We must keep these waters for wild rice, these trees for maple syrup, our lakes for fish, and our land and aquifers for all of our relatives - whether they have fins, roots, wings, or paws.

Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.

Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist, and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesnt make a corporation a terrorist.

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.

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 take a long time to change. If you look at your history in this country, you find that for most rights, people had to struggle. People in this era forget that and quite often think they are entitled, and are weary of struggling over any period of time

To native peoples, there is no such thing as the first, second, and third worlds; there is only an exploiting world ... whether its technological system is capitalist or communist ... and a host world. Native peoples, who occupy more land, make up the host world.

If we build a society based on honoring the earth, we build a society which is sustainable, and has the capacity to support all life forms.