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Aboriginal Quotes

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Aboriginal Quotes

“Things don't always look as they seem. Some stars, for example, look like bright pinholes, but when you get them pegged under a microscope you find you're looking at a globular cluster—a million stars that, to us, presents as a single entity. On a less dramatic note there are triples, like Alpha Centauri, which up close turns out to be a double star and a red dwarf in close proximity. There's an indigenous tribe in Africa that tells of life coming from the second star in Alpha Centauri, the one no one can see without a high-powered observatory telescope. come to think of it, the Greeks, the Aboriginals, and the Plains Indians all lived continents apart and all, independently, looked at the same septuplet knot of the Pleiades and believed them to be seven young girls running away from something that threatened to hurt them. Make of it what you will.”

StarsDesignPerspectiveCoincidenceAboriginalGreeksPleiadesBrian FitzgeraldAlpha CentauriGlobular ClusterPlains Indians
Book:My Sister's Keeper
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“I’ll find out whatever I can about this Frank. Would the girls go to the police if they were in danger, do you think?” “I can’t say,” Shyla replied, but her head was shaking as she spoke. That was hardly a surprise. A lot of Aboriginal people were suspicious of the police, or gunjies, as Shyla sometimes called them. Through conversations with Shyla, Billie had some of the picture—how contacting the authorities about anything might lead to being arrested for something else, or having the men taken, or having the Aborigines Welfare Board take children away “for their own good.” Stuff like that tended to ensure that trust was in short supply. That long and troubled history had not been forgotten and had created understandable tension between Aboriginal communities and the white authorities. That couldn’t simply vanish overnight.”

HistoryCrimePoliceAustraliaCrime FictionAboriginal1940sTara MossThe War Widow
Book:The War Widow
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“The idea of discovery and consequent possession is used by those with neither the intelligence nor sensitivity to see the value in lives other than their own. Anyway, there is no need to possess anything when there is access to everything. It is only when someone says that your mother belongs to them that there is a problem.”

ColonizationAboriginalAboriginal CultureColonisationAustralian LiteratureAustralian HistoryAustralian AuthorAboriginal AustraliansAboriginesLand Rights
Book:Nanima: Spiritual Fiction
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“Whose voice was first sounded on this land? The voice of the red people who had but bows and arrows. [...] What has been done in my country I did not want, did not ask for it; white people going through my country. [...] When the white man comes in my country he leaves a trail of blood behind him. [...] I have two mountains in that country--the Black Hills and the Big Horn Mountain. I want the Great Father to make no roads through them.”

HistoryGenocideUs HistoryAboriginalFirst NationsU S HistoryNativesAboriginalsFirst PeopleNative People
Author:Red Cloud
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“If the Texans had kept out of my country, there might have been peace. But that which you now say we must live on is too small. The Texans have taken away the places where the grass grew the thickest and the timber was the best. Had we kept that, we might have done the things you ask. But it is too late. The white man has the country which we loved, and we only wish to wander on the prairie until we die.”

NativeGenocideUs HistoryAboriginalNative AmericansFirst NationsU S HistoryNativesAboriginalsFirst People
Author:Ten Bears Comanche Nation
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“Aboriginal peoples, like the ancients, were not so concerned with the science of matter, but rather with the science of the mind. For to them, the universe was mind, and all that existed as physical reality was the product of mind and spirit. Everything physical and material was in essence, manifested thought.”

Power Of ThoughtsAboriginalAboriginal CultureAboriginalsPhysical RealityAboriginal AustraliansPhysical Realm
Book:Earth Medicine: Revealing Hidden Teachings of the Native American Medicine Wheel
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“Tracker Marks was of a different opinion. Though he seemed more white than a white man, he had no time for their ways. For him his dress, his deportment was no different than staying downwind in the shadows of trees when hunting, blending into the world of those he hunted, rather than standing out from it. Once he had excelled at the emu dance & the kangaroo dance; then his talent led him to the whitefella dance, only now no-one was left of his tribe to stand around the fire & laugh & praise his talent for observation & stealthy imitation. The whites have no law, he told Capois Death, no dreaming. Their way of life made no sense whatsoever. Still, he did not hate them or despise them. They were stupid beyond belief, but they had a power, & somehow their stupidity & their power were, in Tracker Marks’s mind, inextricably connected. But how? he asked Capois Death. How can power & ignorance sleep together? Questions to which Capois Death had no answer.”

RacePowerIgnoranceCivilizationStupidityAustraliaColonialismWhite ManImperialismRace RelationsWestern CivilizationAboriginalAboriginal CultureAboriginalsTasmania
Author:Richard Flanagan
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“The time has come for you, your Tribe, and all First Peoples. Together, you must learn, remember, and teach the languages, songs, and stories of your ancestors so you may rise once again as true Shepherds of Earth. Teach your quiet light and wisdom to all that they may know, love, and honor all Spirits and the circle of life.”

InspirationalFantasyAboriginalFirst NationsFirst Peoples
Book:Rella Two Trees - The Money Chiefs
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“Long I have known and feared this day would come. Like the circle of Earth, the circle of life is changing. Here in the north, there are those who can still feel, see, and smell the changes wrought in and around Earth by Money Chiefs. The air is no longer clean, winter grows warmer, rivers flood without a sign, and the soil, once dark and rich, lies pale and weak. Bears, wolves, and other forest Spirits will soon go the way of the buffalo, for their food dwindles like birds that once ruled the skies.”

InspirationalFantasyAboriginalFirst NationsFirst Peoples
Book:Rella Two Trees - The Money Chiefs
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“The adoration of the sun was one of the earliest and most natural forms of religious expression. Complex modern theologies are merely involvements and amplifications of this simple aboriginal belief.”

FormBeliefNaturalReligiousSimpleSunModernExpressionComplexesTheologyInvolvementAdorationAboriginalAmplificationNatural Forms
Book:The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy
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“The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.”

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Book:Capital: A Critique of Political Economy - The Process of Capitalist Production
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“The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him. ...[I]t is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races.”

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Author:Theodore Roosevelt
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“The Germans themselves I should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other races through immigration or intercourse. For in former times, it was not by land but on shipboard that those who sought to emigrate would arrive; and the boundless and, so to speak, hostile ocean beyond us,is seldom entered by a sail from our world.”

WorldShouldSpeakRaceLandOceanRegardImmigrationFormerOur WorldSailHostileIntercourseBoundlessAboriginal
Book:Germania by Tacitus
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“The very word "change" has changed. When I was young--and not just because I was young--we looked forward with confident impatience to change. Planned, controlled, beneficent change would continue to clear slums, sweep up the remains of empire, raise living and educational standards, tidy away--firmly but kindly--the last aboriginals who still raved about martial glory or the pride of wealth. Now, as it seems to me, change is set almost exclusively in the minor key, change seen overwhelmingly as loss.”

StillsSeemsLastsYoungChangeWealthLossClearChangedPrideKeysGloryStandardsRaisesRemainsEducationalEmpiresControlledMinorsImpatienceTidySlumsAboriginal
Book:Games with Shadows
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“Every person is a Hindu who regards and owns this Bharat Bhumi, this land from the Indus to the seas, as his Fatherland as well as Holyland, i.e. the land of the origin of his religion... Consequently the so-called aboriginal or hill tribes also are Hindus: because India is their Fatherland as well as their Holyland of whatever form of religion or worship they follow.”

WellsPersonsFormSeaLandWorshipIndiaRegardHillsTribesAboriginalFatherlandBharat
Author:Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
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“Sadly, today there are only a few remaining speakers of kakadu or gagadju. The work, then, is concerned with my feelings about this place, its landscape, its change of seasons, its dry season and its wet, its cycle of life and death the melodic material in Kakadu, as in much of my recent music, was suggested by the contours and rhythms of Aboriginal chant.”

FeelingsTodayMaterialsConcernedSeasonsRhythmLandscapeDryLife And DeathCyclesSpeakersWetAboriginalCycle Of LifeSeasons Change
Author:Peter Sculthorpe
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“My reluctance to enter any relationship with men has been affected by the fact that many Aboriginal men are very wounded and are not able to be in a healthy relationship due to historical damage and with non-Native men because I no longer want to educate them about Indigenous Issues. I'm tired of being the educator or nurse.”

MenWantHas BeensFactsAbleIssuesHealthyTiredHistoricalDuesDamageNativeAffectedEducateNurseWoundedIndigenousEducatorI'm TiredAboriginalReluctanceHealthy Relationship
Author:Marilyn Dumont
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“Over 120 Aboriginal communities run their own health services - some have been doing so for 30 years. They struggle with difficult medical problems. They also try to deal with counselling, stolen generations issues, family relationships, violence, suicide prevention.”

TryingYearsHas BeensProblemRunningDifficultCommunityDealsStruggleIssuesViolenceGenerationsSuicideMedicalStolenPreventionAboriginalFamily RelationshipHealth ServicesMedical Problems
Author:Malcolm Fraser
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“...yesterday and today and tomorrow are not an arrow that shoots from past to present to future; rather all tenses, and sleeping and waking, mix and cohabit in an atemporal duration beyond clocks and calendars. The Aboriginal world began long ago when the Ancestors sang in Dreamtime the cosmic rhythms that give shape to the things we see, and it is the beginning right now, when a living Tiwi sings the Dream songs that continue, or are, the world.”

WorldGivingLongDreamTodayPastSongSleepTomorrowRight NowShapesYesterdayRhythmClockWakingCosmicAncestorLong AgoArrowsCalendarsDurationAboriginalToday And TomorrowYesterday And TodayDreamtime
Author:Huston Smith
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“As far as I'm concerned, any Aboriginal that gets out there and accepts money that has been put out as a package for this bicentenary is actually accepting blood money. We've still got people with leprosy and we still got tremendous problems. These problems have not been our problems, they're the problems of the European population of Australia.”

PeopleHas BeensStillsProblemAcceptingBloodConcernedPopulationAustraliaPackagesAboriginalLeprosy
Author:Warren Mundine
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