Quotes

We do not want some paternalistic government to try and tell us what we should do.

[on government apologizing for it's treatment of First Nations people] The apology is an easy thing to do. It's a ceremonial thing. It's like cutting a cake. It's like kissing a baby. It means nothing unless you put some kind of action behind it.

Native people generally know their own local history, of their reserve and their area. They have a decent idea of what has happened there. But it's often a very myopic idea because it doesn't connect with the larger ideas that make up policy in North America.

No matter how you frame Native history, the one inescapable constant is that Native people in North America have lost much. We've given away a great deal, we've had a great deal taken from us, and, if we're not careful, we will continue to lose parts of ourselves - as Indians, as Cree, as Blackfoot, as Navajo, as Inuit - with each generation. But this need not happen. Native cultures aren't static. They're dynamic, adaptive and flexible, and for many of us, the modern variations of older tribal traditions continue to provide order, satisfaction, identify and value in our lives. More than that, in the five hundred years of European occupation, Native cultures have already proven themselves to be remarkably tenacious and resilient.

A great many people believe that colonialism and racism are artifacts of the past. Unfortunately that is not the case. The negative attitudes about native people that were formed and fostered in the 16th and 17th centuries have, with only minor modifications, followed us into the 21st, and they continue to inform social opinion and federal Indian policy in Ottawa and Washington.

Good travel stories are boring because nothing happens. The great travel stories are when you're beset by minor disasters.