Charles Eastman Quotes

I'm Lakota Sioux.

I do understand that America is a predominantly Christian country. A lot of morals and values are based in Christianity as opposed to Buddhism, which it's not, or Judaism, which it's not, or Islam, which it's definitely not. So I'm not going to lie to myself and just be like, 'Well you know, everybody's equal.' Because we're not.

But in Japan, there's nothing like that, since the temple is made of wood. The divine spirit inside the building is eternal, so the enclosure doesn't have to be.

My mother was a Mohawk, born and raised on a reservation, and when I was a kid, she would take me there to visit her relatives.

God made me an Indian.

If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man, he would have made me so in the first place.

Mennonites are very conservative. They don't drink, dance, smoke, go to movies. I grew up in a very conservative faith-based community.

I came from a family that was pretty insularly Cherokee. We kept to ourselves - the white people were there, and we were here, and it was practically a segregated kind of thing.

In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be.

Chilean society is conservative, but U.S. society is puritanical.

Japanese society doesn't have a god - no absolute presence.

I have always been fascinated by Shaker design and the culture of the Shakers.

I grew up in a small, rural community, where my extended family were mountain-folk type people, and some were very religious.

All of our religions but the Judaic and the Greek think more of us dead than alive.

He was doing missionary work. But from the outset he had little success in convincing his charges of their responsibility for a sin committed at the beginning of creation, one which, as they understood it, they were ready and capable (indeed, they carried charms to assure it) of duplicating themselves. He did no better convincing them that a man had died on a tree to save them all: an act which one old Indian, if Gwyon had translated correctly, regarded as "rank presumption".

He won't fly on the Balinese airline, Garuda, because he won't fly on any airline where the pilots believe in reincarnation.

If you want to know what it will be like when we are more deeply into the horizontal, simply go to one of the Indian casinos. The Native Americans, who stand for vertical thinking more than anyone else in our culture, have been setting up totally flat casinos for honkies.

The savage prays to a stone that he calls a god, while the Christian prays to a god he calls a spirit, and the prayers of both are equally useful.

Different religions meet the needs of different people

The reason I like socialism is that it's kind of enforced Christianity. It's basically very Christian, in the sense of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." These people have nothing, so you have to share.

Look at the Native American culture. They revere the elders.

Of the Shaker society, it was formerly a sort of proverb in the country, that they always sent the devil to market.

I don't know how many millions I'll make, so I have to give some back to charity. God blesses me with the money, but only if I give some away.

Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished.

. . . it is difficult for Europeans to appreciate the sentiment. Other nations kill animals by wholesale and kill one another; they exist in a sea of blood. A European said that the reason why in India animals were not killed was because it was supposed that they contained the spirits of ancestors. This reason was worthy of a savage nation who are not many steps from the brute.