Settlers Quotes

“The global Indigenous cause reached a major milestone in 2007 when the UN General Assembly passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Only four members of the assembly voted in opposition, all of them Anglo settler-states - the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.”
― Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

“For more than a century-and-a-half, Europeans had been killing North American Indians with firewater… Now, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, Canada’s pioneer settlers were killing themselves with their own medicine. About Canada. Toronto: Civil Sector Press, November, 2012. Alcohol, North American Indians, Settlers, Canada”
― Earle Gray, About Canada: "My God, this is a great country."

“Without a doubt, it [Canada] is the land God gave to Cain.”
― Mordecai Richler, Solomon Gursky Was Here

“The Great Plains were immense enough to inspire the grandest, most foolish of dreams - but they were also vast enough that no one could ever explore every corner.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Children's Blizzard

“Machigonne” was the Abenaki Indian name for Portland. Christopher Levett, an English naval captain, landed the first settlement in Casco Bay on the 6,000 acres granted him by King James I. Upon his return to England, Levett wrote A Voyage into New England, seeking support for the settlement, which ultimately failed. He returned to America becoming the Governor of Plymouth, Massachusetts, but never returned to the site of his first settlement. Little is known of those people he left behind, but it wasn’t until ten years later that the first permanent colony was founded in Falmouth, Maine. Fort Levett, named after him, was built in 1898 on the seaward side of Cushing Island, and was manned during the Spanish-American War, as well as the two World Wars.”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater One...."

“One shouldn't be fooled by how quickly they startle. Bluebirds just like open spaces, that's all. Open fields where they're free. And when they find a place, they come in hordes, and they keep coming. They're faithful little settlers. They know when they've found a place of beauty.”
― Ashley Clark, Paint and Nectar

“Painfully, because ancestral wisdom was sadly inadequate to the needs of this soil which, on approach, also revealed itself strange. Application of well-tried ways was here not enough. The peasant had constantly to consider his steps, to make decisions in matters that had passed without thought in the Old World—what to plant, and when, and how much, and where. To shoulder this burden of choices, the individual had not now the support of a village council. He acted alone. He had not long before the difficulties were apparent. He found little on his American farm that was familiar.”
― Oscar Handlin, Children of the Uprooted

“There must also be an option and real possibility for settlers to remain where they are and to become permanent residents or citizens of the State of Palestine. If they are willing to become citizens of Palestine, to recognize Palestinian sovereignty and Palestinian laws, and not to be armed militias, the State of Palestine should be willing to accept them.”
― Gershon Baskin, In Pursuit of Peace in Israel and Palestine

“Refugees carry culture,
Colonizers carry infection.
Colonizers are the virus,
Refugees are civilization.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“Refugees are practicing healers,
living testament of wounds to ointment.
Colonizers are proof of darwinism,
that from monkeys comes the human race.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations