It takes a strong effort on the part of each American Indian not to become Europeanized. The strength for this effort can only come from the traditional ways, the traditional values that our elders retain.

I find freedom to be the most important issue facing any human being today, because without freedom, then life is pointless. The more dependent you become on centralized power, the more easily you are lead around.

Indians in America are yet to be considered human beings, even though the Pope issued a papal bull in 1898 that declared us to be human beings. But to show you the institutional racism, the sports teams are still using the Indians as mascots.

Imagine going to the holy land in Israel, whether you're a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, and start carving up the mountain of Zion. It's an insult to our entire being. It's bad enough getting four white faces carved in up there [on Mount Rushmore], the shrine of hypocrisy.

If you learn from an experience, that's good - so nothing bad happened to you.

Children in poverty aren't trying to get out of poverty; they're just trying to rip off a pair of Nikes. So we Indian people are a microcosm of what's happening in America. We are now consumers, and our culture has gone.

I knew at that young age that going to the Bureau of Indian Affairs was useless, absolutely useless. I grew up having no faith in the bureaucracy of government.