Best 329 quotes in «native american quotes» category

Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist, and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesnt make a corporation a terrorist.

Southern food derives its strength from many cultures. It's a melding of food cultures from Native Americans, enslaved African-Americans, and Europeans.

The average American is nothing if not patriotic.

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.

The environmental catastrophes we're presently seeing are considered "normal" though they're horrific. Fracking has made drinking water flammable, families are dying from planned lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan, mountaintop removal is killing families throughout Appalachia, and oil/mining companies continue to denigrate Native American and indigenous rights throughout the world (see North Dakota Pipeline presently). This is horrific - and yet we somehow consider it normal.

The Clan Mothers ran everything and had the last word. I think that's the answer.

The greatest moments of Native History lie ahead of us if a great spiritual renewal and wakening should take place. The Native American has been a sleeping giant. He is awakening. The original Americans could become the evangelists who will help win America for Christ! Remember these forgotten people!

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said Allah God has come to fight the battle of justice for the Black man and woman of America and it is He who is plaguing America with the disasters of unusual rain, hail, snow, and soon earthquakes. So if the Black man and woman and the Native Americans, or Indians, are not in the equation of those running for the high office of the Presidency of the United States, if we are not in the equation for justice, then none of these candidates can save America from the Wrath of Allah (God).

That is the beauty when I discovered the label 'Touched With Fire.' That book defined it for me, I could be that. And we just happen to be living in one age of society that put these various labels on the condition. In Aristotle's time, it was the 'inspired state.' In the Native American cultures, you were the shaman. Labels and language creates realities, even if they are false.

The first function of violence in Native American literatures is simply to acknowledge that violence is implicit, like gravity and sunlight, in the world and our relations with the world.

The forest is the first cathedral. I felt that from the time I was a child. I credit my mother with that. I used to think it came from her Native-American side. Whichever it was, she instinctively connected with nature, and taught me that.

The Native American side was tragic. It's just unbelievable what has happened to them.

The native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity.

The native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that his religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury... Furthermore, it was the rule of his life to share the fruits of his skill and success with his less fortunate brothers. Thus he kept his spirit free from the clog of pride, cupidity, or envy, and carried out, as he believed, the divine decree-a matter profoundly important to him.

The old Indian teaching was that is is wrong to tear loose from its place on the earth anything that may be growing there. It may be cut off, but it should not be uprooted. The trees and the grass have spirits. Whatever one of such growth may be destroyed by some good Indian, his act is done in sadness and with a prayer for forgiveness because of his necessities.

The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing.

The only thing Native Americans ever did better than the rest of us is spirituality. Of course, that's everything, isn't it?

There have been players with Indian heritage, but there hasn't been a Native-American professional basketball player who became a regular for all sorts of social and political reasons.

There is an old and very wise Native American saying: Every time you point a finger in scorn—there are three remaining fingers pointing right back at you.

The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth, and the Native American shared this elemental ethic: The land was alive to his loving touch, and he, its son, was brother to all creatures.

The only people that deserve to be called Americans are Native Americans, otherwise, I'm a Latino American, you know.... Anybody else... well where did you come from?

There have been periods where the folks who were already here suddenly say, 'Well, I don't want those folks,' even though the only people who have the right to say that are some Native Americans.

There's all sorts of soul. There's Irish soul and Native American soul. If it touches you and moves you, it's soul.

There's an old, private cemetery here in Palm Springs, where I live, just down the street from the airport, that belongs to one of the local Native American tribes, and it occurred to me one day that if you really wanted to get away with murder, you'd kill someone, put them in a coffin and bury them in a private cemetery or, better, an abandoned one. And then suddenly this whole idea of a long con appeared before me and I had this idea of using a Jewish cemetery.

The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.

The seal and the constitution, reflects the thinking of the founding fathers that this was to be a nation by white people, and for white people. Native Americans, Blacks, and all other non-white people, were to be the burden bearers for the real citizens of this nation.

The song and the drumming were like this: Behold, a sacred voice is calling you; All over the sky a sacred voice is calling.

They say there are about 12 million illegal immigrants in this country. But if you ask a Native American, that number is more like 300 million.

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.

Think about the amount of crap the US has done! Between slavery and the genocide of the Native Americans - if any of that had been filmed like [Adolf] Hitler, we'd never live it down.

Things which do not grow and change are dead things.

Today, we have come a distance. We have made a lot of progress. That cannot be denied. You cannot dispute the fact that our country is so different from 50 years ago. But we still have problems. There are too many people that have been left out and left behind, and they are African American, they are White, Latino, Asian American, and Native American.

Traditional people of Indian nations have interpreted the two roads that face the light-skinned race as the road to technology and the road to spirituality. We feel that the road to technology.... has led modern society to a damaged and seared earth. Could it be that the road to technology represents a rush to destruction, and that the road to spirituality represents the slower path that the traditional native people have traveled and are now seeking again? The earth is not scorched on this trail. The grass is still growing there.

Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the most Oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage nature, in which Scythians and Ethiopians and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are light and shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and eclipse, there? The works of man are everywhere swallowed up in the immensity of nature. The AEgean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian.

Training began with children who were taught to sit still and enjoy it. They were taught to use their organs of smell, to look where there was apparently nothing to see, and to listen intently when all seemingly was quiet. A child who cannot sit still is a half-developed child.

Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view and demand that they respect yours.

Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.

We also recommit to supporting tribal self-determination, security, and prosperity for all Native Americans. While we cannot erase the scourges or broken promises of our past, we will move ahead together in writing a new, brighter chapter in our joint history.

We [Americans] have a historical trauma when it comes to the past relationships when it comes to Native Americans and the history of how America was created. With this film, it's nice to see that the trauma is presented from a white male that was in the Civil War and that trauma affects him in a way that still exists.

We learned to be patient observers like the owl. We learned cleverness from the crow, and courage from the jay, who will attack an owl ten times its size to drive it off its territory. But above all of them ranked the chickadee because of its indomitable spirit.

We do not want riches, we want peace and love.

We [Native Americans] respect being human beings, but also the natural and spiritual world and I thought that came across wonderfully and I hope a lot of people get a sense of that; not to take away that we also have that warrior spirit.

We believe profoundly in silence-the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit.

We use a Native American tradition of the talking stick. You sit and pass it around and whoever has the stick has to talk. Some people just hold it. Others really share.

What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian.

What we did in the 1960s and early 1970s was raise the consciousness of white America that this government has a responsibility to Indian people. That there are treaties; that textbooks in every school in America have a responsibility to tell the truth. An awareness reached across America that if Native American people had to resort to arms at Wounded Knee, there must really be something wrong. And Americans realized that native people are still here, that they have a moral standing, a legal standing. From that, our own people began to sense the pride.

When a child my mother taught me the legends of our people; taught me of the sun and sky, the moon and stars, the clouds and storms. She also taught me to kneel and pray to Usen for strength, health, wisdom, and protection. We never prayed against any person, but if we had aught against any individual we ourselves took vengeance. We were taught that Usen does not care for the petty quarrels of men.

When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?

When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, "The one I feed the most.

When it comes down to pure ornamental cursing, the native American is gifted above the sons of men.