Our land here is the dearest thing on eart to us. Men take up land and get rich on it, and it is very important for us Indians to keep it. 
White Thunder

The American Indian is of the soil, whether it be the region of forests, plains, pueblos, or mesas. He fits into the landscape, for the hand that fashioned the continent also fashioned the man for his surroundings. He once grew as naturally as the wild sunflowers, he belongs just as the buffalo belonged.....Luther Standing Bear (Oglala Sioux)

I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have mademe 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..-     Sitting Bull (Sioux)

All Indians must dance everywhere, keep on dancing. Pretty soon in next spring Great Spirit come. He bring back all game of every kind. The game be thick everywhere.   All dead Indians come back and live again. They all be strong just like young men, be young again. Old blind Indian see again and get young and have fine time. When Great Spirit comes this way, then all the Indians go to mountains, high up away from whites. Whites can't hurt Indians then. Then while   Indians way up high, big flood comes like water and all white people die, get drowned. After that water go away and then nobody but Indians everywhere and game all kinds thick. Then medicine man tell Indians to send word  to all Indians to keep up dancing and the good times will come.       Wowoka (Paiute)

The bullets will not go towards you. The prairie is large and the bullets will not go toward you .  Yellow Bird (Medicine man at Wounded Knee)

You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother's bosom? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest. You ask me to dig for stones! Shall I dig under her skin for bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again.  You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it and be rich like white men, but how dare I cut my mother's hair? I want my people to stay with me here. All the dead men will come to life again. Their spirits will come to their bodies again. We must wait here in the homes of our fathers and be ready to meet them in the bosom of our mother               Wowoka (Paiute)

I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream..the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer and the sacred tree is dead.          

          Black Elk(Lakota)

 

Big Foot (Minneconjou)

There was no hope on Earth, and God seemed to have forgotten us. Some said they saw the Son of God; others did not see Him. If He had come, He would do some great things as He had done before. We doubted it because we had seen neither Him nor His works. The people did not know; they did not care. They snatched at the hope. They screamed like crazy men to Him for mercy. They caught at the promise they heard He had made. The white men were frightened and called for soldiers. We had begged for life and the white men thought we wanted theirs. We heard that soldiers were coming. We did not fear. We hoped that we could tell them our troubles and get help. A white man said the soldiers meant to kill us.We did not believe it but some were frightened and ran away to the badlands.          Red Cloud (Sioux)

If a man loses anything and goes back and looks carefully for it he will find it, and that is what the Indians are doing now when they ask you to give them the things that were promised them in the past; and I do not consider that they should be treated like beasts, and that is the reason I have grown up with the feelings I have...I feel that my country has gotten a bad name , and I want it to have a good name; it used to have a good name. And I sit sometimes and wonder who it is that has given it a bad name    Sitting Bull (Sioux)