FROM THE LATE RAY FADDEN

“I love these woods. They’re alive to me. The woods have life of their own. From the smallest insect to the largest moose. Everything has a function. It is all here for a purpose. All of them are necessary.”

“People, they try to play God, and every time they do, they make a terrible mistake.”

“Indians didn’t worship trees. They talked to trees, they respected this form of life. The Christian, the European mentality couldn’t understand that. To them trees, plants, animals even whole mountains had no significance…all of that is believed to below the human… boy, what craziness.”

“Man was created in the image of God. Boy, if I were God I would be insulted. With all the destruction they have caused. How arrogant!”

“See that little bumblebee? That one is more important to the Creation than the President of the United States.”

“The white man has invented an Indian in his own image: unforgiving, vindictive, treacherous. The Indian is none of these things and never was.”

“The minute they landed on Plymouth Rock, they skinned our Mother Earth like you skin a muskrat, without one thought of the future.”

“I wouldn’t hesitate to bet my life on it any day, that White people in this country, whether they realize it or not, are actually living more the way the Indians lived at the time of Columbus, thinking and governing themselves the way the Indians did at the time of Columbus, eating foods that Indians ate at the time of Columbus, than the Indians living the way the White man did at the time of Columbus.”

“…if Sokwaiatison (Creator) ever took away the many gifts of the American Indians to the world, believe-you-me, this civilization we live in today would crumble, and crumble mighty fast.”