Best 329 quotes in «native american quotes» category

They called me an Indian pig. Oh, and they called me a prairie n*****. Pretty colorful, enit?" "I suppose." "That one pissed me off, though. I ain't no prairie Indian. I'm from a salmon tribe, man. If they were going to insult me, they should've called me salmon n*****." "I'm surprised you can laugh about this." "It's what Indians do." "Weren't you afraid?" "Yeah, I was afraid, but I'm afraid most of the time, you know? How would you feel if a white guy like you got dropped into the middle of a black neighborhood, like Compton, California, on a Saturday night?" "I'd be very afraid." "And that's exactly how I feel living in Seattle. Hell, I feel that way living in the United States. Indians are outnumbered, Officer. Those three guys scared me bad, but I've been scared for a long time.

The yard consisted of grass and a Russian Olive tree, which was about the only kind of tree able to survive on the high prairies. Its thin, grey leaves made it look as though it were on the verge of dying, thereby fooling the elements and the bad weather into thinking that they didn't have to bother with something so spindly and bent, something so obviously on its last legs.

They find joy in motion, which transforms their lives into unending odysseys. Their souls are brightly burning streaks of light across the universe—constantly traveling in an endless dance across space and time.

They're all gone, my tribe is gone. Those blankets they gave us, infected with smallpox, have killed us. I'm the last, the very last, and I'm sick, too. So very sick. Hot. My fever burning so hot. I have to take off my clothes, feel the cold air, splash water across my bare skin. And dance. I'll dance a Ghost Dance. I'll bring them back. Can you hear the drums? I can hear them, and it's my grandfather and grandmother singing. Can you hear them? I dance one step and my sister rises from the ash. I dance another and a buffalo crashes down from the sky onto a log cabin in Nebraska. With every step, an Indian rises. With every other step, a buffalo falls. I'm growing, too. My blisters heal, my muscles stretch, expand. My tribe dances behind me. At first they are no bigger than children. Then they begin to grow, larger than me, larger than the trees around us. The buffalo come to join us and their hooves shake the earth, knock all the white people from their beds, send their plates crashing to the floor. We dance in circles growing larger and larger until we are standing on the shore, watching all the ships returning to Europe. All the white hands are waving good-bye and we continue to dance, dance until the ships fall off the horizon, dance until we are so tall and strong that the sun is nearly jealous. We dance that way.

This time they would find the path to love and to acceptance. This time, she would know and understand the secrets of his heart as well as those of her own.

Together they looked skyward. The moonbow was shattering--mere bits of color in the blackness, a sort of bridge between heaven and earth--reminding her that even on the darkest nights there was a glimmer of home, of promise, however hazy.

To understand American Indians is to understand America. This is the story of the paradoxically least and most American place in the twenty-first century. Welcome to the Rez.

Violet suddenly felt something in her as her anger and adrenaline pulsed through her body like a raving lunatic. She felt the rage from before, trying to rise above her control. Her hands began to elongate and her nails grew to razor sharp knives. She tried to hold back the intense metamorphosis, but the more she let go, the better she felt. Millions of coarse hairs sprouted from her skin and covered her in a dense, white fur. Her eyes dilated and contracted with the effort of balancing light. Her face grew into a furry white snout and her limbs grew to immense sizes, filled with muscle. She looked down at herself. She was a beautiful werewolf. A white werewolf! She tried to laugh, but it came out as small barks. She was expecting black fur instead.

They caught up their horses and turned back. Nothing moved in that high wilderness save the wind. They did not speak. They were men of another time for all that they bore christian names and they had lived all their lives in a wilderness as had their fathers before them. They'd learnt war by warring, the generations driven from the eastern shore across a continent, from the ashes at Gnadenhutten onto the prairies and across the outlet to the bloodlands of the west. If much in the world were mystery the limits of that world were not, for it was without measure or bound and there were contained within it creatures more horrible yet and men of other colors and beings which no man has looked upon and yet not alien none of it more than were their own hearts alien in them, whatever wilderness contained there and whatever beasts.

They say that perhaps it is not by love, but by blood, that land is bought. They say that perhaps my people had to die to nourish this earth with their truth. Your people did not have ears to hear. Perhaps we had to return to the earth, so that we could grow within your hearts. Perhaps we have come back and will fill the hills and valleys with our song. Who is to know?

This [forced migration into cities] was part of the Indian Relocation Act, which was part of the Indian Termination Policy, which was and is exactly what it sounds like. Make them look and act like us. Become us. And so disappear.

To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language.

Unearth marvels as you walk the path, Stand in awe, Therein is the joy of life.

Violet, wake up! You are not in some pre-colonial, pre-internet hellhole. WAKE UP! But no matter how many times she rubbed her eyes or pinched herself to the point of almost bleeding, she was still there, on that same dirt floor, on the same animal pelt, still trying not to look at that one boy. Was she a captive to these people? Was she some sort of prisoner?

We gathered up the kids and sat up on the hill. We had no time to get our chickens and no time to get our horses out of the corral. The water came in and smacked against the corral and broke the horses' legs. The drowned, and the chickens drowned. We sat on the hill and we cried. These are the stories we tell about the river," said [Ladona] Brave Bull Allard. The granddaughter of Chief Brave Bull, she told her story at a Missouri River symposium in Bismark, North Dakota, in the fall of 2003. Before The Flood, her Standing Rock Sioux Tribe lived in a Garden of Eden, where nature provided all their needs. "In the summer, we would plant huge gardens because the land was fertile," she recalled. We had all our potatoes and squash. We canned all the berries that grew along the river. Now we don't have the plants and the medicine they used to make.

We discover the bumps are milpa, small mounds of earth on which complementary crops were planted. Unlike linear plowing, which encourages water runoff and soil erosion, the circular pattern traps rainfall. Each mound is planted with a cluster of the Three Sisters that were the staples of Indian agriculture: corn, beans, and squash. The corn provided a stalk for the beans to climb, while also shading the vulnerable beans. The ground cover from the squash stabilized the soil, and the bean roots kept the soil fertile by providing nitrogen. As a final touch, marigolds and other natural pesticides were planted around each mound to keep harmful insects away. Altogether it was a system so perfect that in some Central American countries too poor to adopt linear plowing with machinery, artificial pesticides, and monocrops of agribusiness, the same milpa have been producing just fine for four thousand years. 19 Not only that, but milpa can be planted in forests without clear-cutting the trees; at most, by removing a few branches to let sunlight through on a mound. This method was a major reason why three-fifths of all food staples in the world were developed in the Americas.

We have flattered ourselves by inventing proverbs of comparison in matter of blindness,--"blind as a bat," for instance. It would be safe to say that there cannot be found in the animal kingdom a bat, or any other creature, so blind in its own range of circumstance and connection, as the greater majority of human beings are in the bosoms of their families. Tempers strain and recover, hearts break and heal, strength falters, fails, and comes near to giving way altogether, every day, without being noted by the closest lookers-on.

We have found that no modern prescriptions heal the human heart so fully or so well as the prescription of the Ancient Ones. "To the hills," they would say. To which we would add, "To the trees, the valleys, and the streams, as well." For there is a power in nature that man has ignored. And the result has been heartache and pain.

WEST SALEM ~ October 2011 A sudden vision, fraught with malevolence and darkness, obscured her sight. The face of a menacing figure turned from the shadows of his grisly handiwork and stared at Sorcha. Her muscles tensed. By the Goddess, could he see her? Please! No! She wanted to scream, to run, but the vision ensnared her into the horrific moment like a fly in a spider's web.

We travel only as far and as high as our hearts will take us.

Was there anything he wouldn’t give for an isolated cabin and one night with her? No, he didn’t imagine there was—not that he had anything left to give. The last two things Phillip possessed he’d already bequeathed—to Milly, his heart, and to the Almighty, his vow to that he’d marry her if He would simply rearrange their circumstances to make it possible.

What's with everybody always trying to get rid of the Indians?" I said, not really asking for an answer. I thought again of the history-book pictures. Astronomers and brain surgeons. They should have done brain surgery on Columbus while they had the chance.

We want trumpets that sound like thunder, and men to act as though they were going to war with those corrupt and degrading principles that rob one of all rights, merely because he is ignorant, and of a little different color. Let us have principles that will give every one his due; and then shall wars cease, and the weary find rest.

We weep, tears of blood, we weep, In despair, crying, we weep; the sun forever has stolen the light from his eyes. No more his face do we see, no more his voice do we hear, nor will his affectionate gaze watch over his people.

When you turn around, you'll see something I bet you've never seen before. If it takes your breath away, then you'll fit in nicely. If you don't feel anything, then maybe you don't belong here.

You can buy history, but you can't buy a culture.

You do not understand what has happened to you… what I did to you.” he said sternly. Cold fright swelled in her stomach. What happened after she felt the pain? It was all blank. “What did you do to me?” She whispered. “You are a wolf now, Violet. A part of our pack.” “What? What the hell do you mean I’m a wolf?” She demanded. “You are half wolf, a Skin Walker. In human words… I believe you say werewolf.

You got what you deserved. Now be a man and confess to what most of us already know.

You know, your grandmother once told me something that the Native Americans say about dogs with different-colored eyes: they are extraordinary, for they have the ability to look upon both heaven and hell.

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.

A cold wind blew on the prairie on the day the last buffalo fell. A death wind for my people.

We made powwows because we needed a place to be together. Something intertribal, something old, something to make us money, something we could work toward, for our jewelry, our songs, our dances, our drum.

Where the mountain crosses. On top of the mountain, I do not myself know where. I wandered where my mind and my heart seemed to be lost. I wandered away.

Whether we walk among our people or alone among the hills, happiness in life's walking depends on how we feel about others in our hearts.

Who can declare that money is not a power which rulers of the world cannot withstand?

Why should you take by force that from us which you can have by love?

With unsteady hands, Phillip yanked on the mare’s bridle straps while trying to loosen one of the stubborn buckles. She snorted at his rough handling. Totka appeared beside him. “Let me.” Phillip gratefully released the task, an unexpected sense of brotherhood filling him. If anyone knew the heartache of separation, it was the man whose deft brown hands readied Phillip’s mount for the long road ahead. Totka’s own road had been lengthy. And yet, after two years, he somehow managed to continue to place one foot in front of the other. His breath still entered and left his body in the same monotonous pattern. How? When already several times over the half-day since Grayson had ridden out with Milly, Phillip had wondered if his chest might explode with the effort of expanding and contracting without her.

Would it surprise you to hear that man's unhappiness is due in large measure to the way he is seeking after happiness?

Would it surprise you to hear that man's unhappiness is due in large measure to the way he is seeking after happiness? You know this already from your own life. For when you have been unhappy, you have been unhappy with others—with your father or mother, your sister or brother, your spouse, your son, your daughter. If unhappiness is with others, wouldn't it stand to reason that happiness must be with others as well?

You and I have to rejoice that we have not to answer for our fathers’ crimes, neither shall we do right to charge them one to another. We can only regret it, and flee from it, and from henceforth, let peace and righteousness be written upon our hearts and hands forever.

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.

All of the guests on 'Faces of America' were deeply moved by what we revealed about their ancestry. We were able to trace the ancestry of Native American writer Louise Erdrich back to 438 A.D. We found that Queen Noor is descended from royalty, and that's before she married King Hussein of Jordan.

All I try to do is portray Indians as we are, in creative ways. With imagination and poetry. I think a lot of Native American literature is stuck in one idea: sort of spiritual, environmentalist Indians. And I want to portray everyday lives. I think by doing that, by portraying the ordinary lives of Indians, perhaps people learn something new.

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.'

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

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

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.

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.

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.