Native American Quotes - Page 2

Last night I missed two free throws which would have won the game against the best team in the state. The farm town high school I play for is nicknamed the "Indians," and I'm probably the only actual Indian ever to play for a team with such a mascot.This morning I pick up the sports page and read the headline: INDIANS LOSE AGAIN.Go ahead and tell me none of this is supposed to hurt me very much.

Pulling back, like a savage carnivore at its prey, it tore a large chunk of meat rendering his left arm useless...regardless he did not require it for long.

Captain Bailey’s face went rigid as he stepped aside, revealing another bicorne-crowned officer just behind him.The gentleman joined their circle, probing Milly with his gaze. He was handsome, more so than the other two. The upward tilt of his chin, confident set to his shoulders, and seductive smile lifting one corner of his mouth sent a wave of disquiet through her middle.She’d met this sort before.The silver tassels on his epaulettes glimmered in the firelight and spoke of power, and she lowered her eyes, pointedly aware she didn’t belong here, surrounded by such important men, addressing them as if anything she said were worthy of their consideration. She sucked in a deliberate breath and drew back ever so slightly.Captain Bailey matched her move and slipped a hand to the back of her elbow. She suspected the touch was meant to be one of support. Instead, she felt trapped.“Miss Milly Wilkins, may I present Captain Jameson Collins?” Captain Bailey’s voice was clipped, and Milly feared he was beginning to see through the ruse.The sound of rattling chains stemmed from the shadows and her eyes darted toward it. Any minute these officers would realize she should be shackled as well. Could they see through the shadows of her hood to the pulse pounding in her neck?

Before Sutter, native people had heeded the cycle of the seasons, time was infinite, and life's rhythms were unchanging. Now, for at least part of their lives, some Indians were wedded to a concept that proclaimed that time was limited and that it had economic value. The clang of Sutter's bell announced that time was money, that it marched onward, and that it waited for no man, including Indians in the 1840s.

For being so straight and sure, God’s path held quite the assortment of twists.

Children, language, lands: almost everything was stripped away, stolen when you weren’t looking because you were trying to stay alive. In the face of such loss, one thing our people could not surrender was the meaning of land. In the settler mind, land was property, real estate, capital, or natural resources. But to our people, it was everything: identity, the connection to our ancestors, the home of our nonhuman kinfolk, our pharmacy, our library, the source of all that sustained us. Our lands were where our responsibility to the world was enacted, sacred ground. It belonged to itself; it was a gift, not a commodity, so it could never be bought or sold. These are the meanings people took with them when they were forced from their ancient homelands to new places.

Though many non-Native Americans have learned very little about us, over time we have had to learn everything about them. We watch their films, read their literature, worship in their churches, and attend their schools. Every third-grade student in the United States is presented with the concept of Europeans discovering America as a "New World" with fertile soil, abundant gifts of nature, and glorious mountains and rivers. Only the most enlightened teachers will explain that this world certainly wasn't new to the millions of indigenous people who already lived here when Columbus arrived.

Phillip hardened his grip on Totka’s. “For all our manipulations, God always manages to get His way.”“A beautiful woman once told me our Jesus Creator is a good and wise chief, worthy of obedience without question. His plan is perfect. Wait, and you will see.

A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa—to be a bay—releases the water from bondage and lets it live. “To be a bay” holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of baby mergansers. Because it could do otherwise—become a stream or an ocean or a waterfall, and there are verbs for that, too. To be a hill, to be a sandy beach, to be a Saturday, all are possible verbs in a world where everything is alive. Water, land, and even a day, the language a mirror for seeing the animacy of the world, the life that pulses through all things, through pines and nuthatches and mushrooms. This is the language I hear in the woods; this is the language that lets us speak of what wells up all around us.[…]This is the grammar of animacy.

Coyote, who is the creator of all of us, was sitting on his cloud the day after he created Indians. Now, he liked the Indians, liked what they were doing. This is good, he kept saying to himself. But he was bored. He thought and thought about what he should make next in the world. But he couldn't think of anything so he decided to clip his toenails. ... He looked around and around his cloud for somewhere to throw away his clippings. But he couldn't find anywhere and he got mad. He started jumping up and down because he was so mad. Then he accidentally dropped his toenail clippings over the side of the cloud and they fell to the earth. They clippings burrowed into teh ground like seeds and grew up to be white man. Coyote, he looked down at his newest creation and said, "Oh, shit.

Allow the power to flow through you. Don’t try to capture it. You wish only to borrow it.

Life is a walking, a journey. So, if life upon Mother Earth is a journey, there are two ways to walk. We can choose to walk forward or we can choose to walk backward. Forward Walking choices are rewarded with consequences that light the way to peace, happiness, joy, comfort, knowledge, and wisdom. Backward Walking choices bring to the Two-Legged beings consequences of misery despair, and darkness.

Shit," he said. "I don't know why you're feeling sorry for yourself because you ain't had to fight a war. You're lucky. Shit, all you had was that damn Desert Storm. Should have called it Dessert Storm because it just made the fat cats get fatter. It was all sugar and whipped cream with a cherry on top. And besides that, you didn't even have to fight in it. All you lost during that was was sleep because you stayed up all night watching CNN.

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.

He carried her over the Owl Creek mountain range without stopping,” he said, quietly this time. “He carried her until he reached one of the hot springs around what became Chapin, and then he walked into the water with her and held her there for three days. He had about given up when she opened her eyes and whispered his name.

The true Indian sets no price upon either his property or his labor. His generosity is limited only by his strength and ability. He regards it as an honor to be selected for difficult or dangerous service and would think it shameful to ask for any reward, saying rather: "Let the person I serve express his thanks according to his own bringing up and his sense of honor. Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new sweet earth, and the Great Silence alone!. What is Silence? It is the Great Mystery! The Holy Silence is His voice!

He who runs with the platypus is no more a man than he who swallows chesnuts

To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion.

A significant number of people believe tribal people still live and dress as they did 300 years ago. During my tenure as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, national news agencies requesting interviews sometimes asked if they could film a tribal dance or if I would wear traditional tribal clothing for the interview. I doubt they asked the president of the United States to dress like a pilgrim for an interview.

We stand somewhere between the mountain and the ant.

No, not my spirit, just my ego, and my arms, and my chest, and my back, but luckily they are just bruised.” Squanto responded, “I fear you may not be so lucky.

A brusque whisper coaxed Phillip from slumber. Someone had called his name. The cot squeaked as he sat up and squinted at a featureless silhouette. “Who is it?”“Rise. Quick. Bring your medicine maker.” The ragged voice belonged to True Seeker.Tasked with keeping a watchful eye on Milly, the young man would come to Phillip at this hour for only one reason. He swung his legs to the ground. With one foot going into his trousers, he took a wide step across the narrow barracks and jostled Buck’s shoulder.His friend was on his feet and half-dressed before Phillip left the building, alarm urging his feet to a gallop. No one need tell him which direction to go. He buckled his sword belt as he went. The scabbard slapped his leg with each footfall, bringing to mind a similar night not long enough ago. His stride lengthened.This time, he would run Collins clean through.

In the beginning of all things, wisdom and knowledge were with the animals, for Tirawa, the One Above, did not speak directly to man. He sent certain animals to tell men that he showed himself through the beast, and that from them, and from the stars and the sun and moon should man learn.. all things tell of Tirawa. What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

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.

Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations.

At the end of our lives, when our bodies are about to be laid in Mother Earth, we will know for ourselves whether we are a Two-Legged being full of light or a Two-Legged being full of darkness.

I could see the bay in the distance and where the ship should have been. Instead we found a burnt mast protruding from the waves.

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.

Mother Earth reintroduced me to my people.

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.

Bad and cruel as our people were treated by the whites, not one of themwas hurt or molested by our band. (...) The whites were complaining at the same time that we were intruding upontheir rights. They made it appear that they were the injured party, andwe the intruders. They called loudly to the great war chief to protecttheir property.How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make rightlook like wrong, and wrong like right.

As chief, I will represent my people in many different ways and might never know which particular action is destined to matter more than another, thus, all my actions should be considered potentially important and worthy of my best effort.

No Statue of Liberty ever greeted our arrival in this country...we did not, in fact, come to the United States at all. The United States came to us.

Man's obsession with his own wants is taking him further from those without whom happiness cannot be found. It is taking him from his people.

Last summer we had eight people in the [Christian] congregation who danced four different sun dances. Of course the missionaries have said all along that those ceremonies are pagan and we can't do that. Our people insist that they are free in the gospel, free in Christ Jesus, to participate in Indian religious forms and ceremonies. - George Tinker

The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.All things are connected like the blood that unites one family.Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.The earth is sacred and men and animals are but one part of it.Treat the earth with respect so that it lasts for centuries to come and is a place of wonder and beauty for our children.

Hiking is like life...You can spend the whole trip just watching the trail ahead, worrying that you'll twist an ankle or fall.And then you miss all this.

In 1492, the natives discovered they were indians, discovered they lived in America, discovered they were naked, discovered that the Sin existed, discovered they owed allegiance to a King and Kingdom from another world and a God from another sky, and that this God had invented the guilty and the dress, and had sent to be burnt alive who worships the Sun the Moon the Earth and the Rain that wets it.

There was nothing physical she could do to stop Mario from carrying out whatever he wished. She shivered at the thought of what that sleazy, other world leftover might do should she launch an attack on him.

I want to say that further you are not a great chief of this country. That you have no following, no power, no control." Logan continued, "You are on an Indian reservation merely at the sufferance of the government. You are fed by the government, clothed by the government, your children are educated by the government, and all you have and are today is because of the government. If it were not for the government you would be freezing and starving today in the mountains. I merely say these things to notify you that you cannot insult the people of the United States of America or its committees ...the government feeds and clothes and educates your children now, and desires to teach you to become farmers, and to civilize you, and make you as white men.-Senator John Logan, 1883

The wolf turned to Rachel. She was afraid to run, afraid fleeing would make it chase her. Somewhere in the stored files of her mind, she remembered one should not look directly at a menacing dog, but she couldn’t take her eyes from it.

WEST SALEM ~ October 2011A 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.

Modern man has lost the sense of wonderabout the unknown and he treats it asan enemy.

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?

For every inch of skin, there is memory. Devils are so made. Saints, too, if you believe in them. His humanity has been broken as an old walking stick that once held up a crippled man named Thomas. He realizes the stick and the man are one thing and he can fall. He has violated the laws beneath the laws of men and countries, something deeper, the earth and the sea, the explosions of trees. He has to care again. He has to be water again, rock, earth with its new spring wildflowers and its beautiful, complex mosses.

No matter how hard I try to forget you, you always come back to my thoughts When you hear me singing I am really crying for you.

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 forces that we deal with have two sides: one is good and helpful and the other is dark and dangerous. Part of your training is to learn to distinguish between them, and know when to use which.” (Nakoma)

In our hurry of utilitarian progress, we have either forgotten the Indian altogether, or looked upon him only in a business point of view, as we do almost everything else; as a thriftless, treacherous, drunken fellow, who knows just enough to be troublesome, and who must be cajoled or forced into leaving his hunting-grounds for the occupation of very orderly and virtuous white people, who sell him gunpowder and whiskey, but send him now and then a missionary to teach him that it is wrong to get drunk and murder his neighbor.

It's not about Indians, it's about people... the overall philosophy is to reconnect all people to nature and inevitably themselves. - Larry Stillday

Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept us safe among them... The animals had rights - the right of man's protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, the right to freedom, and the right to man's indebtedness. This concept of life and its relations filled us with the joy and mystery of living; it gave us reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all.

If a child hasn't been given spiritual values within the family setting, they have no familiarity with the values that are necessary for the just and peaceful functioning in society.

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.

But, my dear friend Wildfire," said Carl Peterson laying his hand on the Indian's shoulder, "this is not a policy to live by." "Then let it be a policy to die by," defiantly spoke the Indian. "If we cannot be free, let us die. What is life to a caged bird, threatened with death on all sides?

I have learned that the point of life's walk is not where or how far I move my feet but how I am moved in my heart.

Mother Earth has never been more crowded, yet her inhabitants have never been more lonely.

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

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.

There is a falling from the skyThe sacred hoop is brokenBut different hands with different voiceHear the ancient songsAnd soonAll men will seeThat truth and justiceMustPrevail.

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