Indigenous Knowledge Quotes

The first people, next after the Syrians and Jews, who occupy this country are husbandmen

Our practical success in preserving order, securing justice and developing the material resources of many of our colonies is largely due to the fact that we have learnt to employ native agents wherever possible for detailed work of administration, and to adapt our government, where it can be safely done, to native conditions.

I support the indigenous people anywhere in the planet.

Each time one of the medicine men dies, it's as if a library has burned down.

Aboriginal people are key because they have a different sense of where we belong and how we interact with nature.

Eduardo Galeano notes that America was conquered, but not discovered, that the men who arrived with a religion to impose and dreams of gold never really knew where they were, and that this discovery is still taking place in our time.

One of India's major blessings is the rich store of experience and knowledge available in the rural and tribal areas.

The Indian is a human being.

In Africa, animals and the natural landscape allow local communities to support themselves, as there is a constant source of money from tourism.

Richard Lee calculated that a Bushman child will be carried a distance of 4,900 miles before he begins to walk on his own. Since, during this rhythmic phase, he will be forever naming the contents of his territory, it is impossible he will not become a poet.

The only way to resist colonialism is through education.

From my teenage years on, I sought out Native elders from many tribal nations and listened to their words. I also started a small press, The Greenfield Review Press, and became very involved with publishing the work of other American Indian authors, especially books of poetry.

One learns more from listening than speaking. And both the wind and the people who continue to live close to nature still have much to tell us which we cannot hear within university walls.

All preceding experiments for the improvement of the Indians have failed. It seems now to be an established fact that they cannot live in contact with a civilized community and prosper.

Sensitivity to nature is not an innate attribute of indigenous peoples. It is a consequence of adaptive choices that have resulted in the development of highly specialized peripheral skills. but those choices in turn spring from a comprehensive view of nature and the universe in which man and woman are perceived as but elements inextricably linked to the whole.

India is a reservoir of alternative interpretations of what the global is, and these ways of viewing the world need to be exposed.

I thought I was benefiting the Indians as well as the government, by taking them all over the United States, and giving them a correct idea of the customs, life, etc., of the pale faces, so that when they returned to their people they could make known all they had seen.

When I dig around in the roots of how we imagine ourselves, how we govern, how we live together in communities - how we treat one another when we are not being stupid - what I find is deeply Aboriginal.

Now in the 1980s, I happened to notice that if you look at an aerial photograph of an African village, you see fractals. And I thought, 'This is fabulous! I wonder why?' And of course I had to go to Africa and ask folks why.

In fact, Guerra based his story on the diaries of two explorers, German Theodor Koch-Grunberg and American Richard Evans Schultes. There work is some of the only documentation of cultures that have since vanished. But Guerra did not want white men to be his protagonists.

I am safe in affirming that the proofs of genius given by the Indians of North America place them on a level with whites in the same uncultivated state.

I have called this phenomenon of stealing common knowledge and indigenous science "biopiracy" and "intellectual piracy." According to patent systems we shouldn't be able to patent what exists as "prior art." But the United States patent system is somewhat perverted. First of all, it does not treat the prior art of other societies as "prior art." Therefore anyone from the United States can travel to another country, find out about the use of a medicinal plant, or find a seed that farmers use, come back here, claim it as an invention or an innovation.

Do not listen to the Jesus missionaries! Look among yourselves for witches, and note who they are, and they will be judged soon. How will you know witches? I will tell you: They will be doing commerce with Americans, and going to their treaty councils, against the warnings of Our Creator

Under the veneer of Westernization, the cultures of the Indian world - which have existed for 30,000 years! - continue to live. Sometimes in a magical way, sometimes in the shadows.

I often find myself unsatisfied with books 'about' Indians because they are written from the viewpoint of non-Indians.