Native American Quotes - Page 9

• There can be no more ancient and traditional American value than ignorance. English-only speakers brought it with them to this country three centuries ago, and they quickly imposed it on the Africans--who were not allowed to learn to read and write--and on the Native Americans, who were simply not allowed.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Country, Writing, Ignorance

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• The forest is the first cathedral. I felt that from the time I was a child. I credit my mother with that. I used to think it came from her Native-American side. Whichever it was, she instinctively connected with nature, and taught me that.

  Alice Walker

  Mother, Children, Thinking

  "Alice in Walkerland!". Interview with Kam Williams, www.pittsburghurbanmedia.com.

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• That those tribes [the Sac and Fox Indians] cannot exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizensis certain. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition.

  Andrew Jackson

  Desire, Essentials, Foxes

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• It's therapy. [people] say true healing requires honest confrontation, and that can be seen on a macro scale with America and the things that have been swept under the rug, whether it be with the native Americans or slavery, or whatever holocaust that's happened on this soil.

  Nate Parker

  Healing, People, Holocaust

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I have made a short excursion into the new world which the Indian dwells in, or is. He begins where we leave off.

  Henry David Thoreau

  World, Made, Indian

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1843, Delphi Classics

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• A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,--the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man's treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, White Man, Crow

  Henry David Thoreau (1974). “The correspondence of Henry David Thoreau”, Greenwood Pub Group

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• Thanksgiving began in 1621 when Native Americans sat down with a bunch of undocumented pilgrims. They had dinner and the pilgrims never left.

  Jay Leno

  Dinner, Bunch, Pilgrim

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• The power of the world always works in circles.

  Black Elk

  Circles, World, Cherokee

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

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• Laila Lalami has fashioned an absorbing story of one of the first encounters between Spanish conquistadores and Native Americans, a frightening, brutal, and much-falsified history that here, in her brilliantly imagined fiction, is rewritten to give us something that feels very like the truth.

  Salman Rushdie

  Giving, Encounters, Fiction

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• 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.

  George Tahdooahnippah

  Uncles, Father, School

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• So long as mists envelop you, be still. Be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists - as it surely will. Then act with courage.

  Chief White Eagle

  Long, Pieces, Sunlight

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• In the name of Hypocrites, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.

  Edward Everett Hale

  Time, Hypocrite, Men

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• I think laughter is crucial. Some of the original cultures, like the Dalit and the Native American, don't separate laughter and seriousness.

  Gloria Steinem

  Laughter, Thinking, Culture

  "The Humanist Interview with Gloria Steinem" by Jennifer Bardi, thehumanist.com. August 14, 2012.

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• I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Missionary, Christianity, Clergy

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.186

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• If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace.

  Chief Joseph

  Men, White, Want

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

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• The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, andagain, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Names, Lakes, Water

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.680, Delphi Classics

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• Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes; but they are excluded from the banquet. Plenty revels over the fields; but theyare starving in the midst of its abundance: the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden; but they feel as reptiles that infest it.

  Washington Irving

  Eye, Garden, Luxury

  "Traits of Indian character". Book by Washington Irving, 1819.

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• I'm not encouraged by the silence. I can think of no benign reason for it. I'm afraid we may expect something closer to Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas than a scene from Close Encounters, and we all know how that turned out for the Native Americans.

  Rick Yancey

  Thinking, Silence, Encounters

  Rick Yancey (2013). “The 5th Wave”, p.36, Penguin

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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, Men

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

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• 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

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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, Men

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

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

  John Ross

  Pursuit, Civilized, Has Beens

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• I know Great Spirit is looking down upon me from above, and will hear what I say.

  Sitting Bull

  Spirit, Knows, Looking Down

  Sitting Bull, Mark Diedrich (1998). “Sitting Bull: The Collected Speeches”

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

  Gore Vidal

  Life, Running, Political

  FaceBook post by Gore Vidal from Nov 17, 2010

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• 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.

  Michael Shermer

  School, Science, Intelligent

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