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Native American History Quotes

Browse 15 quotes about Native American History.

Native American History Quotes

“My grandfather was a voyageur, and lived to be of great age,” recalled “Old” Pierre, “and [he] told me the stories of the wild Indians of those days, and our brave French Canadians who were a match for them. There was a great man of whom he used to speak much, Monsieur de Langlade. […] My grandfather told me that when Langlade was a child about seven years of age, there was a war raging between the Ottawas, many of whom lived at Michilimackinac, and another tribe allied to the English. Twice the young men of the Ottawas had gone forth to attack a village of the enemy, and each time had they been driven back. The French officer at the fort urged them to make the attack again. The Ottawas were not willing. At last, their chief said that he had had a dream; that in the dream he saw a fight; that the young Langlade was there; and that in his dream the Ottawas seemed to win the day. The dream gave the young men courage on its being told them. They must be accompanied by the child Langlade, and they would go upon the war-path once more. The father Langlade, at first unwilling, at last agreed, but only on a pledge given by the boy that he would never disgrace his father by being a coward. The Ottawas were now ready to go forth; they advanced with the terrible war-cries of the [Natives]; inspired by the recollection of the dream and the presence of the boy, they gained the day […]. The young Langlade was now held in great honor; they said he was no doubt preserved by a mighty Manitou [“Great Spirit”].”

WarMilitaryAmerican HistoryCanadian HistoryNative American History
Book:Auke-wingeke-tawso, or, 'Defender of His Country': The Circumstances & Services of Charles Michel de Langlade
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“Indeed, so prevalent had his leadership on the battlefield been that day, that Langlade was jointly proclaimed “Ake-wauge-ketausa”, or “Military Conqueror”, by his Indigenous brethren, with the literal translation of his title meaning “He Who is Fierce for the Land”, although an alternative spelling of “Auke-winge-ketaw-so”, meaning “Defender of his Country” is also recorded. However, to the Menomonee (Folles Avoines) specifically, he was simply known henceforth as the “Bravest of the Brave.”

WarMilitaryAmerican HistoryCanadian HistoryNative American History
Book:Auke-wingeke-tawso, or, 'Defender of His Country': The Circumstances & Services of Charles Michel de Langlade
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“The Apparition by Stewart Stafford The Indian burial ground, Lay beyond the tree steeples, Wind murmured in the branches, Of lost lands and wounded ancestors. A new tenant's first night at home, A Wendigo came in a pandemic fugue, The head, neck and shoulders visible, Jittery, contorted shapes on blinds. Wild dawn packing, screeching tyres, Home sweet home, still beyond reach, Out of the driveway at top speed then, Flight from an entity that won't leave you. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”

HorrorKarmaHalloweenHauntingIndian CultureHaunted HouseHorror PoetryNative American HistoryCryptidWendigo
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Nothing about the the birth of America is great - America is a terrorist nation, built by terrorists who invaded other people's land, stripped them of their homes, and built a spin-off of the ruthless British empire over their blood and bones.”

AmericaCivil RightsUsaAmerican HistoryUnited States Of AmericaAmerican PoliticsAmerican CultureColonial HistoryNative American GenocideNative American History
Book:Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth
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“Similarly, others think that the mined copper has gone “missing,” and that this perceived absence of artifacts in North America was further evidence for trans-Atlantic trade. I learned that this misunderstanding arose because most people are totally unaware that thousands of copper artifacts made by Native Americans have been found around Lake Superior and are still regularly discovered to this day. The reality is that these so-called missing copper artifacts were simply lost over vast stretches of forests, lakes, rivers, and prairies. One can only guess how many missing artifacts are actually out there. If the size and extent of the prehistoric copper mines around Lake Superior are any indication, thousands of artifacts are still likely to be found.”

ArchaeologyArtifactsCopperNative American History
Book:Great Water: The Lost Mines of Lake Superior
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“Happens more than we want to know. There are Indian kids, just like your brother, heck just like me, all over this Valley. Fostered out, adopted out, working their fingers to the bone--heck, many of them not being properly fed so they are nothing but muscle and bone to begin with, thinking that if they just do good enough, maybe, just maybe, someday they will actually belong. Mostly what I see is once they've been used up--in some cases broken beyond repair--they're thrown away like all the battered farm equipment you see sitting in the back of farmyards, back by the windbreak." - Cash Blackbear in Girl Gone Missing”

BrokenAdoptionMinnesotaIndigenous RightsNative American History
Book:Girl Gone Missing
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“At school, my science teacher talked about the ozone layer even as aerosol hairspray kept clouding the bathroom stalls. I tried to tell Mom about climate change, but she acted like I was gullible. If I was mad about losing our land, I was even angrier about what they'd done to it. While I still didn't know about the massacres, I knew enough to feel robbed. Manhatten was purchased with beads. Valuable furs had been traded for whiskey. White people used empty promises as tender, and in exchange, we Indians got blood quantum, our lineages tracked like thoroughbreds or dogs, destined to be turned into glue.”

American HistoryTruth TellingNative American LiteratureNative American History
Book:Whiskey Tender: A Memoir
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“Imagine two incidents of theft. In the first case, a bandit takes something valuable from someone else. Deprived of this important source of wealth, the victim and his family live a life of relative destitution, even as the thief and his family flourish, with nary a thought about the crime that served as the basis of their wealth, nor the fate of those they stole from. Eventually the perpetrator and his family forget about the theft altogether and come to view their wealth as legitimate. In the second case, a bandit also takes something precious from someone else, likewise leaving the victim and his family in a state of relative destitution, even as the robber and his family prosper. But in the second case, the bandit constantly acknowledges that his own prosperity was achieved at the victim’s expense. He explicitly and repeatedly recognizes the state of privation that the victim and his family live in as a result of the crime. He publicly praises the victim at every turn. Yet he nonetheless declines to return the stolen resources. Instead, he continues to actively leverage the seized assets in order to build his own wealth, but incessantly laments the poor state of the victim and his family, and the horror of the crime that was done to them, and insists that someone really ought to do something to help “those people” out. The second scenario describes the practice of land acknowledgments, which have grown increasingly popular in symbolic capitalist spaces in recent years (while the first scenario depicts how the people who do make land acknowledgments describe those who don’t; I’ll leave it to the reader to decide which is worse). One stated purpose of land acknowledgments is to show respect to those who have been dispossessed. But of course, precisely as a function of that very dispossession, there are almost never people from the affected tribes “in the room” to receive these acknowledgments—particularly in symbolic capitalist spaces (where this practice is most pronounced). Instead, these acknowledgments typically consist of non-Indigenous people virtue signaling exclusively to other non-Indigenous people, who nod along approvingly, leading all in attendance to feel good about how enlightened they are … and then everyone gets on with business as usual.”

WokenessNative American HistoryLand Acknowledgement
Book:We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite
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