Unbowed (1999)

Jay Tavare: Waka Mani

Photos 

Quotes 

• Richard : Your hair. The other were willing.

  [to cut it off] 

  Waka Mani : That is why they are not Chief!

• Cleola : We are Christian and free.

  Waka Mani : Free to be white.

• Cleola : Did you say it!

  Waka Mani : I did not mean you.

  Cleola : My skin is black. If I said Indians were savages and blanketheads, would you believe I didn't mean you?

  Waka Mani : No. It was wrong. I am sorry. Everyday we become like those we hate!

• Waka Mani : I'm no man's captive.

• Cleola : I'm not an Indian. I don't know how to live as an Indian. Your ways are...

  Waka Mani : We will make our own ways.

• Cleola : That is why an education is so important to us. It shows us that we are free!

  Waka Mani : The story is different but the result is the same!

  Cleola : Learning is a victory. It doesn't break out spirit. We know we are black, we're not trying to be like the white man.

  Waka Mani : Did your ancestors dress for dinner? This room is a prison. I need to be out!

• Cleola : Waka Mani, you must promise me one thing. I will be all six of your wives.

  Waka Mani : All six. Then I will have to love you forever.

  Cleola : That's long enough.

• Waka Mani : Noble words that mean nothing.

  Cleola : Oh, I think they do. They set a standard for what is right.

  Waka Mani : The words are useless because the white man does not live by them.

  Cleola : Not yet, but one day they will because the words are there. They can never be erased.

  [debating the U.S. Constitution] 

• Waka Mani : Liberty or death, is that a choice only the White Man can make?

• Waka Mani : You should be angry at what the white people have done to your people.

  Cleola : If I worried about every indignity the negro suffered during the course of a normal day, I'd wouldn't be able to think of much else.

• Junius : They shouldn't be locked up anymore.

  [referring to the native students] 

  Waka Mani : Careful, the red is showing beneath the black.

• Junius : Indian has often been a friend to the negro. Professor Clark is a half-breed, his family was rescued from slavery by the Seminoles.

  Waka Mani : That was Florida!

  Junius : There are a hundred other examples.

• Waka Mani : I was in the calvary two years, I know Indians!

  Simon Crow : Maybe they won't be too red.

  Waka Mani : I grew up in west Oklahoma, Indian Territory. The Indians there held slaves, treated them like niggers! Civil War wasn't over two days when some Choctaw bastard spit in my grandfather's skull.

  Junius : I'm sorry, Junius.

  Waka Mani : We should kill them all.

  Junius : I didn't know. But suppose I had a drop of Indian blood, would you kill me?