Native American quotes
429 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"A bit of advice Given to a young Native American At the time of his initiation: As you go the way of life, You will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think."
"The Justice Department ruled that Native American tribes are allowed to grow and sell marijuana on reservations. This decision was hailed as a victory by Native American leader Giggling Eagle."
"I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or who you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try."
"America has always been the richest and most secure, and sometimes the most dangerous country in the world. In the early years, the danger was to everybody near us, slaves, Native Americans, Mexicans. It finally expanded in 1898 to the Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines."
"We are now going to the Lamanites, to whom we intend to be messengers of instruction... We will show them that in consequence of their transgressions a curse has been inflicted upon them - in the darkness of their skins. We will have intermarriages with them, they marrying our young women, and we taking their young squaws to wife. By these means it is the will of the Lord that the curse of their color shall be removed and they restored to their pristine beauty."
"My work to me is more like what the Native Americans say: When we walk upon the earth, we always place our feet very carefully upon the ground, because we know the faces of our future generations are looking up at us from below, and we never forget them. I think as a culture today we've forgotten them. This work is a way to help us remember them. It's a way for us not only to find meaning in our individual lives, but to extend that approach all across the planet. Because if we don't, we won't have a planet."
"He who would do great things should not attempt them all alone."
"The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, andagain, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him."
"Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge."
"Think not forever of yourselves, O Chiefs, nor of your own generation. Think of continuing generations of our families, think of our grandchildren and of those yet unborn, whose faces are coming from beneath the ground."
"No matter where you're from - you can be Native American, Italian, Jewish, Latino, African-American - whatever you are, we're all distant relatives."
"I reached the age of 70, because I have cultivated an association of multicultural intellectuals who are informed and alert to whatever "tricknology" that's laid on us by the powers that be. These include White ethnic intellectuals- people who know their roots- as well as Native American, Asian American, Hispanic and Black intellectuals. These are thirty, forty-year associations with some of the best minds around. Minds that are ignored by the media."
"Unless you're one of the first Americans, a Native American, you came from someplace else. Somebody brought you."
"Life is greater than you have ever known it."
"Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls."
"Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified."
"It may be regarded as certain that not a foot of land will ever be taken from the Indians without their own consent."
"Growing up on the border there, we were always frustrated with people's pronunciations of towns in Michigan, and people mispronouncing Illinois. There are all these Native American words that no one really knows how to pronounce."
"When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, "The one I feed the most.""
"There may be something in the fact that when I was a little kid I'd been told growing up that we had some degree of native American blood in us, I always found that a point of pride. So, when it came to cowboys and Indians I most certainly did not want to be John Wayne. I wanted to be one of the Indians."
