Eden Robinson Quotes

Passed down from generation to generation, storytelling was an art in my family.

I am a member of the Kiowa Gourd Dance Society; I visit sacred places such as Devil's Tower and the Medicine Wheel. These places are important to me, because they've been made sacred by sacrifice, by the investment of blood and experience and story.

Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's one that I embrace wholeheartedly and have been fortunate enough to be rewarded for.

Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors - the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.

This is a coca leaf. This is not cocaine. This represents the culture of indigenous people of the Andean region.

I was brought up telling stories, when I was a kid, in the tiny village where I grew up. Storytelling was a tradition.

An old Apache storyteller reminds us

Let us keep the dance of rain our fathers kept and tread our dreams beneath the jungle sky.

I'm Native American, so it's in my blood to always want brothers and friends. I'm a good brotherhood guy.

When our ancestors crouched about the camp fire at night, they told each other tales of gods and heroes, monsters and marvels, to hold back the terrors of the night. Such tales comforted and entertained, diverted and educated those who listened, and helped shape their sense of the world and their place in it.

I have a high regard for Native languages and the pivotal role they have played in our nation's history.

Storytelling is important. Part of human continuity.

I didn't learn stories, I just absorbed them.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

Tradition is a very powerful force.

I believe in traditions; I believe in the idea of things being passed between generations and the slow transmission of cultural values through tradition.

My aunt Geraldine was the unofficial historian and storyteller. She had all the information about family members and the gossip that came out of the church because we were very much part of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. At family gatherings, the older folk had the floor, had pride of place, and it was their stories I remember.

What I find interesting about folklore is the dialogue it gives us with storytellers from centuries past.

My people have called upon me to speak to you. The red man has no books, and when he wishes to make known his views...like his father before him...he speaks with his mouth. He is afraid of writing. When he speaks he knows what he says; the Great Spirit hears him. Writing is the invention of the pale faces;

Societies perish when people forget where they come from.

History is merely gossip.

I love my people's history. I feel a huge responsibility to tell the stories of my past and my ancestors' past.

Storytelling was a way to see the world bigger than the one you were looking at, and that had great appeal for me. I think, since that was part of my upbringing, it became part of me, and I wanted to pass it along to my kids and my grandkids.

Leon Uris is a storyteller, in a direct line from those men who sat around fires in the days before history and made the tribe more human.

Where I come from, we sing poetry.