Indigenous Quotes

“They're all gone, my tribe is gone. Those blankets they gave us, infected with smallpox, have killed us. I'm the last, the very last, and I'm sick, too. So very sick. Hot. My fever burning so hot.
I have to take off my clothes, feel the cold air, splash water across my bare skin. And dance. I'll dance a Ghost Dance. I'll bring them back. Can you hear the drums? I can hear them, and it's my grandfather and grandmother singing. Can you hear them?
I dance one step and my sister rises from the ash. I dance another and a buffalo crashes down from the sky onto a log cabin in Nebraska. With every step, an Indian rises. With every other step, a buffalo falls.
I'm growing, too. My blisters heal, my muscles stretch, expand. My tribe dances behind me. At first they are no bigger than children. Then they begin to grow, larger than me, larger than the trees around us. The buffalo come to join us and their hooves shake the earth, knock all the white people from their beds, send their plates crashing to the floor.
We dance in circles growing larger and larger until we are standing on the shore, watching all the ships returning to Europe. All the white hands are waving good-bye and we continue to dance, dance until the ships fall off the horizon, dance until we are so tall and strong that the sun is nearly jealous. We dance that way.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, its because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this so strong, the experience so recent, that we can't quite bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much of. As for hat we were like before we met you, I no longer care. No periods of time over which my ancestors held sway, no documentation of complex civilisations, is any comfort to me. Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you.”
― Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place

“I never learned how to be a woman in this world because I didn't know what it meant to be one. What I learned were things I was supposed to do and how to carry myself, but no one taught me to do that and trudge through my trauma at the same time.”
― Elaine Alec, Calling My Spirit Back

“I have a dream, humans were part of aliens on earth.
I also dream, that some humans are really indigenous.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“My story may be rooted in trauma but it is not my only story.”
― Elaine Alec, Calling My Spirit Back

“Shop where you stay, shop where you see smile, shop such so they sustain.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Our ancestors dreamed us into being. The least we can do is listen when the earth speaks back.”
― Lawrence Nault

“She nodded so subtly as she passed, like we were both in the cartel, and the cartel was gay.”
― Eliana Ramage, To the Moon and Back

“Colonialism destroys in order to replace. And it destroyed our relationships with each other. p. 72”
― Patty Krawec, Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past & Reimagining Our Future-Krawec, Patty

“Maria Sabina Magdalena Garcia (July 22, 1894, Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca - November 23, 1985) was a curandera and shaman of the Mazatec indigenous ethnicity of the state of Oaxaca in Mexico. She subverted patriarchal theology by invoking the Divine Feminine in her entrancing chants.”
― Laurence Galian, Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!

“Okay, but look. Think how white people believe their houses or yards or scenic overlooks are haunted by Indians, when it's really the opposite. We're haunted by settlers and their descendants.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Sentence

“In a world run by the indigenous, no ethnicity is the second race.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“We cultivated our land, but in a way different from the white man. We endeavored to live with the land; they seemed to live off it. I was taught to preserve, never to destroy.”
― tom dystra

“Maidens dream of love's soft song; women seek the trust that
lasts long.
The soul yearns for the twin flames of feeling and fire,
passion's blaze restoring belief to the young and lost,
consumed by their own desire.”
― Tiffany Desiree, Nature, Sex, and Culture: A Tree of Discombobulated Thoughts

“Wielu białych w tym kraju poczucie wyższości ma w genach. Nienawidzą nas. To nawet nie ich wina, rozumiem ich, taka jest Ameryka, tak została zbudowana. Dlatego przyszedł Trump, on uosabia tę całą nienawiść. Nigdy nie było bardziej amerykańskiego prezydenta.”
― Maciej Jarkowiec, Powrócę jako piorun. Krótka historia Dzikiego Zachodu

“The Earth is more than scenery—it is ancestry.”
― Lawrence Nault

“When rivers are dammed, so too are the stories they carried.”
― Lawrence Nault

“Every language carries a map of the soul that spoke it first.”
― Lawrence Nault

“Center of the world is indigenous.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“And afterward, I stopped at Red Cloud's grave to pay my respects to the old chief. Some Oglalas had left him tobacco ties, little sacred bundles in all the colors of the four directions. I asked him to take care of my woman out there, where she was new and maybe lost. I asked him to take her into his lodge and protect her until I could come for her. That's all I remember.”
― Luis Alberto Urrea, Six Kinds of Sky: A Collection of Short Fiction

“The scientific descriptions of ethnology that we find in books are inevitably dry and do not give the least impression of the mysterious world of the Achumawi, whose life is so inextricably mixed in with the animals, the trees, the plants.
But without forming some mental picture of that life, it is, I believe, almost impossible to understand how and to what extent the Achumawi Indian finds himself in a state of direct mystical connection with the universe that surrounds him.
Now that is precisely his religion, and his entire religion.” — Jaime de Angulo
from
"Tracks Along the Left Coast"
by Andrew Schelling”
― Jaime de Angulo

“The scientific descriptions of ethnology that we find in books are inevitably dry and do not give the least impression of the mysterious world of the Achumawi, whose life is so inextricably mixed in with the animals, the trees, the plants. But without forming some mental picture of that life, it is, I believe, almost impossible to understand how and to what extent the Achumawi Indian finds himself in a state of direct mystical connection with the universe that surrounds him. Now that is precisely his religion, and his entire religion.”
— Jaime de Angulo

Appears in the introduction of "Tracks Along the Left Coast" by Andrew Schelling”
― Jaime de Angulo

“You say that to (Franz) Boas science is "austere and impersonal." You know, that is just the thing that gets my goat. They have managed to take all the life out of science. Why be ashamed of the joy and the exaltations that are the blood of knowl-edge? Why pretend that you have no emotions? In another century they will look aghast at the funereal aspect of our science. They will say: those people were doing penance for something! ... We have driven our libido underground.”
— Jaime de Angulo, written in a letter to his friend and mentor, the linguist Edward Sapir

(Appears in the introduction to "Tracks Along the Left Coast" by Andrew Schelling)”
― Jaime de Angulo

“The Naskar I Keep Tamed (Sonnet 2949)

There are many things I'm tempted to write,
such as, all oligarchic kids must be
legally mandated to be sterilized at birth -

one of the first duties of every
new government of the global south is
to mount a rescue operation to heist their
rightful relics from the british museum -

all faces of mount rushmore must be bombed to cinders,
every white person must sit for a human rights exam
when they turn 18, before they're allowed to vote -

every self-confirmed zionist must be mandated
to seek psychiatric treatment, or face house-arrest -

yet my conscience takes over
before my rage becomes canon,
but just imagine, what would happen
to the planet's pointless minority of
white fanatics, if every persecuted,
occupied, dehumanized, exploited,
appropriated, abducted, demoralized
community lost their conscience!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“My ancestors didn’t need hope to build resistance, to build Nishnaabeg life and imaginings beyond regulation. Our movements and mobilizations do not have the privilege of resting upon a fleeting emotion. The absence of hope is a beautiful catalyst. Tenacity, persistence, stubbornness, rage, resentment, pessimism and despair are all motivators. So are joy, love, attachment, care, truth, optimism, respect and reciprocity. So is the delicious soup in which all those exist at once.”
― Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Rehearsals for Living

“Those red men you offended were my brothers.
Town drinkers, Buckles Pipe, Star Boy,
Billy Fox, were blood to bison. Albert Heavy Runner
was never civic. You are white and common.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Christmas comes like this: Wise men
unhurried, candles bought on credit (poor price
for calves), warriors face down in wine sleep.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“Moon is speaking
woman to the ancient fire. Always woman.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“The Man from Washington

The end came easy for most of us.
Packed away in our crude beginnings
in some far corner of a flat world,
we didn’t expect much more
than firewood and buffalo robes
to keep us warm. The man came down,
a slouching dwarf with rainwater eyes,
and spoke to us. He promised
that life would go on as usual,
that treaties would be signed, and everyone—
man, woman and child—would be inoculated
against a world in which we had no part,
a world of money, promise and disease.”
― James Welch, Riding the Earthboy 40

“I realised connection to country was something I'd always innately felt. Whenever I stepped into significant areas it's like my senses were in tune with nature. They both dulled the outside world and made the quiet nature feel loud with life. Dappled sunlight felt like messages from somewhere beyond. I remember feeling a sensation of warmth all over my body the first time I stepped onto My Country. I'd visited as a young girl, but something felt different when I visited when I was a little older. My soul or spirit was grounded in that place. And the memory of it never left.”
― Steph Tisdell, The Skin I'm In