Best 329 quotes in «native american quotes» category

A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt. He said, 'I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, violent one, the other wolf is the loving compassionate one.' The grandson asked him, 'Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?' The grandfather answered, 'The one I feed.'

And my point was one I think that you'd agree with, which is there's no room in America for a black racist, a Latino racist, or a white racist, or an Asian racist, or a Native American racist. Now, we're either color blind or we're not color blind.

An Indian is an Indian regardless of the degree of Indian blood or which little government card they do or do not possess.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.

At the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit. And that center is really everywhere. It is within each of us.

Arizona faces unique healthcare challenges including uncompensated care for illegal immigrants, and the large number of Native Americans who live in remote and isolated areas of the state.

Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.

As Native Americans, we believe the Rainbow is a sign from the Spirit in all things. It is a sign of the union of all people, like one big family. The unity of all humanity, many tribes and peoples, is essential.

As you know, today was Don't Take Your Illegal Immigrant To Work Day here in Los Angeles. No, all across the nation they had a Day Without Immigrants, is what they call it. Or, as Native Americans call it, the good ol' days.

Creationists have also changed their name ... to intelligent design theorists who study 'irreducible complexity' and the 'abrupt appearance' of life-yet more jargon for 'God did it.' ... Notice that they have no interest in replacing evolution with native American creation myths or including the Code of Hammarabi alongside the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools.

Before me, my grandfathers, my uncles and my father were all boxers because Native Americans had to box in boarding schools. But in my time, when I grew up in Lawton Oklahoma, we didn't have boxing. I was a wrestler.

Being Indian is an attitude, a state of mind, a way of being in harmony with all things and all beings. It is allowing the heart to be the distributor of energy on this planet; to allow feelings and sensitivities to determine where energy goes; bringing aliveness up from the Earth and from the Sky, putting it in and giving it out from the heart.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

Conversation was never begun at once, nor in a hurried manner. No one was quick with a question, no matter how important, and no one was pressed for an answer. A pause giving time for thought was the truly courteous way of beginning and conducting a conversation. Silence was meaningful with the Lakota, and his granting a space of silence to the speech-maker and his own moment of silence before talking was done in the practice of true politeness and regard for the rule that, "thought comes before speech.

Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! [...] I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians.

Being Native American has been part of my story I guess since the day I was born.

By peace our condition has been improved in the pursuit of civilized life.

Confronted with a choice, the American people would choose the policeman's truncheon over the anarchist's bomb.

Do the very best you can.

Every human longs for peace and love.

Help me always to speak the truth quietly, to listen with an open mind when others speak, and to remember the peace that may be found in silence.

Everywhere is the center of the world. Everything is sacred.

For the multiculturalist, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are prohibited, Italians and Irish get a little respect, blacks are good, native Americans are even better. The further away we go, the more they deserve respect. This is a kind of inverted, patronising respect that puts everyone at a distance.

Five hundred years later we're still doing it. This is a moment where we're either going to reaffirm that's what we do [with Native Americans ], that's who we are, or we're going to start moving toward change. A change won't come easy, because there's a lot of big money that doesn't care about any of this.

For me space rock is something that takes you out of yourself and out of your normal realm. And if space happens to be that inner space or outer space it's a very personal thing. I think that mantra is space music. I think that Native American tribal drumming is space music. Anything that allows you to go inward to go outward and to move within a space that is not normal to your reality.

For most Native Americans, there's no more offensive name in English. That non-Native folks think they get to measure or decide what offends us is adding insult to injury.

Golf is played by twenty million mature American men whose wives think they are out having fun.

How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.

I am convinced that those societies (such as the Native American peoples) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves & sheep. I do not exaggerate.

I always see America as really belonging to the Native Americans. Even though I'm American, I still feel like a visitor in my own country.

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

I always think of the Pacific Northwest as giant trees, and rain, and clouds and dampness, like the Native American art from that area.

I am honored to have Ajamu Baraka as a running mate. I think he brings enormous credibility in the disenfranchised communities, not just African American but Latino, Asian American and Native American. He is a recognized advocate for racial justice, economic justice and human rights, and I think this conversation is only just begun. It is very important.

I believe, as a Puerto Rican, that the majority of Puerto Ricans want to be Puerto Ricans. Once we become annexed to the United States or by the United States, that we will lose our national identity. I can look at Hawaii as an example of people who lose, the Natives who lose their identity. I can look into the Native American reservations and see people who lose their national identity, their culture, their language, their land. And that's what's going to happen to Puerto Ricans here.

I am proud to be an American. Because an American can eat anything on the face of this earth as long as he has two pieces of bread.

I believe in white supremacy, until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don't believe giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people ... I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from [the Native Americans] ... Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

I can't get upset about 'offensive to women' or 'offensive to blacks' or 'offensive to Native Americans' or 'offensive to Jews' ... Offend! I can't get worked up about it. Offend!

I do know that there have been many Native people - I don't like to call them "Native Americans," I guess, definitely not "Indians" - I've seen and read a lot about there's a big number of Natives that don't mind the Redskins name and they actually embrace it. Although there are a number of groups as well that are opposed to it.

I certainly don't object to [writers] trying to imagine the lives of other societies, but you have to do it with a certain amount of humility and respect. If it were not for the ethnographic material that had been collected by missionaries and anthropologists and so forth, much of past Native American society would no longer be accessible. What I object to is making kitsch of things that are very serious.

I'd like to invoke the Native American Navajo because their word for road is used as a verb. Their whole relationship to road has to do with how you travel it, who you are traveling it with, what the environment might be, where you're headed, in what direction, the weather and so on.

I don't know that I would have the courage to come over to a new country where the religion is different, the language is different, where I don't have any money. The thought of starting over like that in the way that many refugee families have to start all over again - that's an incredible thing to think about. One of the things I tell about Refugee is that unless you're Native American or a descendant of slaves, your family immigrated to this country - whether they came over on the Mayflower or whether they came over on a raft last year.

I feel sorry for people of good heart who have never had a chance to learn the realities of Native American everything - not just our history but the sweetness and the beauty and the reasons why were so close to Mother Earth.

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans.

I have always been interested in mythology and history. The more I read, the more I realized that there have always been people at the edges of history that we know very little about. I wanted to use them in a story and bring them back into the public's consciousness. Similarly with mythology: everyone knows some of the Greek or Roman legends, and maybe some of the Egyptian or Norse stories too, but what about the other great mythologies: the Celtic, Chinese, Native American?

If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.

If we must die, we die defending our rights.

If you want to know what it will be like when we are more deeply into the horizontal, simply go to one of the Indian casinos. The Native Americans, who stand for vertical thinking more than anyone else in our culture, have been setting up totally flat casinos for honkies.

I have a hard problem, being some part Native American - being a Christian: do you get burned, do you get cremated, do you get - let the sharks eat you? How do you die?

I have built my world through Native American mythology.

I have good genes. My father is Danish and my mother is Irish and Native American. They both have good skin.