Lydia Millet Quotes

I can't imagine what it must be like to be one of the indigenous people of the United States of America. I can't imagine watching the news every day - as people debate whose country this is and who should be in charge of it and how to make it great again - and hardly ever see your people brought into the discussion.

We’re [Native Americans] portrayed as either the noble savage or the ignoble savage. In most people’s minds, we only exist in the 19th century.

It's a bit of a sore spot, the Thanksgiving in Indian country.

'Indian policy' has now been brought down upon the American people, and the American people are the new Indians of the 21st Century.

My obsessions stay the same - historical memory and historical erasure. I am particularly interested in the Americas and how a history that is rooted in colonialism, the language and iconography of empire, disenfranchisement, the enslavement of peoples, and the way that people were sectioned off because of blood.

In the end, there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will be determined by the government that has been responsible for doing everything in its power to destroy Native American cultures.

Specifically, in Canada, the First Nations are often overlooked in pop culture or in general, and when things are reported about our First Nations, it's often negative things - about the hardships they face and what-not.

I have four relatively small children, and around fourth grade, they start doing big projects on Native Americas: everything is Native Americans in elementary school. Do you know how many Native American dresses I've sewn, on and on; it's a full yearlong study. And then never again. As journalists, we never even cover Native Americans.

What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian.

So many people of color who made major contributions to American history have been trapped in the purgatory of history.

For many Native Americans across the land, the name of the Washington football team is a deeply personal reminder of a legacy of racism and generations of pain.

I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

Who came to this country first—the white man, didn’t he? That’s who made this country great.

Civilization or death to all American savages!

Millions of dollars have been expended to excavate and transport to museums the tools, weapons, and other artifacts of Indians--but scarcely a penny has been spent to save the living descendants of those who made them

The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them. [The Seminole Indians]

American popular culture has long been marked by an absence of empathy for American Indians. Westerns doubled as a campaign against so-called savages in a way that desensitized us to the savages we'd become.

Those that clamor loudest for Columbus to be erased from the pages of American history do so far more because of their hatred for America than their love of the Indians.

Native Americans' families experience living surrounded, living in increasingly small reservations surrounded by the society that destroyed their civilization, and are still stigmatized. For decades and decades, for hundreds of years except in Indian schools, they weren't allowed to speak their language. That stigma takes a terrible toll.

Issues that have relevance to the tribal community have routinely been minimized and ignored.

I think when you see 'Ridiculous Six,' the show speaks for itself in terms of its treatment of American Indians.

The whole Indian thing, I always say it's really the American holocaust. It's something we need to look at.

Why don't they go ahead and change the name of the White House to the West House. They want to do away with the heritage of White Settlement and destroy the history of White Settlement.

It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.

America is so accustomed to some depiction of native people that is entirely racist, and there's a perception that that is okay.