We Refuse to Forget Quotes

“You cannot abolish bonds of kinship cemented in faith, religion, culture, tradition, and laws. But a nation? A nation can be destroyed.”
― Caleb Gayle, We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power

“Colonizers often tell themselves stories that the places they have colonized were in desperate need of saving—that their colonizing was redemptive.”
― Caleb Gayle, We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power

“We are all beautifully complex, and there’s nothing more American than struggling to fit all that complexity into boxes you did not create in the first place.”
― Caleb Gayle, We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power

“As a white man elected to the U.S. Senate who was given the responsibility of determining what the relationship between the federal government and Native Nations should be going forward, [Dawes] gave many nonwhites identities that we never asked for but that white supremacy required.”
― Caleb Gayle, We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power

“We let our simplistic misconceptions about race triumph rather than allow identities to be beautifully complex.”
― Caleb Gayle, We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power

“When we give people names that they did not give themselves, we erase the identity they and their ancestors fought for. The labels we give them come preloaded with definitions limited by our imaginations.”
― Caleb Gayle, We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power

“Hawkins and the U.S. government knew that the concept of private property must take hold. They knew that communalism among the Creeks provided strength, but you can divide and conquer a nation more easily with private property if you pit family estate against family estate.”
― Caleb Gayle, We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power