"One cannot be "an Indian." One is a Comanche, an Oneida, a Hopi. One can be self-determining, not as "an Indian," but as a Comanche, an Oneida, etc. We progress as communities, not as individuals. We want to maintain ourselves as communities, according to our group identity, not just as mere individuals or as amorphous "Indians"...We want to maintain ourselves as we are so we can contribute our differences, our particular understanding, to both the national community and to global society."
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Statement (1988), anthologized in Native American Reader: Stories, Speeches and Poems, edited by Jerry D. Blanche
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/LaDonna_Harris
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LaDonna Harris
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