Best 329 quotes in «native american quotes» category

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.'

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Every human longs for peace and love.

Do the very best you can.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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 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.