I tend to agree with people who are of the opinion that we really shouldn’t desire not to have been discovered because the noteworthy elements of the tribe are based upon those negative things or connotations to the negatives, which have come because of the discovery. And it would have happened sooner or later based upon prophecies and predictions about what were going to occur, the advent of soyaapo and the advent of society, and different things. We have had a lot of things happen to us that probably were more negative and so irrespective of the things that we are standing for today, for example, the things we have contributed to, it has been to the detriment of our people.

And so I would look at it as a very negative impact on the survival of our people, the lifestyle, and the cultural conditions. We as a society, where we were at that point and time, which was something that we were very much at peace and harmony with the world about us; ecosystems were in place. We were helping to nurture that ecosystem survival the way that we knew how. Then what they call “the Corp of Discovery,” when that came about that drastically altered and changed that environment forever. And so today we have lost a lot of things.

And so I look back at everything that has happened. The advent of society, “civilization,” the advent of the culture and the languages that have overwhelmed our people, Christianity and the churches, all those things that have been tad amount to ethnocide, genocide. All those things have been kind where someone else’s destiny has been manifested upon the ills of our people. So I have no other choice but to say that I am one of the leading proponents of the fact that the impacts on the Nez Perce people, the Nimíipuu, put it that way, have been as a result of the support of the Lewis and Clark expedition. We probably would have been better off if we would have eliminated them. Put it that way.