Native American Indian Quotes - Page 3

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  One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk.

  Crazy Horse

  Native American, Journey, Hiking

  "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee". Book by Dee Brown. Chapter 12, 1970.

  242 Copy quote

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• 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.

  Crazy Horse

  Children, Native American, Parent

  500 Copy quote

• Man's heart away from nature becomes hard.

  Standing Bear

  Inspirational, Life, Nature

  69 Copy quote

• Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.

  Black Elk

  Native American, Circles, Bird

  Black Elk (2000). “Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux”, Bison Books

  9 Copy quote

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• 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.

  Tom Brown, Jr.

  Nature, Native American, Owl

  87 Copy quote

• Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man ... cannot be exempt from the common destiny.

  Chief Seattle

  Regret, Destiny, Men

  28 Copy quote

• First kill me before you take possession of my Fatherland.

  Sitting Bull

  Firsts, Kill Me, Possession

  15 Copy quote

• All things are bound together. All things connect.

  Chief Seattle

  Native American, Web Of Life, Earth Day

  Seattle (Chief) (1980). “How can one sell the air?: the manifesto of an Indian chief”, Book Publishing Company (TN)

  43 Copy quote

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• I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.

  Red Cloud

  Love, Life, Peace

  180 Copy quote
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  It does not require many words to speak the truth.

  Chief Joseph

  Truth, Native American, Reality

  225 Copy quote

• He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart he put other different desires.

  Sitting Bull

  Native American, Heart, Wish

  "God Is Red: A Native View of Religion". Book by Vine Deloria, Jr., 1972.

  17 Copy quote

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• Let me be a free man - free to travel, free to stop, free to work.

  Chief Joseph

  Travel, Native American, Men

  Lincoln Hall Speech in Washington D.C., January 14, 1879.

  16 Copy quote

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• Suppose a white man should come to me and say, "Joseph, I like your horses. I want to buy them." I say to him, "No, my horses suit me; I will not sell them." Then he goes to my neighbor and says to him, "Joseph has some good horses. I want to buy them, but he refuses to sell." My neighbor answers, "Pay me the money and I will sell you Joseph's horses." The white man returns to me and says, "Joseph, I have bought your horses and you must let me have them." If we sold our lands to the government, this is the way they bought them.

  Chief Joseph

  I Like You, Horse, Native American

  Arguing against the right of the US Government to force his people to leave their lands, 1876.

  189 Copy quote

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• Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pcanet, and other powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and oppression of the white man, as snow before the summer sun.

  Tecumseh

  Summer, Powerful, Native American

  Quoted in Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970)

  66 Copy quote

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• Our land is everything to us.... I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember that our grandfathers paid for it - with their lives.

  John Wooden

  Native American, Land, Grandparent

  8 Copy quote

• The voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers.

  Zitkala-Sa

  God, Sweet, Nature

  Zitkala-Sa (2014). “American Indian Stories”, p.109, Diderot Publishing

  95 Copy quote

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

  Black Hawk

  Native American, Native Language, Looks

  Black Hawk, John B. Patterson (1836). “Life of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, or Black Hawk: With an account of the late war”, p.97

  145 Copy quote

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• All men were made brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born free should be content when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.

  Chief Joseph

  Mother, Running, Brother

  Lincoln Hall Speech in Washington D.C., January 14, 1879.

  131 Copy quote

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• Our fathers gave us many laws which they had learned from their
  fathers. These laws were good.

  Chief Joseph

  Father, Native American, Law

  8 Copy quote

• We live, we die, and like the grass and trees, renew ourselves from the soft earth of the grave. Stones crumble and decay, faiths grow old and they are forgotten, but new beliefs are born. The faith of the villages is dust now... but it will grow again... like the trees.

  Chief Joseph

  Native American, Dust, Tree

  118 Copy quote

• I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

  John Wayne

  Funny, Country, Military

  45 Copy quote

• And I say the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father.

  Black Elk

  Mother, Children, Father

  Black Elk (2000). “Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux”, Bison Books

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• The beauty of the trees, the softness of the air, the fragrance of the grass, they speak to me. The summit of the mountain, the thunder of the sky, the rhythm of the sea, speaks to me. The faintness of the stars, the freshness of the morning, the dewdrop on the flower, speaks to me. The strength of the fire, the taste of the salmon, the trail of the sun, and the life that never goes away, they speak to me. And my heart soars.

  Chief Dan George

  Morning, Nature, Stars

  Chief Dan George, “My Heart Soars”

  536 Copy quote

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• If a man loses anything and goes back and looks carefully for it, he will find it.

  Sitting Bull

  Inspirational, Native American, Men

  63 Copy quote

• To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground.

  Chief Seattle

  Ashes, Sacred, Ancestor

  31 Copy quote