Native American Quotations

When I was a kid, I really loved Indians. Native Americans. Pardon. Me.

Golf is played by twenty million mature American men whose wives think they are out having fun.

Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.

The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined.

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.

And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.

I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures.

I've come to the point in my life where I encourage young Native Americans to become much more selfish about their personal needs and wants.

I have good genes. My father is Danish and my mother is Irish and Native American. They both have good skin.

Grown men can learn from very little children for the hearts of little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.

I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place.

When you start to look at Native American history, you realize that, very far from being a peaceful, morally superior people, Native Americans were not that different from Europeans.

We do not want riches, we want peace and love.

America is made up of people who came from someplace else. Even the Native Americans came over the Bering strait... America is what it is because people came from someplace else.

What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian.

Yancy is actually a Native-American name, but I'm Irish. Go figure.

It does not require many words to speak the truth.

I've always been interested in the history of the West, our country and particularly as it relates to the Native Americans - the original Americans.

When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?

Native Americans are the original inhabitants of the land that now constitutes the United States. They have helped develop the fundamental principles of freedom of speech and separation of powers that form the foundation of the United States Government.

Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.

People are so busy dreaming the American Dream, fantasizing about what they could be or have a right to be, that they're all asleep at the switch. Consequently we are living in the Age of Human Error.

It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even to our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land.

In more recent years, I've become more and more fascinated with the indigenous folklore of this land, Native American folklore, and also Hispanic folklore now that I live in the Southwest.

Confronted with the choice, the American people would choose the policeman's truncheon over the anarchist's bomb.

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

Native Americans had only stone and wooden weapons and no animals that could be ridden. Those military advantages repeatedly enabled troops of a few dozen mounted Spaniards to defeat Indian armies numbering in the thousands.

Music is a performing art, as any Native American will tell you. It isn't there in the score.

The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.

All things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man... the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.

Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations.

What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has ever come to me hungry and left me unfed? Who has seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken?

Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors - the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.

Second, this epic tale allows the audience to actually listen to the Native Americans and receive their wisdom. Spielberg conveys the respect for Native Americans that is normally lacking in Western films.

This is the city of dreamers and time and again it's the place where the greatest dream of all, the American dream, has been tested and has triumphed.

Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit.

I represent more Native Americans than anyone else in Congress.

From where the sun now stands I will fight no more.

Instead of kids just hearing about beads and baskets and fringe, and about what 'was' and 'were,' we present Native American culture as a living contemporary culture.

Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.

There is no death, only a change of worlds.

Quakers are known for wanting to give back. Ban the bomb and the civil rights movement and the native American struggle for justice - those things were very, very front-burner in my childhood, as were the ideas of working for peace and if you have more than you need, then you share it with people who don't.

On the Native American front, we have turned a new page in the 400-year history of the interface between the American settlers of this country and the nation's first Americans. That's included a new relationship where the sovereignty of tribes is in fact recognized.

Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am Sioux? Because I was born where my father lived? Because I would die for my people and my country?

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

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.

I want to tell you that if the Great Spirit had chosen anyone to be the chief of this country, it is myself.

All men were made by the Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers.

It's striking that Native Americans evolved no devastating epidemic diseases to give to Europeans, in return for the many devastating epidemic diseases that Indians received from the Old World.

I like Celtic folk music, Native American music, and any kind of early music. There isn't a lot of music that I don't like... except for Show Tunes.

The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth, and the Native American shared this elemental ethic: The land was alive to his loving touch, and he, its son, was brother to all creatures.

Last year, I twice voted against the Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations bill because it did not adequately fund education in general, and Native American programs specifically.

The Native American side was tragic. It's just unbelievable what has happened to them.

They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse.

I was very sorry when I found out that your intentions were good and not what I supposed they were.

What white man can say I never stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say that I am a thief.

I'm Native American, so it's in my blood to always want brothers and friends. I'm a good brotherhood guy.

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans.

So the American government lied to the Native Americans for many, many years, and then President Clinton lied about a relationship, and everyone was surprised! A little naive, I feel!

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

I have a hard problem, being some part Native American - being a Christian: do you get burned, do you get cremated, do you get - let the sharks eat you? How do you die?

If we must die, we die defending our rights.

You think I am a fool, but you are a greater fool than I am.

We use a Native American tradition of the talking stick. You sit and pass it around and whoever has the stick has to talk. Some people just hold it. Others really share.

Now that we are poor, we are free. No white man controls our footsteps.

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

If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans, and in my heart he put other and different desires. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.

Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers.

Each man is good in His sight. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.

I always see America as really belonging to the Native Americans. Even though I'm American, I still feel like a visitor in my own country.

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.

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty.

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.

Nobody else in the world has a form like the Native American musical, and Americans should be very proud.

Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.

Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge.

It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.

Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.

Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

I have built my world through Native American mythology.

I've got tonnes of aboriginal and Native American art, but I'd like even more.

Thus the white men and Native Americans were able, through the spirit of goodwill and compromise, to reach the first in what would become a long series of mutually beneficial, breached agreements that enabled the two cultures to coexist peacefully for stretches of twenty and sometimes even thirty days, after which it was usually necessary to negotiate new agreements that would be even more mutual and beneficial, until eventually the Native Americans were able to perceive the vast mutual benefits of living in rock-strewn sectors of South Dakota.

I sang a song in Hindi; nobody even knew what that was. Singing about Native American issues, nobody did that. I had no reason to want to copy anybody else. All I had was my originality.

I feel sorry for people of good heart who have never had a chance to learn the realities of Native American everything - not just our history but the sweetness and the beauty and the reasons why were so close to Mother Earth.

Native Americans say, "It's a good day to die," and samurai live their life to die honorably, so that kind of energy creates a certain mindset of reactiveness with control to a point. And after that, it's gone.

Do you think we care about the feelings of Native Americans when we celebrate Columbus Day? That's the day that the white man discovered a land where Indians had been living for a few thousand years.

In America there is really very little knowledge of the literature of the rest of the world. Of the literature of Latin America, yes, But that's not all that different in inspiration from that of America, or of Europe. One must go further. You don't even have to go too far in terms of geography - you can start with the Native Americans and listen to their poetry.

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people.

Your religion was written on tablets of stone, ours on our hearts. 8. We are part of the earth and the earth is part of us.

Tribe follows tribe, nations follow nations like the tides of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless.

All things are bound together. All things connect.

We do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us?

All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth, befalls the children of the Earth.

The whites, too, shall pass - perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your own bed, and you might suffocate in your own waste.

Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only change of worlds.

The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond, the smell of the wind itself cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with pinon pine. The air is precious to the red man, for all things are the same breath - the animals, the trees, the man.

When the Earth is sick, the animals will begin to disappear, when that happens, The Warriors of the Rainbow will come to save them.

The power of these recommendations is that they come from leaders representing a broad spectrum of religious conviction. At the table were people with Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Native American and humanist perspectives, as well as individuals from advocacy groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the American Center for Law and Justice.