Trail Of Broken Treaties Quotes

Hanging a banner from the front of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building that proclaimed it to be the “Native American Embassy,” hundreds of protesters hailing from seventy-five Indigenous nations entered the building to sit in. BIA personnel, at the time largely non-Indigenous, fled, and the capitol police chain-locked the doors announcing that the Indigenous protesters were illegally occupying the building. The protesters stayed for six days, enough time for them to read damning federal documents that revealed gross mismanagement of the federal trust responsibility, which they boxed up and took with them. The Trail of Broken Treaties solidified Indigenous alliances, and the “20-Point Position Paper,”14 the work mainly of Hank Adams, provided a template for the affinity of hundreds of Native organizations. Five years later, in 1977, the document would be presented to the United Nations, forming the basis for the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

We covered over your colorful earth with gray cement. We cut down trees and stripped the soil wherever we went. We scarred the hills for gold and coal, Blind with greed inside our soul, Our goal:To have complete control. Lord, have mercy. Can we be restored? Lord, have mercy. What of the lands of tribes and nations who lived here first? Who took the best with broken treaties, and left the worst? By whom were slaves bought, used, sold? Who valued humans less than gold? Who told us racist lies until our hearts went cold? Lord, have mercy. Can we be restored? Lord, have mercy The noise of traffic is drowning out the songbird’s song. Your voice within us is telling us that we’ve gone wrong. You call us from our selfishness, To be blessed—and to bless To turn to you, to begin anew. Lord, have mercy. Can we be restored? Lord, have mercy.