Native Quotes - Page 4

• So the American government lied to the Native Americans for many, many years, and then President Clinton lied about a relationship, and everyone was surprised! A little naive, I feel!

  Eddie Izzard

  Native American, Government, Years

  7 Copy quote

• American football seems to resemble soccer in that one scores by putting the ball through the opponent's goal; but football, truly is about land. The Settlers want to move the line of scrimmage Westward, the Native Americans want to move it East.

  David Mamet

  Soccer, Football, Moving

  "Ultimate fighting: the final frontier" by David Mamet, www.theguardian.com. September 29, 2007.

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• The Great Spirit Chief who rules above all will smile upon this land... and this time the Indian race is waiting and praying.

  Chief Joseph

  Native American, Race, Land

  25 Copy quote

• We know our lands have now become more valuable. The white people think we do not know their value; but we know that the land is everlasting, and the few goods we receive for it are soon worn out and gone.

  Canasatego

  Native American, Thinking, Land

  10 Copy quote

• I want my people to stay with me here. All the dead men will come to life again. Their spirits will come to their bodies again. We must wait here in the homes of our fathers and be ready to meet them in the bosom of our mother.

  Wovoka

  Mother, Father, Home

  25 Copy quote

• You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother's bosom? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest.

  Wovoka

  Mother, Native American, Cutting

  62 Copy quote

• We learned to be patient observers like the owl. We learned cleverness from the crow, and courage from the jay, who will attack an owl ten times its size to drive it off its territory. But above all of them ranked the chickadee because of its indomitable spirit.

  Tom Brown, Jr.

  Nature, Native American, Owl

  87 Copy quote

• And I say the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father.

  Black Elk

  Mother, Children, Father

  Black Elk (2000). “Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux”, Bison Books

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• 

  I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures.

  Geronimo

  Break Up, Freedom, Native American

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  122 Copy quote

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• Traditional people of Indian nations have interpreted the two roads that face the light-skinned race as the road to technology and the road to spirituality. We feel that the road to technology.... has led modern society to a damaged and seared earth. Could it be that the road to technology represents a rush to destruction, and that the road to spirituality represents the slower path that the traditional native people have traveled and are now seeking again? The earth is not scorched on this trail. The grass is still growing there.

  William Commanda

  Native American, Technology, Two

  48 Copy quote

• This war did not spring up on our land, this war was brought upon us by the children of the Great Father who came to take our land without a price, and who, in our land, do a great many evil things... This war has come from robbery - from the stealing of our land.

  Spotted Tail

  Children, Father, Spring

  78 Copy quote

• A wee child toddling in a wonder world, I prefer to their dogma my excursions into the natural gardens where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers. If this is Paganism, then at present, at least, I am a Pagan.

  Zitkala-Sa

  Inspirational, Life, Sweet

  62 Copy quote

• Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows. Now we are poor but we are free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die, we die defending our rights.

  Sitting Bull

  Native American, Men, White

  60 Copy quote

• Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view and demand that they respect yours.

  Tecumseh

  Native American, Views, Demand

  "A Sourcebook for Earth's Community of Religions". Book by Joel Diederik Beversluis, 1993.

  43 Copy quote

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• The American Indian is of the soil, whether it be the region of forests, plains, pueblos, or mesas. He fits into the landscape, for the hand that fashioned the continent also fashioned the man for his surroundings. He once grew as naturally as the wild sunflowers, he belongs just as the buffalo belonged.

  Luther Standing Bear

  Nature, Native American, Men

  Luther Standing Bear (2006). “Land of the Spotted Eagle”, p.247, U of Nebraska Press

  79 Copy quote

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• If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them and what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears, one destroys.

  Chief Dan George

  Inspirational, Life, Native American

  336 Copy quote

• If we must die, we die defending our rights.

  Sitting Bull

  Native American, Rights, India

  237 Copy quote

• If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The Earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself, and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty.

  Chief Joseph

  Mother, Teacher, Brother

  Lincoln Hall Speech in Washington D.C., January 14, 1879.

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• One thing to remember is to talk to the animals. If you do, they will talk back to you. But if you don't talk to the animals, they won't talk back to you, then you won't understand, and when you don't understand you will fear, and when you fear you will destroy the animals, and if you destroy the animals, you will destroy yourself.

  Chief Dan George

  Native American, Animal, Remember

  558 Copy quote

• May the stars carry your sadness away, may the flowers fill your heart with beauty, may hope forever wipe away your tears. And, above all, may silence make you strong.

  Chief Dan George

  Stars, Flower, Condolences

  584 Copy quote

• Somewhere close I knew spear-nosed bats flew through the tree crowns in search of fruit, palm vipers coiled in ambush in the roots of orchids, jaguars walked the river's edge; around them eight hundred species of trees stood, more than are native to all of North America; and a thousand species of butterflies, 6 percent of the entire world fauna, waited for the dawn.

  E. O. Wilson

  Butterfly, Eight, Orchids

  8 Copy quote

• I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place.

  Sitting Bull

  Native American, Men, White Man

  "God Is Red: A Native View of Religion". Book by Vine Deloria, Jr., 1972.

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• It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even to our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land.

  Sitting Bull

  Native American, Animal, Yield

  Sitting Bull, Mark Diedrich (1998). “Sitting Bull: The Collected Speeches”

  144 Copy quote

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• What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.

  Crowfoot

  Life, Change, Death

  98 Copy quote

• The voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers.

  Zitkala-Sa

  God, Sweet, Nature

  Zitkala-Sa (2014). “American Indian Stories”, p.109, Diderot Publishing

  94 Copy quote

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