is too small. The Texans have taken away the places where the grass grew the thickest and the timber was the best. Had we kept that, we might have done the things you ask. But it is too late. The white man has the country which we loved, and we only wish to wander on the prairie until we die.”

NativeGenocideUs HistoryAboriginalNative AmericansFirst NationsU S HistoryNativesAboriginalsFirst People
Author:Ten Bears Comanche Nation
Create image

“You have driven me from the East to this place, and I have been here two thousand years or more. [...] My friends, if you took me away from this land it would be very hard for me. I wish to die in this land, I wish to be an old man here. [...] I have not wished to give even a part of it to the Great Father [the President]. Though he were to give me a million dollars I would not give him this land. [...] When people want to slaughter cattle they drive them along until they get them to a corral, and then they slaughter them. So it was with us. [...] My children have been exterminated; my brother has been killed.”

GenocideUs HistoryNative AmericansFirst NationsU S HistoryNativesAboriginalsFirst PeoplesPoncas
Author:Standing Bear
Create image

“The white men in the East are like birds. They are hatching out their eggs every year, and there is not room enough in the East and they must go elsewhere; and they come west, as you have seen them coming for the last few years. And they are still coming, and will come until they overrun all of this country; and you can't prevent it. [...] Everything is decided in Washington by the majority, and these people come out west and see that the Indians have a big body of land they are not using, and they say we want the land.”

GenocideUs HistoryNative AmericansFirst NationsU S HistoryNativesAboriginalsFirst Peoples
Author:George Crook
Create image

“We have been south and suffered a great deal down there. Many have died of diseases which we have no name for. Our hearts looked and longed for this country where we were born. There are only a few of us left, and we only wanted a little ground, where we could live. We left our lodges standing, and ran away in the night. The troops followed us. I rode out and told the troops we did not want to fight; we only wanted to go north, and if they would let us alone we would kill no one. The only reply we got was a volley. After that we had to fight our way, but we killed none who did not fire at us first. My brother, Dull Knife, took one-half of the band and surrendered near Fort Robinson. [...] They gave up their guns, and then the whites killed them all.”

GenocideUs HistoryNative AmericansFirst NationsU S HistoryNativesAboriginalsFirst PeoplesCheyennes
Author:Little Wolf
Create image

“Aboriginal peoples, like the ancients, were not so concerned with the science of matter, but rather with the science of the mind. For to them, the universe was mind, and all that existed as physical reality was the product of mind and spirit. Everything physical and material was in essence, manifested thought.”

Power Of ThoughtsAboriginalAboriginal CultureAboriginalsPhysical RealityAboriginal AustraliansPhysical Realm
Book:Earth Medicine: Revealing Hidden Teachings of the Native American Medicine Wheel
Create image

“Tracker Marks was of a different opinion. Though he seemed more white than a white man, he had no time for their ways. For him his dress, his deportment was no different than staying downwind in the shadows of trees when hunting, blending into the world of those he hunted, rather than standing out from it. Once he had excelled at the emu dance & the kangaroo dance; then his talent led him to the whitefella dance, only now no-one was left of his tribe to stand around the fire & laugh & praise his talent for observation & stealthy imitation. The whites have no law, he told Capois Death, no dreaming. Their way of life made no sense whatsoever. Still, he did not hate them or despise them. They were stupid beyond belief, but they had a power, & somehow their stupidity & their power were, in Tracker Marks’s mind, inextricably connected. But how? he asked Capois Death. How can power & ignorance sleep together? Questions to which Capois Death had no answer.”

RacePowerIgnoranceCivilizationStupidityAustraliaColonialismWhite ManImperialismRace RelationsWestern CivilizationAboriginalAboriginal CultureAboriginalsTasmania
Author:Richard Flanagan
Create image

“For ages the Aborigines had relied heavily on isolation. It was their asset and their liability, and gave them long-term control of the continent. But if their isolation were to end, as it ultimately had to end with a shrinking world, their whole way of life could be fractured. Even the arrival of a few thousand permanent settlers, whether from Europe or Asia, would be like the first tremors of an earthquake.”

HistoryIsolationColonialismAboriginal CultureAboriginalsAboriginal AustraliansEuropean Expansion
Book:The Story of Australia's People Volume 2: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia
Create image