Indigenous Quotes

When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, 'Ours.'

When they laid down their arms, we murdered them. We lied to them. We cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing fraudulent agreements that we called treaties which we never kept. We turned them into beggars on a continent that gave life for as long as life can remember. And by any interpretation of history, however twisted, we did not do right. We were not lawful nor were we just in what we did. For them, we do not have to restore these people, we do not have to live up to some agreements, because it is given to us by virtue of our power to attack the rights of others, to take their property, to take their lives when they are trying to defend their land and liberty, and to make their virtues a crime and our own vices virtues.

When we were children, we were told that we have a motherland, and that motherland was Spain. However, we have discovered later, in our lives, that as a matter of fact, we have several motherlands. And one of the greatest motherlands of all is, no doubt, Africa.

The children, each of those kids is in touch with nature and traditional aboriginal culture so a very important part of getting performances from them was just letting them be and trying to capture the unique spirituality that was in each of them.

Democracy should be home grown.

In more recent years, I've become more and more fascinated with the indigenous folklore of this land, Native American folklore, and also Hispanic folklore now that I live in the Southwest.

You are the land. The land is you.

My family is Native American, and I was raised with Native American ceremonies.

My mother's last name, maiden name is Hogue. She is Cherokee and African. My grandfather, Dave Hogue, owned 300 acres of land in Marion, Alabama. He was an entrepreneur and someone I looked up to as a kid a lot.

I'm a Native American actress.

The most important thing is the script.

The Indian wars have never ended in the Americas.

God made me an Indian.

For me, to celebrate the twelfth of October is the absolute expression of triumphism, occupation and presumptuousness, and I think that history will remember those that celebrate it.

The romantic myth of the artist says that you are the Source. I have no illusion about that. Native Americans don't believe they are the Source. They have access to the Source. Endless access. But don't get confused.

In a way, this is a definition of shamanism. A shaman is a person who by some means has gotten out of their own culture.

I love the natural world - it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

Canada is a country of ingredients without a cuisine; we're a country with musicians without an indigenous instrument; Toronto's a city that doesn't even have a dish named after it.

When I first came to Harvard, I thought to myself, 'What kind of an Indian am I?' because I did not grow up on a reservation. But being an Indian is a combination of things. It's your blood. It's your spirituality. And it's fighting for the Indian people.

By burning down their reed-hutted villages, after we'd warned them to get out, we put them to the maximum amount of inconvenience, without physical hurt [sic], and they soon stopped their raiding and looting. The Arabs and Kurds now know what real bombing is like; in casualties and damage, they know that within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured.

I look forward to the day when indigenous actors can play Hamlet and Ophelia and not just Othello and Desdemona.

There is a meta discussion, which is the discussion of either good or evil, between freedom and democracy as opposed to totalitarians and murderers. I have decided to take sides with good and against the woke crowd and their stupid interpretation of freedom, out of which comes the account of oppressors versus the oppressed, which is, at bottom, post-Marxism. They have taken the class struggle to other issues—women against men, black against white, the indigenous people’s agenda, the LGBT agenda, the climate agenda, man against nature. The most violent expression of this is the abortion agenda, which is disguised as goodness when in fact it’s a bloody agenda. Unless Europe breaks from that agenda, it will be doomed and disappear in the way that we know it.

Chiapas has had its problems for many centuries. The different Indian tribes that live there have always fought among themselves.

The only method that proved effective, not justified or moral but effective, is when Arabs plant mines on our side. If we try to search for the [particular] Arab [who planted mines], it has no value. But if we harass the nearby village ... then the population there comes out against the [infiltrators] ... and the Egyptian Government and the Transjordanian Government are [driven] to prevent such incidents, because their prestige is assailed ... the method of collective punishment so far has proved effective.

The Mohawks have on all occasions shown their zeal and loyalty to the Great King; yet they have been very badly treated by his people.