"If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man, he would have made me so in the first place"
About this Quote
A refusal disguised as theology: Sitting Bull turns the colonizer's own moral language back on itself and makes assimilation sound not just undesirable, but cosmically absurd. By invoking the "Great Spirit", he’s speaking in a register non-Native America claimed to respect - faith, destiny, the righteous order of things - while quietly rejecting the premise that "white" equals "better" or "more civilized". The line doesn’t beg for inclusion; it denies that inclusion is the goal.
The intent is political, not merely personal. In the late 19th century, U.S. policy and missionary pressure worked in tandem to remake Indigenous life: land allotments, boarding schools, enforced Christianity, the slow violence of "kill the Indian, save the man". Sitting Bull answers with a blunt counter-theory of identity: if transformation were divine, it would be original. The subtext is sharper: your demand that I change is not progress; it’s arrogance masquerading as salvation.
What makes the quote work is its economy. It avoids the trap of pleading for tolerance on white terms. Instead, it asserts a Native legitimacy that doesn’t require validation from Washington or a pulpit. It’s also a strategic inversion of power: the speaker frames whiteness as merely one contingent form among others, not the default human setting. Under the calm fatalism is a warning - attempts to forcibly edit a people will be met with resistance grounded in something deeper than policy: an un-negotiable claim to being.
The intent is political, not merely personal. In the late 19th century, U.S. policy and missionary pressure worked in tandem to remake Indigenous life: land allotments, boarding schools, enforced Christianity, the slow violence of "kill the Indian, save the man". Sitting Bull answers with a blunt counter-theory of identity: if transformation were divine, it would be original. The subtext is sharper: your demand that I change is not progress; it’s arrogance masquerading as salvation.
What makes the quote work is its economy. It avoids the trap of pleading for tolerance on white terms. Instead, it asserts a Native legitimacy that doesn’t require validation from Washington or a pulpit. It’s also a strategic inversion of power: the speaker frames whiteness as merely one contingent form among others, not the default human setting. Under the calm fatalism is a warning - attempts to forcibly edit a people will be met with resistance grounded in something deeper than policy: an un-negotiable claim to being.
Quote Details
| Topic | Native American Sayings |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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