Aaron Neville Quotes

My family is Abenaki Indian on my mother's side. My father's side of the family is Slovak, and we also have some English ancestry.

I was told all my life I was part Cherokee. Then it was Crow. The latest is Blackfoot.

When I was a boy, I would ask about my family history, about my bloodlines. We really didn't know that much. We had a little Indian in us from the Oklahoma Trail of Tears.

I'm half-Armenian. Even though my grandparents did not discuss the genocide, and my father - like many sons and daughters of immigrants - wanted to be as 'American' as possible, I was always aware of it. How could I not be?

I'm very aware of my own background. I'm Irish, French, and then a little bit of everything else thrown in, ranging from German to Native American. We're talking about tiny drops of blood.

Our ancestors are totally essential to our every waking moment, although most of us don't even have the faintest idea about their lives, their trials, their hardships or challenges.

Yancy is actually a Native-American name, but I'm Irish. Go figure.

I must admit, even though I'm the product of two Jewish parents, I think the Irish temper got in there somewhere, so I'm going to check Mom's genealogy.

Not an inconsiderable proportion of them can boast a small dash of the pure blood of the aborigines of America.

I have Chinese blood in me... I am not ashamed to admit that perhaps the great leaders of our country all have Chinese blood.

Almost any American can connect on some level to a family background of having come across some ocean. They say, 'My great-grandparents came from wherever... this is why we have this last name, why we do this thing at Christmas.' All the details get watered down but don't quite disappear.

I was researching my family tree, and I was deeply hoping I was going to turn out to be Eastern European, but I'm not.

I'm just another non-native whose mom told him we were part-Cherokee.

My mother was from upstate New York; she's of Irish and German descent. My father was from Ghana.

My forefathers didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.

On my mother's side I'm Polish-Jewish, and on my father's side I'm Scottish puffin.

There may be something in the fact that when I was a little kid I'd been told growing up that we had some degree of native American blood in us, I always found that a point of pride. So, when it came to cowboys and Indians I most certainly did not want to be John Wayne. I wanted to be one of the Indians.

The point is, you have an ethnic heritage and you have a human heritage. Your human heritage includes everything of human value.

I've got that Irish thing going on. Lots of Irish in my background.

[I'm] more German than Irish.

[Woman Walks Ahead] is from me being a very bizarre child. From the age of about 8 to the age of about 15, I was obsessed with Native Americans.

America is a melting pot for all different groups of people, historically. And it's rare that the story of all of these people will be told in the history books. So I always felt I had to find out my history for myself and research my roots.

What happens is sometimes these congregations will still have the white style of worship, even though they're mixed, because folks are willing to give up whatever they may have come with. So it's still quite a stretch for African Americans, yeah.

I love writing family stories.

Every real nation is a people of a common blood and descended from the same ancestors. A nation - from the Latin word meaning to be born - can have no other meaning.