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Indigenous Wisdom Quotes

Browse 69 quotes about Indigenous Wisdom.

Indigenous Wisdom Quotes

“When the anthropologist asked the Kwakiutl for a map of their coast, they told him stories: "Here? Salmon gather. Here? Sea otter camps. Here seal sleep. Here we say body covered with mouths." How can a place have a name? A man, a woman may have a name, but they die. We are a story until we die. Then our names are very dangerous. A place is a story happening many times.”

SpiritualityStorytellingPhilosophy Of LifeLife And DeathIndigenous WisdomDeep EcologyNature ConnectionMeaning Of ExistenceKwakiutlSacred Geography
Book:Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth
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“If the Sun is the source of flow in the economy of nature, what is the “Sun” of a human gift economy, the source that consonantly replenishes the flow of gifts? Maybe it is love.”

LoveEconomicsEconomic GrowthSustainable DevelopmentEconomics PhilosophyIndigenous WisdomNatural LawsIndigenous KnowledgeGift EconomyEthnobotany
Book:The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
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“Many Indigenous Peoples understand that, as humans, we need a healthy foundation based on a sacred connection to the land. They know that genuine sustainability entails living in accordance with values rooted in natural laws and teachings that acknowledge the sacredness of nature; these ways of life involve sacred duties and responsibilities.”

SustainabilityIndigenous WisdomNatural LawsSense Of PlaceDeep EcologyLand ConnectionSacred Duties
Book:Collapse: Navigating Civilization's Predicaments With Wisdom and Courage
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“I’m here to bear witness to what used to be here […] I know I must. I was out here before Ultimate Corp ran everything and everyone out into the desert and into the Red Eye. Then they hired many of us nomads to leave our way of life to earn a salary by planting. We were fools. ‘We let them convince us that we had nothing and our lands were useless. If it cannot make money, then it is worthless. That is not our culture, that is capitalism. Yet we still listened. We saw their big cities, we wanted all their nonsense things, we respected their big talk. We learned to prize money over things far more valuable. ‘This led to farmers’ letting Ultimate Corp buy their land. They were convinced they were getting something for nothing, the nothing being the land they’d been told was worthless. There was an element of fear, too. Fear of the big people from big faraway places. Goddamn, it was like rolling over and dying.”

Indigenous WisdomLand OwnershipDisability AwarenessAfrofuturismCapitalist Society
Book:Noor
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“We have been led to identify ourselves with our destructive side - and that which we have become identified, we overvalue and empower. This has been happening for many generations, reinforcing this harmful image of ourselves.”

SpiritualityEnvironmentEcologyIndigenousIndigenous WisdomIndigenous KnowledgeEcology And Capitalism
Book:The Time of the Black Jaguar: An Offering of Indigenous Wisdom for the Continuity of Life on Earth
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“So, if capitalism is not really the root of the problem socialist societies share with late capitalist societies, there must be some­thing else, something shared in common. And that, it would seem to me, is industrialism. That, and the peculiar social forms gener­ated by the industrial process itself. Centralization is a dynamic shared, of necessity, by any industrial/industrializing society. Rationalization is another factor...assembly­ line workers are alienated [not] so much by the abstract notion of their "distancing" from their "product" or "profit" so much as they are alienated by the sheer physical misery of being trapped in a factory.”

CapitalismSocialismIndigenous WisdomIndustrialism
Author:Frank Black Elk
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“Educating the Educators (Sonnet 2281) Greeks did not invent philosophy, philosophy had existed across Latin America, Africa, Arabia, India and China, thousands of years earlier, not as some elitist discipline, but as everyday way of life, later the europeans contributed their puny drop in the ocean, but of course, the myth of europe as the origin of philosophy goes deceptively well with the whitewashed history of earth. Maps of the world are whitewashed, history of the world is whitewashed, ethics of the world are whitewashed, knowledge of the world is whitewashed. No wisdom is flawless 'n absolute, ancient or modern, but the point is, enlightenment and civilization did not originate in europe, they were born of the lands colonially categorized as uncivilized.”

PhilosophyEducationKnowledgeColonialismIndigenous WisdomEurocentrismWhitewashEurocentricDecolonialAncient Culture
Book:Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper
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“Greeks did not invent philosophy, philosophy had existed across Latin America, Africa, Arabia, India and China, thousands of years earlier, not as some elitist discipline, but as everyday way of life, later the europeans contributed their puny drop in the ocean, but of course, the myth of europe as the origin of philosophy goes deceptively well with the whitewashed history of earth.”

PhilosophyEducationColonialismIndigenous WisdomEurocentrismWhitewashDecolonizingEurocentricDecolonialAncient Culture
Book:Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper
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“That an Israeli soldier could bulldoze 189 olive trees on the Land he claims is part of the "God-given Land" is something I will never comprehend. Did he not consider the possibility that God might get angry? Did he not realize that it was a tree he was running over? If a Palestinian bulldozer were ever invented (Haha, I know!) and I were given the chance to be in an orchard, in Haifa for instance, I would never uproot a tree an Israeli planted. No Palestinian would. To Palestinians, the tree is sacred, and so is the Land bearing it. And as I talk about Gaza, I remember that Gaza is but a little part of Pales tine. I remember that Palestine is bigger than Gaza. Palestine is the West Bank; Palestine is Ramallah; Palestine is Nablus; Palestine is Jenin; Palestine is Tulkarm; Palestine is Bethlehem; Palestine, most importantly, is Yafa and Haifa and Akka and all those cities that Israel wants us to forget about.”

PalestinianPalestineIndigenousIndigenous WisdomPalestinian Israeli ConflictFalastin
Book:Gaza Writes Back
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“I had a lot of resentment against my brothers for what they did to me. I carried this anger around with me, and it was actually making me sick. There is a saying in AA that if you have resentments it keeps you away from the joy of sobriety, and this was true. I was carrying a load on my shoulders. One day we talked about the abuse in counselling, and my counsellor asked me if it was happening today. I said, “No.” She suggested living for today and leaving yesterday in the past. I did not know what she meant until I got thinking about it. If I dwelled on the past it would rob me of today. That made a lot of sense. I was stuck in the past. To get past it, I had to accept that yes I was a victim of sexual abuse and yes, I was a victim of residential school, but that was in the past. This is very hard to do because the result of these events changed my views on everything I do today. I have to learn how to keep myself in the present, instead of the past. It is a continuous battle within me. It is like I have dual personalities, and one wants to overtake the other. One still wants to be Karen the victim, who wants the attention and pity. The other, Karen the Survivor, wants to be independent and strong and wants to help others.”

Healing The PastIndigenous WisdomResidential Schools
Book:They Called Me 33: Reclaiming Ingo-Waabigwan
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“Greeks did not invent philosophy, philosophy had existed across Latin America, Africa, Arabia, India and China, thousands of years earlier, not as some elitist discipline, but as everyday way of life, later the europeans contributed their puny drop in the ocean, but of course, the myth of europe as the origin of philosophy goes deceptively well with the whitewashed history of earth. Enlightenment and civilization did not originate in europe, they were born of the lands colonially categorized as uncivilized.”

PhilosophyCivilizationEnlightenmentColonialismIndigenous WisdomGreek PhilosophyWhitewashDecolonizingDecolonialAncient Culture
Book:Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper
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“…before we are human beings, we are light. When we are light, we see everything. We see the past and we see the future. We see how everything will happen in our lives and we know what our purpose is. As light, we pick our parents before we are born. We pick them and everyone that comes into our lives. We pick our experiences and everything that happens to us. We know the path we pick will make us grow and contribute to who we are as human beings in order to live our purpose. Some individuals remember everything they knew as light. Most of us forget what our purpose is, and it makes our time on Earth a struggle until we find our way back to our purpose, if we ever do.”

LightPurposeMeaningIndigenousIndigenous WisdomIndigenous Women
Book:Calling My Spirit Back
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