American Indian Quotes - Page 6

• There was such a relationship between the buffalo and the American Indian - the Indians would eat them, live inside their pelts, use every part of the body. There was almost no separation between the people and the animals.

  Val Kilmer

  Animal, People, Use

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• I'd love to work more with the American Indians, my people.

  Loretta Lynn

  People, Indian

  Loretta Lynn (2010). “Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter”, p.194, Vintage

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• 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.

  Sherman Alexie

  Spiritual, Native American, Thinking

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• This country was a lot better off when the Indians were running it.

  Vine Deloria Jr.

  Running, Country, Better Off

  Vine Deloria, Jr., James Treat (2013). “For This Land: Writings on Religion in America”, p.8, Routledge

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• The following twenty years would be the nadir of American Indian history, as the total Indian population between 1890 and 1910 fell to fewer than 250,000. (It was not until 1917 that Indian births exceeded deaths for the first time in fifty years.)

  Kenneth C. Davis

  Years, Twenties, Population

  Kenneth C. Davis (1990). “Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History But Never Learned”, Crown Pub

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• The logical man must either deny all miracles or none, and our American Indian myths and hero stories are perhaps, in themselves, quite as credible as those of the Hebrews of old.

  Charles Alexander Eastman

  Hero, Men, Miracle

  Charles Alexander Eastman, Michael Oren Fitzgerald (2007). “The Essential Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa): Light on the Indian World”, p.7, World Wisdom, Inc

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• There has been a vigorous acceleration of health, resource and education programs designed to advance the role of the American Indian in our society. Last Fall, for example, 91 percent of the Indian children between the ages of 6 and 18 on reservations were enrolled in school. This is a rise of 12 percent since 1953.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Children, Fall, School

  Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1961). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960-1961”, p.925, Best Books on

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• The American Indian, once proud and free, is torn now between White and tribal values; between the politics and language of the White man and his own historic culture. His problems, sharpened by years of defeat and exploitation, neglect and inadequate effort, will take many years to overcome.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Men, White Man, Years

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1970). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968-1969”, p.336, Best Books on

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• I heard stories from my mother's mother who was an American Indian. She was spiritual, although she did not go to church, but she had the hum. She used to tell me stories of the rivers.

  Tina Turner

  Mother, Spiritual, Rivers

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• What the American Indian Movement says is that the American Indians are the Palestinians of the United States, and the Palestinians are the American Indians of Europe.

  Russell Means

  Europe, United States, Movement

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• Like almost everyone else in America, I grew up believing the myth of the objective scientist. Fortunately I was raised on the edges of two very distinct cultures, western European and American Indian.

  Vine Deloria Jr.

  Believe, Two, America

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• Tribal sovereignty means that. It's sovereign. You're a... you're a... you've been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign entity.

  George W. Bush

  Mean, Sovereign, Funny Bush

  George W. Bush “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, George W. Bush, 2004, Book 2, July 1 to September 30, 2004”, Government Printing Office

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• So, one of the things I was doing with the aliens in The Quiet Invasion was creating that advanced society which had ideas about morality and proper use of natural resources that were radically different from ours, as the Europeans were from the American Indians.

  Sarah Zettel

  Ideas, Creating, Use

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• This government to government relationship is the result of sovereign and independent tribal governments being incorporated into the fabric of our Nation, of Indian tribes becoming what our courts have come to refer to as quasi-sovereign domestic dependent nations. Over the years the relationship has flourished, grown, and evolved into a vibrant partnership in which over 500 tribal governments stand shoulder to shoulder with the other governmental units that form our Republic.

  George H. W. Bush

  Independent, Years, Government

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• The United States, which would live on Christian principles with all of the peoples of the world, cannot omit a fair deal for its own Indian citizens.

  Harry S. Truman

  Christian, Citizens, World

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• The idea of hunting and gathering as the best way for life has become quite popular recently, much more populare in some circles than the idea of simple farming as the best way of life. Many of the new primitives regard the beginnings of agriculture as one of humanity's major steps in the wrong direction. Most of the people who are drawn to such ideas do their actual hunting and gathering in grocery stores, but the *feeling* is there; it takes the form of a religion...expressed by particpating in American Indian rituals - or primitive-style rituals that are created anew.

  Walter Truett Anderson

  Hunting, Simple, Agriculture

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• You see the one thing I've always maintained is that I'm an American Indian. I'm not a Native American. I'm not politically correct. Everyone who's born in the Western Hemisphere is a Native American. We are all Native Americans. And if you notice, I put American before my ethnicity. I'm not a hyphenated African-American or Irish-American or Jewish-American or Mexican-American.

  Russell Means

  Native American, Ethnicity, Mexican

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Let us rededicate ourselves to the principle that all Americans have the tools to make the most of their God-given potential. For Indian tribes and tribal members, this means that the authority of tribal governments must be accorded the respect and support to which they are entitled under the law. It means that American Indian children and youth must be provided a solid education and the opportunity to go on to college. It means that more must be done to stimulate tribal economies, create jobs, and increase economic opportunities.

  William J. Clinton

  Jobs, Children, Mean

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• Above all, I wanted to be appreciated as a prima ballerina who happened to be a Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina.

  Maria Tallchief

  Native American, Appreciated, Ballerina

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• While public school history courses in the United States stress the horrors of the German Nazi murder of 6 million Jews and Josef Stalin's pogroms against racial minorities and political dissidents in the Soviet Union, the facts that the U.S. Army's solution to the 'Indian Problem' was the prototype for the Nazi 'Final Solution' to the 'Jewish Problem' and that the North American Indian Reservation was the model for the twentieth century gulag and concentration camp, are conveniently overlooked.

  Jonathan Ott

  Stress, School, Army

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• The turn of the century was the lowest point for the devastation of Indian culture by disease and persecution, and it's a wonder to me that they survived it and have not only maintained their identity, but are actually growing stronger in some ways. The situation is still very bad, especially in certain geographical areas, but there are more Indians going to school, more Indians becoming professional people, more Indians assuming full responsibility in our society. We have a long way to go, but we're making great strides.

  N. Scott Momaday

  School, Responsibility, Growing Stronger

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• It takes a strong effort on the part of each American Indian not to become Europeanized. The strength for this effort can only come from the traditional ways, the traditional values that our elders retain.

  Russell Means

  Strong, Effort, Way

  "I Am Not a Leader": Russell Means’ 1980 Mother Jones Cover Story, www.motherjones.com.

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• Every culture from the Egyptians to the Mayans to the American Indians to the Bedouins created bestiaries that enabled them to express their relationship with nature. Ashes and Snow is a 21st-century bestiary filled with species from around the world. Nature’s orchestra includes not just Homo sapiens but elephants, whales, manatees, eagles, cheetahs, orangutans, and many others.

  Gregory Colbert

  Elephants, Eagles, Whales

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• White domination is so complete that even American Indian children want to be cowboys. It's as if Jewish children wanted to play Nazis.

  Ward Churchill

  Children, Cowboy, Play

  Ward Churchill, M. Annette Jaimes (1992). “Fantasies of the master race: literature, cinema and the colonization of American Indians”, Common Courage Pr

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• It is the fundamental right of every American, as guaranteed by the first amendment of the Constitution, to worship as he or she pleases... This legislation sets forth the policy of the United States to protect and preserve the inherent right of American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiian people to believe, express, and exercise their traditional religions

  Jimmy Carter

  Believe, Exercise, People

  United States. President (1977-1981 : Carter), Jimmy Carter (1979). “Jimmy Carter”

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