Politics & Power Quote by Ben Nighthorse Campbell

There is a deliberate impatience in Campbell's opening move: "Indians were here first" is less a history lesson than a political claim-stake, a reminder that Native legitimacy predates the nation that now doles out recognition, funding, and rights through paperwork. The dash that follows - "it's about time" - snaps the line into the present tense. He's not asking for sympathy; he's demanding catch-up in power.

The comparison is doing heavy work. By naming African Americans and Hispanic Americans as groups "way" ahead in political involvement, Campbell is puncturing a persistent stereotype that Native communities are either invisible or politically inert. He's also signaling a strategic pivot: stop treating Native politics as an exceptional, isolated case and start treating it as American coalition politics - turnout, candidate recruitment, issue framing, and institution-building.

"Take a page out of their notebook" carries a knowingly pragmatic subtext. It's admiration without romanticizing. Campbell is gesturing toward the practical mechanics of modern civil-rights-era politics: organizing at scale, translating grievance into votes, leveraging media, pushing litigation, winning federal and local offices, building durable advocacy groups. The phrase also implies that the "notebook" exists because these communities were forced to invent it under pressure - a pointed acknowledgment of shared experiences of marginalization, even if the legal histories differ.

Context matters: Campbell, a rare Native U.S. senator, is speaking from inside the system Native nations have long had to negotiate with. The quote reads like an internal memo to his own communities: ancestry is not leverage until it's converted into representation.