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Native Americans Quotes

Browse 116 quotes about Native Americans.

Native Americans Quotes

“En 1492, los nativos descubrieron que eran indios, descubrieron que vivían en América, descubrieron que estaban desnudos, descubrieron que existía el pecado, descubrieron que debían obediencia a un rey y a una reina de otro mundo y a un dios de otro cielo, y que ese dios había inventado la culpa y el vestido y había mandado que fuera quemado vivo quien adorara al sol y a la luna y a la tierra y a la lluvia que la moja.”

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Book:Los hijos de los días
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“Throughout the history of the Kensington Rune Stone in the twentieth century, memories of an ancient battle were repeatedly evoked to address the concerns about more recent battles. The skræling endured as a convenient symbol of the threats posed by secularization, urbanization, and diversification. As sociologist Richard K. Fenn observes, “Any society is a reservoir of old longings and ancient hatreds. These need to be understood, addressed, resolved and transcended if a society is to have a future that is different from its past.” Furthermore, when a society does not adequately confront its past, it perpetually finds “a new target that resembles but also differs from the source of original conflict.” If Fenn is correct, old enemies will continue to emerge in the face of new enemies unless Minnesotans can understand, address, resolve, and transcend the state’s original sin: the unjust treatment of the region’s first inhabitants.”

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Book:Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the Birthplace of America
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“What's the story here, Karl?' Kevin asked. 'Hard as it is to believe, these people are slaves,' Karl explained. 'Slaves?' I asked skeptically. 'Well, you might not call them that but they are virtual slaves. They don't receive any pay. They are dealt with harshly. They don't have anywhere else to go' 'What about the government? Don't they help?' Marcus asked. 'The government?' Karl laughed. 'The government my eye! Those generals stay in power several years, make a bundle smuggling drugs, and once they're millionaires, they retire. Some other lousy generals take over from them, and history repeats itself. You think they give a shit what happens to a few lousy Indians?”

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Book:Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Survival
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“Juet's journal frequently records how only a tiny quantity of alcohol was needed to get the Indians drunk, 'for they could not take it'; and tales of the drunkenness that greeted Hudsons' arrival persisted among the native Indians until the last century. Indeed Heckewelder claims that the name Manhattan is derived from the drunkenness that took place there, since the Indian word 'manahactanienk' means 'the island of general intoxication'.”

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Book:Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History
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“The eagle is a bird that flies higher than any other, so the Indian considered it to be 'closer to the sky'. To the Indian, the sky was synonymous with spiritual things [like] principles. [When close to the sky,] from that elevated viewpoint [you are] detatched from the Earth and material things. The eagle is also attributed with remarkable vision. It can see clearly over great distances and identify small creature and objects from a long way off. So the eagle is associated with far-sightedness and the ability to look ahead. From an elevated viewpoint [you are] able to see more clearly where things on Earth fitted together. Since the eagle is able to look directly into the un without being blinded by its intensity, this ability indicates [the] attribution of illumination, which comes to the mind through spiritual vision or the ability to see into the essence or spirit of things.”

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Book:Earth Medicine: Revealing Hidden Teachings of the Native American Medicine Wheel
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“The boys are afraid of Opal, like she was always afraid of her mom. Something about how brief and direct she is. Maybe hypercritical too, like her mom was hypercritical. It’s to prepare them for a world made for Native people not to live but to die in, shrink, disappear. She needs to push them harder because it will take more for them to succeed than someone who is not Native. It’s because she failed to do anything more than disappear herself. She’s no-nonsense with them because she believes life will do its best to get at you. Sneak up from behind and shatter you into tiny unrecognizable pieces.”

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Book:There There
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“They were ‘half breeds,’ ‘mongrel races,’ and ‘mixed-bloods.” These individuals and families may have gravitated to frontier areas or to mixed-race communities that were more welcoming of their heritage. They too kept traditions of their Indian lineage alive, yet the fact that they assimilated into existing, non-tribal (if also nonwhite) communities leads to the same conclusion as the white-Indian individuals mentioned: it could hardly be said that these mixed Indian, black, and white communities were tribes. Because of stereotypes, however, it is easer to view these impoverished, marginal enclaves as Indian. The basic facts pertinent to tribal recognition are the same: thousands of individuals left tribal communities in the nineteenth century, and their descendants cannot now make a convincing case to be aboringal Indian tribes.”

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Book:Claiming Tribal Identity: The Five Tribes and the Politics of Federal Acknowledgment
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“It was never the poverty that deterred me, never the disease, unsanitary conditions, bugs or garbage, those things were never even a thought in my head as a reason for not staying. I kept looking for the good and always found it each day. I was happy on the reservation. It would have all worked out if Chief could have been a little nicer to me. The only thing I was missing was love and respect from my partner. Maybe he had changed.”

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Book:The Dark Horse Speaks
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“When you look at it objectively, that’s what most colonists do—they land then find a way of wiping out their competition. In America is was blankets covered with smallpox and in Australia it was permits to hunt aborigines. If you wipe a whole people from the face of the earth, then there’s no one to point fingers at you. It’s just their spirits that haunt you and spirits can’t do shit.”

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Book:The Space Race
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“The white woman across the aisle from me says 'Look, look at all the history, that house on the hill there is over two hundred years old, ' as she points out the window past me into what she has been taught. I have learned little more about American history during my few days back East than what I expected and far less of what we should all know of the tribal stories whose architecture is 15,000 years older than the corners of the house that sits museumed on the hill. 'Walden Pond, ' the woman on the train asks, 'Did you see Walden Pond? ' and I don't have a cruel enough heart to break her own by telling her there are five Walden Ponds on my little reservation out West and at least a hundred more surrounding Spokane, the city I pretended to call my home. 'Listen, ' I could have told her. 'I don't give a shit about Walden. I know the Indians were living stories around that pond before Walden's grandparents were born and before his grandparents' grandparents were born. I'm tired of hearing about Don-fucking-Henley saving it, too, because that's redundant. If Don Henley's brothers and sisters and mothers and father hadn't come here in the first place then nothing would need to be saved.' But I didn't say a word to the woman about Walden Pond because she smiled so much and seemed delighted that I thought to bring her an orange juice back from the food car. I respect elders of every color. All I really did was eat my tasteless sandwich, drink my Diet Pepsi and nod my head whenever the woman pointed out another little piece of her country's history while I, as all Indians have done since this war began, made plans for what I would do and say the next time somebody from the enemy thought I was one of their own.”

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Author:Sherman Alexie
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“But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances. Or choices. We’re just poor. That’s all we are. It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you’re poor because you’re stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you’re stupid and ugly because you’re Indian. And because you’re Indian you start believing you’re destined to be poor. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it. Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.”

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Book:The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
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“This World "We hear that other lands are better: we do not know. The pines sing and we are glad. Our children play in the sand and we hear them sing and we are glad. The seeds ripen an we have them to eat and we are glad. We do not want their good lands; we want our rocks and the great mountains where our fathers lived." A Shi’vwits chief to JW Powell Sun on red rock Raves riding thermals Jays crazy in the pines Big blue mountain On the far horizon And here- infinite air- Moving, opening East-west, north-south, Up-down, high Over the one-way river Pulling The whole sky west. What need For any other world?”

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Book:Grand Canyon Days
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