Winona LaDuke Quotes

Wherever I go, people ask: 'What is she? What is she?' There has always been an agenda - they're excluding me or including me in something with that question. It is the first thing agents in Los Angeles ask me. And then I'd hear: 'You're not black enough, you're too black, you're Italian - no, you're Spanish.'

Labels are for cans, not people.

Not only do I not want to be stereotyped as this Asian girl who fights - gee, what a wonder - but also I have more to offer than that.

I don't want to shut the door and only be thought of as the dark girl.

For me, I'm an American and I'm a Mexican. I live here. And it hurts me the way a lot of people talk about Mexicans when I know we're all about hard work and dedication.

Sometimes America is so great because it brings all of us together, but sometimes it can be so limiting because it puts labels on things.

I want to be a human being, nothing more and nothing less. ... I don't suppose we can ever stop hating each other, but why encourage that by keeping the old labels with their ready-made history of millennial hate?

No matter what happens, we couldn't let people say Asian-American actors can't act.

I'm very happy to have the heritage that I do, but I'm not wanting to be 'the Latino actor.' I just want to be 'an actor.'

Every character when born is a stereotype.

I am Chinese - it doesn't matter what other people say.

I realize that I'm black, but I like to be viewed as a person, and this is everybody's wish.

I feel like I've been observed as an individual more than a gay person, or as a filmmaker with a certain point of view rather than a lesbian filmmaker with a gay point of view.

I don't care if you're gay, black, Chinese, straight. That means nothing to me. It's all an illusion.

Of course we've been fighting against stereotypes from Day One at East West. That's the reason we formed: to combat that, and to show we are capable of more than just fulfilling the stereotypes - waiter, laundryman, gardener, martial artist, villain.

We're not thought of in terms of color because we are entertainers. We are there to entertain you not because we are black, white, pink, or green or gay or straight or because we are Catholic or Protestant.

I've tried to avoid labels, but they always find you.

At some point we have to stop and say, There's Marlee, not, There's the deaf actress.

I don't like the monikers, and I don't like being pigeonholed. You know, I'm a human being.

If you don't acknowledge differences, it's as bad as stereotyping or reducing someone.

In other words, I would be giving in to a myth of sameness which I think can destroy us.

I've always ignored the labels people put on things.

Yeah, I had gay friends. The first thing I realized was that everybody's different, and it becomes obvious that all of the gay stereotypes are ridiculous.

One of these days every person in Canada will be a Canadian.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.