I am very proud to come back to speak on the disinterested effort we have made and I believe that with all due respect that the decisions we made when we turned our final report over to President Johnson will stand in history.

On the Native American front we have turned a new page in the 400-year history of the interface between the American settlers of this country and the nation's first Americans. That's included a new relationship where the sovereignty of tribes is in fact recognized.

No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused dedicated disciplined.

The large ensemble cast and the fact that it was being shot in New York combined with a lot of strong positive images as far as African Americans are concerned really turned me on to The Best Man.

And I'm a believer that you take a negative and turn it into a positive and as it turned out it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. And so I do appreciate the Ranger staff and the Ranger organization for giving me that opportunity.

I turned 54 this year and I find myself feeling like I'm in a bit of a race to get down on paper the way I really feel about life - or the way it has presented to me. And because it has presented to me very beautifully this is hard. It is technically very hard to show positive manifestations.

So there was a fire inside me. And that fire inside you it can be turned into a negative form or a positive form. And I gradually realised that I had this fire and that it had to be used in a positive way.

As I became very defined in my personal politics I turned down some films that I slightly regret now I'm not going to say what they were.

The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose but that it has turned to advertising copy.

Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.