The True Peace
The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Taka (the Great Spirit), and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.
This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.
Black Elk - Oglala Sioux
Doublehead - Creek Chief
On this land there is a great deal of timber, pine and oak, that are much use to the white man. They send it to foreign countries, and it brings them a great deal of money.
On the land there is much grass for cattle and horses, and much food for the hogs.
On this land there is a great deal of tobacco raised, which likewise brings much money. Even the streams are valuable to the white man, to grind the wheat and corn that grows on this land. The pine trees that are dead are valuable for tar.
All these things are lasting benefits. But if the Indians are given just a few goods for their lands, in one or two seasons those goods are all rotted and gone for nothing.
We are told that our lands are of no service to us, but still, if we hold our lands, there will always be a turkey, or a deer, or a fish in the streams for those young who will come after us.
We are afraid if we part with any more of our lands the white people will not let us keep as much as will be sufficient to bury our dead.
Doublehead - Creek Chief
Sitting Bull - Teton Sioux
When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set in their land; they sent ten thousand men into battle.
Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?
What white man can say I ever stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say I am a thief.
What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian.
What white man has ever seen me drunk ?
Who has ever come to me hungry and left me unfed ? Who has ever seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken?
Is it wrong of 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?
Sitting Bull - Teton Sioux
Chief Dan George
"How long have I known you, oh Canada? A hundred years? Yes, a hundred years. And many many 'seelanum" more. And today, when you celebrate your hundred years, oh Canada, I am sad for all the Indian people throughout the land.
For I have known you when your forests were mine; when they gave me my meat and my clothing. I have known you in your streams and rivers where your fish flashed and danced in the sun, where the waters said come, come and eat of my abundance. I have known you in the freedom of your winds. And my spirit, like the winds, once roamed your good lands.
But in the long hundred years since the white man came, I have seen my freedom disappear like the salmon going mysteriously out to sea. The white man's strange customs which I could not understand, pressed down upon me until I could no longer breathe.
When I fought to protect my land and my home, I was called a savage. When I neither understood nor welcomed this way of life, I was called lazy. When I tried to rule my people, I was stripped of my authority.
My nation was ignored in your history textbooks - they were little more important in the history of Canada than the buffalo that ranged the plains. I was ridiculed in your plays and motion pictures, when I drank your fire water, I got drunk -- very, very drunk. And I forgot.
Oh Canada, how can I celebrate with you this Centenary, this hundred years? Shall I thank you for the reserves that are left to me of my beautiful forests? For the canned fish of my rivers? For the loss of my pride and authority, even among my own people? For the lack of my will to fight back? No! I must forget what's past and gone.
Oh, God in Heaven! Give me back the courage of the olden Chiefs. Let me wrestle with my surroundings. Let me again, as in the days of old, dominate my environment. Let me humbly accept this new culture and through it rise up and go on.
Oh, God! Like the Thunderbird of old I shall rise again out of the sea; I shall grab the instruments of the white man's success---his education, his skills, and with these new tools I shall build my race into the proudest segment of your society. Before I follow the great Chiefs who have gone before us, oh Canada, I shall see these things come to pass.
I shall see our young braves and our chiefs sitting in the houses of law and government, ruling and being ruled by the knowledge and freedom of our great land. So shall we shatter the barriers of our isolation. So shall the next hundred years be the greatest and proudest in the proud history of our tribes and nations."
Chief Dan George
