“We speak the same words from our mouths as the white man, but the language of the heart and how we communicate to the web of life is different,” Wolf continued. “It is a language the white man don’t possess. We are invisible to ’em unless we are used as their sports mascots or slaves. They exploit our medicine, ceremonies, culture and textiles. They sell us. They label us as Indians, Redskins and Savages, and change our tribal names to bastardized references so it better suits their ignorance. We Natives have so many ways of being, but we are seen by the white man only one way … as warriors on horseback with our shirts off and with long dark hair … with painted faces and buckskin and bows and arrows. They force us to play roles as the villains in every story told where the white cowboy is always the hero savin’ the day. Even the Lone Ranger’s sidekick is named ‘Tonto’ which is a word that means stupid. They call us savage and simple but they are the savages. They annihilated over 100 million of us. Ten times more people than Nazi Germany killed.

“We call the white man ‘Little Brother.’ Because it’s the Little Brother that needs to be taught. He doesn’t know how to work with nature anymore, including his own nature. He has to be reminded of how to take care of himself and all existence again. But Little Brother is a stubborn, defensive little shit and blind to the death he causes to the natural world. We have lost countless animals, tribes and holy grounds to extinction because of his ‘modern world.’ The heat even rises in our atmosphere and still Little Brother doesn’t believe what the wisdom keepers have been warning us about. We are banished or exiled by the white man into reservations and barrios, and those places don’t give us a place to belong. All that’s left is anger. We rot out there in the abuse, the alcohol, the poverty, the religions and the broken way of life that has been forced on us by the white man. We had to practice our own spirituality in secret until 1978.”