Native American Quotes

“I am a star falling from the night sky
I need you to catch me
I am a rainbow lifting from a dark cloud
I need you to see me”
― Joy Harjo, An American Sunrise

“To live in the moment... is the only
footprint one must follow..”
― Oglala Lakota- Hinhan Wakangli

“I have a real problem when those people preferring to affirm an African or even a Spanish side to their history say that I can't affirm who I am as an indigenous person, as though everybody else is entitled to be who they are on our ancestral homeland, except us.”
― Roberto Mukaro Borrero

“I have two wolves inside me" he tells the chief.
"One wolf is hopeful, spirited, and kind, and the other wolf is mean, competitive, and evil. Who will win?" he asks.

The grandfather pats the young warrior on his head and says, "The one who will win is the one you feed.”
― Joey Reiman, Thumbs Up!: 5 Steps to Create the Life of Your Dreams

“He didn't kiss like other men. There was no smooth seduction. No playful interest. No hint of weighing this kiss against the memory of many others. There was something fierce and hungry in Law's kisses. It was like having the front seat on the Batman roller coaster. The overpowering sensation was that of being swept up by a primal force and taken for a ride.”
― D.D. Ayres, Primal Force

“There are so many new skyscrapers being built in our city of rain, I wonder if everybody's spirit animal is now the construction crane.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“The strong old woman was walking away, and in her step there was the sadness of parting with an old but dangerously foolish friend.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Birchbark House

“Something about it will make sense. The bullets been coming from miles. Years. Their sounds will break the water in our bodies, tear sound itself, rip our lives in half. The tragedy of it all will be unspeakable, the fact that we've been fighting for decades to be recognized as present-tense people, modern and relevant, alive, only to die in the grass wearing feathers.”
― Tommy Orange (author)

“The things we must walk through in life that bring us to the places of knowledge and understanding are never the easy path.

From Book 2 The Cross of One Horse”
― Steven G. Hightower, A New Beginning: The Smoke of One Thousand Lodge Fires

“Would others like their grandparents or great-grandparents to be dug up and put on display? How do you explain to your children why their ancestors are on display and not other groups”
― Roberto Mukaro Borrero

“What was your college major?"

"Criminal justice." She slid a hand down into the back of his pants and gripped a naked butt cheek. "I wanted to be an attorney. Do something for the greater good."

He hissed in a breath as she slid that hand forward. "And now?"

She smiled against his warm mouth. "I just want to be bad."

He could definitely help with that.”
― D.D. Ayres, Primal Force

“A fire is a nice idea. But won't we be spending the evening under the covers?”
― D.D. Ayres, Primal Force

“Unless you are an American Indian, you are a descendant of an immigrant yourself.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Heart Force One: Need No Gun to Defend Society

“The casino was at the center of a constellation of transactions. I saw fishermen come to fish the lake; a woman looking for a job; elders cracking crab legs at the casino buffet—one of two restaurants on the reservation that served breakfast, lunch, and dinner; and a steady flow of men in suits. One morning, I watched a tour bus disgorge a hundred elderly passengers and learned they had come from a senior center in Bismarck. They were among the few patrons I saw come solely for the slots. The other gamblers were oil workers and tribal members, many of whom lived in the lodge.”
― Sierra Crane Murdoch, Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country

“Unlike Penn and those who stood to profit from the acquisition of land, Lenape sachems sought trade goods and payments for their lands in order to distribute the wealth to their communities. Penn, an eyewitness and careful observer of Lenape sachems, noted that 'wealth circulates like blood, all parts partake.”
― Dawn G. Marsh, A Lenape among the Quakers: The Life of Hannah Freeman

“When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover that you cannot eat money.”
― Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina

“Bertie is the soul of the desert. Her body’s Navajo brown inside the dawn of civilization. Her heart, the rumble of wind across dark boulders, across the ocean of dry soil. He holds her now inside his small, growing frame.”
― Laurie Perez, Virga in Death Valley

“There are 566 Indian tribes, bands, and Alaska Native villages recognized by the BIA, and no one could be expected to know the name of every one.”
― Mark Edwin Miller, Claiming Tribal Identity: The Five Tribes and the Politics of Federal Acknowledgment

“In existing writings about federally recognized tribes and their engagement with tribal acknowledgment politics, a palpable theme is clear: presently recognized nations are not acting the ‘Indian way’ when they refuse to acknowledge their less fortunate Indian relatives and share with them. To many writers, federally recognized tribal leaders are so ensconced in the hegemonic colonial order that they are no even aware that they are replicated and reinforcing it inequities. According to this line, because the Five Tribes and related groups like the Mississippi Band of Choctaws and the Eastern Band of Cherokees have embraced nonindigenous notions of ‘being Indian’ and tribal citizenship using federal censuses such as the Dawes Rolls and blood quantum they are not being authentic. Some critics charge that modern tribes like the Choctaw Nation have rejected aboriginal notions and conceptions of Indian social organization and nationhood. This thinking, however, seems to me to once again reinforce stereotypes about Indians as largely unchanging, primordial societies. The fact that the Creek and Cherokee Nations have evolved and adopted European notions of citizenship and nationhood is somehow held against them in tribal acknowledgment debates. We hear echoes of the ‘Noble Savage’ idea once again. In other context when tribes have demanded a assay in controlling their cultural property and identities – by protesting Indian sports mascots or the marketing of cars and clothing with their tribal names, or by arguing that studios should hire real Indians as actors – these actions are applauded. However, when these occur in tribal recognition contexts, the tribes are viewed as greedy or racists. The unspoken theme is that tribes are not actin gin the ‘traditional’ Indian way…With their cultures seen as frozen in time, the more tribes deviate from popular representation, the more they are seen as inauthentic. To the degree that they are seen as assimilated (or colonized and enveloped in the hegemonic order), they are also seen as inauthentic, corrupted, and polluted. The supreme irony is that when recognized tribes demand empirical data to prove tribal authenticity, critics charge that they are not being authentically ingenious by doing so.”
― Mark Edwin Miller, Claiming Tribal Identity: The Five Tribes and the Politics of Federal Acknowledgment

“As historian Theda Perdue and anthropologist Jack Campisi have noted separately, the closing of all-Indian schools created a crisis for southeastern Indians. When institutions like the East Carolina Indian School in Sampson County, North Caroline, locked its doors, a symbol of Indian pride, independence, and identity was closed as well. Despite the negative publicity surrounding integration, some silver lining soon appeared. The loss of schools prompted many groups to establish formal tribal entities in place of old board of education and related committees.”
― Mark Edwin Miller, Claiming Tribal Identity: The Five Tribes and the Politics of Federal Acknowledgment

“Just as the Five Tribes and others were formalizing their tribal governments and running their own programs, legal aid groups were helping nonrecognized tribes do the same: the two were on a collision course. One result was the Federal Acknowledgment Process, establsiehd within the BIA in 1978. Its rigorous criteria and evaluation process reflected the desires of the Five Tribes and many other reservation tribes to have a stringent regimen, on that protected their rights, economic resources, and overall ability to define ‘Indians” and “tribes.” Throughout these debates pulsed questions of “authenticity” and being “real” or “bona fide” Indians and tribes. While academics and unrecognized tribes questioned the ability of any party to accurately define “Indian” and “tribe,” as a practical political and cultural matter tribes and their federal allies groped toward a way to measure and define these highly problematic terms. By 1978 leaders of federally recognized tribes felt they had found the answer in the new Federal Acknowledgment Process, with many unrecognized groups agreeing that finally a way had been found to determine what group were “real” tribes.”
― Mark Edwin Miller, Claiming Tribal Identity: The Five Tribes and the Politics of Federal Acknowledgment

“A host of scholars who have studied surviving southeastern Indian groups conclude that few if any of these peoples possess cultures that do not bear the mark of significant contact with nonindigenous societies. Even the most “traditional,” such as the Seminoles of Florida, whom Nancy O. Lurie describes as “Contact-Traditional,” were significantly altered from precolonial days by the time pioneer “salvage” ethnologists described their cultural traits and created laundry lists that have since become benchmarks for defining aboriginal culture in the region. To many more traditional reservation-based groups, having surviving Indian cultural traits is extremely important to proving authenticity, although they are not required for acknowledgement via the BIA process. The existence of surviving Indian cultural traits is highly persuasive to most observers in proving that a group still exists as a viable tribal community.”
― Mark Edwin Miller, Claiming Tribal Identity: The Five Tribes and the Politics of Federal Acknowledgment

“It is no surprise that the Five Tribes, longtime leaders in remaining Native while assimilating nonindigenous ways, are leading the crusade to define Native people sin the United States today. They are demanding the power to say who is Indian, rather than having the ‘white man’ do it for them.”
― Mark Edwin Miller, Claiming Tribal Identity: The Five Tribes and the Politics of Federal Acknowledgment

“What kind of a precedent is the Cherokee Nation setting by breaking a treaty? Does it give it the right to break other treaties? Or only treaties with Cherokee Nation or treaties with any Indian tribe? With all Indian tribes?

Opponents of the rights of tribal sovereignty have for years been calling for the abrogation of all Indian treaties, claiming that they are old and out of date and no longer applicable. Will the actions of the Cherokee Nation regarding the 1866 treaty give those opponents further ammunition? I should think that it will.

I have one further thought about this recent Cherokee Nation action and the reasons given for it. If the Cherokee Nation is really serious about exercising its sovereignty and determining its membership, then why the hell does it continue to use the Dawes Commission Roll, which was put together by the U.S. government and then closed by the U.S. government? The Cherokee Nation does not have a current roll. It is not allowed to have one by the U.S. Congress. The Dawes ROll is the only roll, and when the last original enrollee on the Dawes Roll dies, there will be no Cherokee Nation roll. When the CHerokee Nation lists anyone as a current tirbal memebe,r it puts him or her on a 'tribal membership list.' It 'registers' him or her only.

I have never read anything about the Dawes Roll that did not condemn the roll for being inefficient, faulty, even fraudulent, or talked to anyone about the Dawes Roll who did not agree with that assessment. Legitimate Cherokee citizens of mixed blood who could get away with it were enrolled as less Cherokee than they really work in order to be able to sell or least their land sooner some whites without a legitimate claim were falsely enrolled...”
― Robert J. Conley, Cherokee Thoughts: Honest and Uncensored

“He was deeply susceptible, moreover, to that singular spell which the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures, and he loved the wild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost to an obsession. The life of the backwoods fascinated him—whence, doubtless, his surpassing efficiency in dealing with their mysteries”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Wendigo

“When Marquette asked his [Algonquin] guides what people lived on this river, they replied, "mihsoori", or "wehmihsoori" which in their Algonquin language describes a wooden canoe... Missouri is therefore translated as "people of wood canoes.”
― Michael E. Dickey, The People of the River's Mouth: In Search of the Missouria Indians (Volume 1)

“Language is one way of determining relationships among American Indian nations. The Missouria are of the Siouan-language family, speaking a dialect known as the Chiwere. Other tribes speaking this dialect were the Ho Chunk (Winnebago), the Wahtohtana (Otoe, and the Baxoje (Ioway). William Clark said these tribes spoke the same language and correctly surmised they were "once one great nation.”
― Michael E. Dickey, The People of the River's Mouth: In Search of the Missouria Indians (Volume 1)

“The stars are night birds with bright breasts
Like hummingbirds.

Twinkling stars are birds flying slowly.
Shooting stars are birds darting swiftly.

(Taos Pueblo, New Mexico)”
― Natalia Maree Belting, Whirlwind Is a Spirit Dancing: Poems Based on Traditional American Indian Songs and Stories

“Though Oklahoma is known in African American history circles for its all-Black spaces, like the famed ‘Black Wall Street’ of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, the first Black inhabitants of Indian Territory were those who came as enslaved people with their Native owners. In arguing for their claim to Indian Territory land, these Indian freedpeople utilized the strategies of the first wave of Indian Territory settlers, the members of the Indian nations in which they’d lived.”
― Alaina E. Roberts, I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land

“Apart from Cherokee freedpeople, Cherokee citizens also spoke out against the present of African Americans from the United States. In 1894, the editor of the Cherokee Advocate incited his fellow tribesmen to resist both Black and white migration, telling them to ‘Be men, and fight off the barnacles that now infest our country in the shape of non-citizens, free Arkansas ni—ers, and traitors.’

Anti-Black sentiment like this encouraged Native peoples to ignore Indian freedpeople’s shared histories with their nations and to inaccurately associate them with Black interlopers from the United States. Indian freedpeople fought this attitude by attempting to differentiate themselves. When Mary Grayson was interviewed in 1937 as part of the Works Progress Administration Slave Narrative project, she illustrated this dichotomy, saying ‘I am what we colored people call a ‘native.’ That means I didn’t come into the Indian country from somewhere in the Old South, after the War, like so many Negroes did, but I was born here in the Old Creek Nation and my master was a Creek Indian. Mary felt that her experiences of enslavement were better than those of Black Americans, arguing that ‘I have had people who were slaves of white folks tell me that they had to work awfully hard and their masters were cruel to them, but all the Negroes I knew who belonged to Creeks always had plenty of clothes and lots to eat and we all lived in good log cabins we built.’ Mary clearly demarcated her history and circumstances from those of African Americans from the United States. Mary’s assertion of her identity as a ‘native’ rather than a newcomer (like other Blacks in the West) is reflective of a key component of the settler colonial process—strategic differentiation.”
― Alaina E. Roberts, I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land