Isabella Bird Quotes

I grew up in neighbouring Hawaii, where Tahiti is regarded as a brother.

I mean, a Mexican boy couldn't be anything else but an Indian. And why did you take the name of Quinn, they used to say to me. Hey, you're an Indian, so I played Indians.

I'm of Filipino, Spanish, and Chinese descent, and was raised on Hawaii.

It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.

It is sometimes hard to grasp the difference between identifying with one's own roots, understanding people with other roots, and judging what is good or bad.

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

I never fit in. Everyone knew my dad was Indian. I was half-Indian.

My parents are Polish. I don't know anything about Italian-ness.

Thus the races, though alike in their physical response to climate, may possibly be different in their mental response because they have approached America by different paths.

That's a traditional Samoan dance. I was lucky that I was able to fly my cousins, who are professional dancers, up from Hawaii and they were able to be in the movie with me. We had a great time.

You need to figure out other societies, where they came from, what the people believe in, what they do, how their ethnic divisions work, which is often very different from our own; then design your policies around that. Pay attention. I think that's the simple answer, which is just to realize that not everybody is like the United States. Whether you study history or sociology, or anthropology, journalism, there's room for seeing there are other cultures and other ways and other structures.

Ethnicity and tribe begin precisely where taxes and sovereignty end.

We Irish have been more concerned with what divides us than what we have in common

When I first pitched my Navy tent on the island of Espiritu Santo to the north of Vila, the natives on nearby Malakula were cannibals. Today, they have representation in the United Nations.

If, for 2,000 years, you dress up differently, believe in a different God, celebrate different holidays, and on top of it insist on telling everyone that you're completely different than them, ultimately they'll believe you.

I think there's a misconception that all Asian-American experiences are the same. My experiences with my family and the way they wanted me to know my culture are not the same as others.

I am extremely proud to be of Tongan and Samoan descent. We are really proud of our culture and, really, just being a minority.

I come from a community that has a lot of white kids, and I notice how, a lot of times, they don't understand our differences and how I come from a different culture and my ancestors are different and my history is different.

When I was small, I thought I was just cooler than my mom because of how foreign she is. She's really foreign. You'd think it would kill her to get store-bought snacks, she's that foreign.

Even today, when an Aboriginal mother notices the first stirrings of speech in her child, she lets it handle the "things" of that particular country: leaves, fruit, insects and so forth. "We give our children guns and computer games," Wendy said. "They gave their children the land."

Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

He rolled his eyes. "First, my Dad's Korean and my mom was Swedish. Second, I totally suck at math. I don't like cuckoo clocks or skiing or fancy chocolate either." I sputtered a laugh. "I think that's Swiss.

Whoever the last true cowboy in America turns out to be, he's likely to be an Indian.

In the West the past is like a dead animal. It is a carcass picked at by the flies that call themselves historians and biographers. But in my culture the past lives. My people feel this way in part because death does not separate us from our ancestors.