American Indian Quotes - Page 5

• I hear Republicans and Libertarians and so forth talking about property rights, but they stop talking about property rights as soon as the subject of American Indians comes up, because they know fully well, perhaps not in a fully articulated, conscious form, but they know fully well that the basis for the very system of endeavor and enterprise and profitability to which they are committed and devoted accrues on the basis of theft of the resources of someone else. They are in possession of stolen property. They know it. They all know it. It's a dishonest endeavor from day one.

  Ward Churchill

  Rights, Talking, Libertarian

  Z Magazine, vol. 8, p. 32,

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• There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived or at any other time in history. Does this sound like a record of genocide?

  Rush Limbaugh

  Stupid, Sound, Doe

  Rush H. Limbaugh (1994). “See, I Told You So”, Pocket Books

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• In the past, when we were initially organizing to bring about changes, our elders had little or no political experience. However, today, most of those American Indian Movement organ-izers are the elders. They are quite adept at bringing attention to the public about any attacks upon our people.

  Leonard Peltier

  Past, People, Political

  Source: montanapioneer.com

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• I've always considered myself a man of integrity as a leader of the American Indian Movement and of Indian people. I will stand that test against anyone at anytime, anywhere.

  Russell Means

  Integrity, Men, People

  Source: progressive.org

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• I don't want to be remembered as an activist; I want to be remembered as an American Indian patriot.

  Russell Means

  Want, Patriot, Activist

  Source: progressive.org

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• I told my friend - we were working on a movie together - and he gave me a script and asked me to give him notes. And they were all male characters, and I said, "You know what would make this character more interesting?" And he asked what - and it's this road trip between three guys, basically, one older man, one 30-year-old and a 13-year-old mechanic. And I said, "If you make the 13-year-old a girl, and you make her an Indian-American mechanic." And he said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Yeah, don't change anything in the script about him, and just make it a her."

  Karla Souza

  Girl, Character, Mean

  Source: www.sheknows.com

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• I certainly don't object to [writers] trying to imagine the lives of other societies, but you have to do it with a certain amount of humility and respect. If it were not for the ethnographic material that had been collected by missionaries and anthropologists and so forth, much of past Native American society would no longer be accessible. What I object to is making kitsch of things that are very serious.

  Michael Dorris

  Humility, Native American, Past

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• Humor is widely used by Indians to deal with life. Indian gatherings are marked by laughter and jokes, many directed at the horrors of history, at the continuing impact of colonization, and at the biting knowledge that living as an exile in one's own land necessitates. . . . Certainly the time frame we presently inhabit has much that is shabby and tricky to offer; and much that needs to be treated with laughter and ironic humor.

  Paula Gunn Allen

  Laughter, Land, Impact

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• I am committed to furthering the self-determination of Indian communities but without terminating the special relationship between the Federal Government and the Indian people. I am strongly opposed to termination. Self-determination means that you can decide the nature of your tribe's relationship with the Federal Government within the framework of the Self-Determination Act, which I signed in January of 1975.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Determination, Mean, Government

  United States. President (1974-1977 : Ford), Gerald R. Ford (1979). “Gerald R. Ford: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President”

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• I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Believe, Thinking, Politics

  Theodore Roosevelt (1941). “Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia”

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• I moved here when I was 20 to go to college. After I moved here, I became much more aware of the importance of the culture and literature to my life. Sometimes when you're immersed in something, you just don't notice it very much. Moving away makes you appreciate your culture. Living here, I've thought more and more about India, and what being Indian-American means to me. And it's made me incorporate things from Indian literature into my own writing.

  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  Moving, Writing, Mean

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• Among the language of the American Indians, there is no word for 'art'... For Indians, everything is art... therefore needs no name.

  Jamake Highwater

  Art, Names, Needs

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• One hundred years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, the Spanish government issued a decree authorizing the enslavement of the American Indian as in accord with the law of God and man.

  Nelson A. Miles

  Men, Years, Law

  NELSON A. MILES (1911). “SERVING THE REPUBLIC”

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• For the American Indian, the ability of all creatures to share in the process of ongoing creation makes all things sacred.

  Paula Gunn Allen

  Ongoing, Sacred, Creation

  Paula Gunn Allen (2015). “The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions”, p.51, Open Road Media

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• There aren't a lot of alternative roles for Indian actors. I think we've fallen short of portraying Indians in the media. We don't need to make another Dances With Wolves, because it's not an Indian movie. When Indians portray themselves, then we have a different perspective. I've been asked about making period pieces but I've never read one that wasn't about guilt, and I'm not trying to make a guilt film.

  Chris Eyre

  Thinking, Media, Perspective

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• What we did in the 1960s and early 1970s was raise the consciousness of white America that this government has a responsibility to Indian people. That there are treaties; that textbooks in every school in America have a responsibility to tell the truth. An awareness reached across America that if Native American people had to resort to arms at Wounded Knee, there must really be something wrong. And Americans realized that native people are still here, that they have a moral standing, a legal standing. From that, our own people began to sense the pride.

  Dennis Banks

  School, Responsibility, Native American

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• The American Indians, the ancient Indians would say, the metaphysical ones would say: "Power binds us together." Power, for a while, makes us what we are, perceivers, luminous perceivers of reality.

  Frederick Lenz

  Power, Reality, Together

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• I was so tired of the parts I had to play. There seems little for me in Hollywood, because, rather than real Chinese, producers prefer Hungarians, Mexicans, American Indians for Chinese roles.

  Anna May Wong

  Real, Tired, Play

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• Sixty percent of the vegetables you see in the supermarkets came from the American Indians. They also gave us aspirin and quinine. And their model of government parallels our Senate. But their women elected the chiefs, and impeached them.

  Harry Dean Stanton

  Sixty

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• What this ideology, what this myth about savagery did was really excuse America for the disappearance of the Indian. It wasn't our fault. They were just an inferior race. And so John Marshall adopts that. And the tragedy and the present-day circumstances of that decision are that those racial attitudes are so deeply embedded in these foundational principles of American Indian law.

  Robert A. Williams, Jr.

  Attitude, Decision, Tragedy

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Even though the American Indian Movement on a national-international scale has proven to be extremely dysfunctional, the American Indian Movement I was associated with I'm very proud of. We were a revolutionary, militant organization whose purpose was spirituality first, and that's how I want to be remembered.

  Russell Means

  Organization, Movement, Want

  Source: progressive.org

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• Colonialism has completed the destruction of the American Indian in the United States - the cultural destruction.

  Russell Means

  Colonialism, United States, Destruction

  Source: progressive.org

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• We still have to realize that if you are say a historian of the Civil War, you don’t know anything special about say Columbus or for that matter the 20th century. You are a consumer of that information, especially if it’s stuff like Columbus and the American Indians. That information isn’t even in history, much of it. Much of it is in anthropology or archeology.

  James W. Loewen

  War, Special, Information

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

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• We don't intend to always keep this necessarily African oriented. Originally I had hoped to have African American Indian of this area, and the Appalachian of this area, but at the same time, just as we have the Haitian room, we will always have room for another exhibit.

  Katherine Dunham

  African American, Rooms, Haitian

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• The matriarchal society is thus the decadent and broken. The strongly matriarchal character of Negro life is due to the moral failure of Negro men, their failure to be responsible, to support the family, or to provide authority. The same is true of American Indian tribes which are also matriarchal today.

  R.J. Rushdoony

  Character, Men, Broken

  "The Institutes of Biblical Law" by R.J. Rushdoony, (p. 203), 1973.

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