Native American Wisdom

“I have Native American blood. I have African blood. I have European blood.”

“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.”

“It was never the poverty that deterred me, never the disease, unsanitary conditions, bugs or garbage, those things were never even a thought in my head as a reason for not staying. I kept looking for the good and always found it each day. I was happy on the reservation.It would have all worked out if Chief could have been a little nicer to me. The only thing I was missing was love and respect from my partner. Maybe he had changed.”

“A staunch abolitionist, Hamilton was one of the founding members of the New York Manumission Society. He was a trustee and namesake of Hamilton-Oneida Academy, an upstate New York school dedicated to educating Native-American boys.”

“Through the years, I found we had Native American blood in us. My great-grandmother came from the island of Martinique, and they hooked up with the Native Americans of Louisiana.”

“My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain.”

“I speak of the Creator. He has walked with me often in my journeys, and it has been by learning to walk with Him that I have learned to walk forward.”

“It is our duty to defend the Haitian community, just as we defend the Muslim, Jewish, LGBTQ, Women, African American, Asian, Latino, Native American, and other subsets of society when attacked.”

“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.”

“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!”

“Darkness within clouds the world without.”

“With unsteady hands, Phillip yanked on the mare’s bridle straps while trying to loosen one of the stubborn buckles. She snorted at his rough handling.Totka appeared beside him. “Let me.”Phillip gratefully released the task, an unexpected sense of brotherhood filling him. If anyone knew the heartache of separation, it was the man whose deft brown hands readied Phillip’s mount for the long road ahead.Totka’s own road had been lengthy. And yet, after two years, he somehow managed to continue to place one foot in front of the other. His breath still entered and left his body in the same monotonous pattern. How? When already several times over the half-day since Grayson had ridden out with Milly, Phillip had wondered if his chest might explode with the effort of expanding and contracting without her.”

“The western has always been, for me, the bread and butter. It's the easiest place for an identifiable Native American to be able to work. But I do yearn to be known as an actor rather than a 'Native American actor.'”

“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.”

“Edward Curtis was a photographer in the late 19th century who tried to document the rapidly disappearing Native Americans. He assembled a canon of work which, today, is exemplary and invaluable.”

“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.”

“The name Crow was inspired by a number of things. I thought it would be cool to have a robot with sort of a Native American feel to it.”

“Every president since Nixon has embraced a policy of 'self-determination without termination' - the idea that Native Americans are best equipped to govern themselves. Trump is breaking with this position.”

“Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life - that to the white man is an 'unbroken wilderness.' But for us there was no wilderness, nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly. Our faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings; the other sought the dominance of surroundings.For us, the world was full of beauty; for the other, it was a place to be endured until he went to another world.But we were wise. We knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard.”

“It is important that Congress works to promote home ownership in Indian Country. These federal housing funds and programs will help young Native American families to stay on tribal lands in order to live, work and raise a family.”