If you’re going to spend most of your time in your democracy figuring out how to get oil by intervening into other people’s countries and insuring that you follow it with military might, we think...

In the end, there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will be determined by the government that has been responsible for doing everything in its power to...

Eliminating some 3600 post offices – mostly rural – will save the USPS less than seven tenths of one percent of their operating budget, but nationally, a number of tribal communities will be hit.

What we all need to do is find the wellspring that keeps us going, that gives us the strength and patience to keep up this struggle for a long time.

The United States, you know, people – one of the reasons that it is said that native people received citizenship in 1924 was so that they could be drafted. And they have been extensively drafted.

The idea that you can dress up in some kind of a fake Indian outfit and get on stage is somehow acceptable in this country. That has to do with the fact that you have...

Now that I think about it, I was arrested in 1992. Some people may think of that as a bad thing, but I feel good about it. I chained myself to the gate of a...

I don’t oppose pipelines – I like infrastructure – but I heard that the Keystone XL pipeline was going to carry tar sands oil from the lands of the Cree and Dene all the way...

We are launching a campaign called Wind, Not War, which is about the alternatives to a fossil-fuels-based economy and looking at wind, an alternative energy, as key to that in terms of issues of global...

Food for us comes from our relatives, whether they have wings or fins or roots. That is how we consider food. Food has a culture. It has a history. It has a story. It has...

On my reservation, we had one of the most abundant fisheries in the world and hundreds of thousands of acres of wild rice beds. We’ve lost a lot of it, but there’s still natural wealth...

I think of some of my friends who have passed to the spirit world but are who here with me when I go to events and when I walk in my own community. My sisters,...

Tribes have the potential to provide almost 15 percent of the country’s electricity with wind power, and have 4.5 times the solar resources to power the entire U.S.

I see a lot of damage to Mother Earth. I see water being taken from creeks where water belongs to animals, not to oil companies.

The United States – you know, native people are large landowners, but the military has a huge chunk of our territories. And in those, there are a number of places that are our sacred sites.

The reality is, is that the military is full of native nomenclature. That’s what we would call it. You’ve got Black Hawk helicopters, Apache Longbow helicopters. You’ve got Tomahawk missiles. The term used when you...

Actually, I consider myself to be pretty politically conservative.

I wanted to get out of Ashland, and I thought it would be pretty cool to go to school in the East. So I asked my guidance counselor what Ivy League schools were. And I...

I’m voting my conscience on November 2; I’m voting for John Kerry.

Native people – about two-thirds of the uranium in the United States is on indigenous lands. On a worldwide scale, about 70 percent of the uranium is either in Aboriginal lands in Australia or up...

America is so accustomed to some depiction of native people that is entirely racist, and there’s a perception that that is okay.

If we moved from industrialized agriculture to re-localized organic agriculture, we could sequester about one quarter of the carbon moving into the air and destroying our glaciers, oceans, forests and lands.

We don’t think scientists have the right to contaminate the state grain — and it could happen through cross-pollination, if they develop a genetically enhanced wild rice and plant it in Minnesota.

When I first came to Harvard, I thought to myself, ‘What kind of an Indian am I?’ because I did not grow up on a reservation. But being an Indian is a combination of things....

The question of socialism or communism or capitalism or between the left and right – I think the important question is between the industrial society and the earth-based society. And I say that because I...

I used to go to some Harvard parties with my athlete friends, and they would introduce me as ‘Winona, the Indian activist.’ It made me uncomfortable. I felt like a novelty.

Food sovereignty is an affirmation of who we are as indigenous peoples and a way, one of the most surefooted ways, to restore our relationship with the world around us.

We drew a line. Just don’t mess with the rice.

Ojibwe prophecy speaks of a time during the seventh fire when our people will have a choice between two paths. The first path is well-worn and scorched. The second path is new and green. It...

Another thing is, people lose perspective. It is a cultural trait in America to think in terms of very short time periods. My advice is: learn history. Take responsibility for history. Recognise that sometimes things...

I’m interested in what kind of food we’re going to eat as the climate changes. I’m interested in what kind of economy we’re going to have in another 1,000 years.

Post office closures in the Dakotas and Minnesota will impact many communities, but the White Earth reservation villages, and other tribal towns of Squaw Lake, Ponemah, Brookston in Minnesota, and Manderson, Wounded Knee and Wakpala...

The University of Minnesota has basically said, ‘Well, we aren’t intending to do it. But we want the right to.’ And that’s the problem, is that open door. I understand academic freedom. I’m a big...

Oil is drowning our oceans and drowning our boreal forests.

One of our people in the Native community said the difference between white people and Indians is that Indian people know they are oppressed but don’t feel powerless. White people don’t feel oppressed, but feel...

I’m Harvard-educated; I’m an economist by training. I’m an author, a journalist, as well as being active in community development.

The first thing I am is a person. I am a woman. And I am part of a nation, the Indian nation. But people either relate to you as an Indian or as a woman....

She’s an old ricer and knows everybody on this reservation.

Spirituality is the foundation of all my political work.

I don’t understand all the nuances of the women’s movement. But I do understand that there are feminists who want to challenge the dominant paradigm, not only of patriarchy, but of where the original wealth...

In most of America, it seems you don’t matter if you’re not between 25 and 50.

We filed a constitutional rights lawsuit on my reservation, and I had to go out and interview all these old people. And I found that many of the old people on my reservation didn’t know...

I look at my own reservation, the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota – on my reservation, one quarter of our money is spent on energy. All of that money basically goes to off-reservation vendors...

Mother Earth needs us to keep our covenant. We will do this in courts, we will do this on our radio station, and we will commit to our descendants to work hard to protect this...

The thing about being an Indian person is that you feel most at home with your own people.

In the time of the sacred sites and the crashing of ecosystems and worlds, it may be worth not making a commodity out of all that is revered.