Chief Sitting Bull: These are the lands where my people lived before you whites first came.
Colonel Miles: I don't understand. We whites were not your first enemies. Why don't you demand back the land in Minnesota, the Chippewa forced you from years before?
Chief Sitting Bull: The Black Hills are a sacred land given to my people by Wakan Tanka.
Colonel Miles: How very convenient to cloak your claims in spiritualism. No matter what your legends say, you didn't sprout from the plains like the spring grasses. And you didn't coalesce out of the ether. You came out of the Minnesota woodlands armed to the teeth and set upon your fellow man.
Colonel Miles: You massacred the Kiowa, the Omaha, the Ponca, the Oto and the Pawnee without mercy. And yet you claim the Black Hills, as a private preserve bequeathed to you by the Great Spirit.
Colonel Miles: The proposition that you were a peaceable people before the appearance of the white man is the most fanciful legend of all. You killed each other for hundreds of moons before whites stepped foot on this continent.
Colonel Miles: You conquered those tribes, lusting for their game and their lands just as we have now conquered you for no less noble a cause.
from the movie Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee (2007)
I always laugh at the way the poor native americans are portrayed. They had numerous chances to carve out a fair deal for themselves at every turn they fought...attacked...ambushed....like they had for hundreds of years vs. each other. They were savages-it served them well until they met an enemy they could not compete with. To the victors go the spoils- thats the way its always been.