Indian Quotes - Page 36

• By the time I was done with the car it looked worse than any typical Indian car that has been driven all its life on reservation roads, which they always say are like government promises - full of holes.

  Louise Erdrich

  Government, Car, Promise

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• I know that my race must change. We cannot hold our own with the white men as we are. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men. If an Indian breaks the law, punish him by the law. If a white man breaks the law, punish him also.

  Chief Joseph

  Men, Race, White Man

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

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• Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other then we shall have no more wars. We shall be all alike - brothers of one father and mother, with one sky above us and one country around us and one government for all. Then the Great Spirit Chief who rules above will smile upon this land and send rain to wash out the bloody spots made by brothers' hands upon the face of the earth. For this time the Indian race is waiting and praying. I hope no more groans of wounded men and women will ever go to the ear of the Great Spirit Chief above, and that all people may be one people.

  Chief Joseph

  Country, Mother, Brother

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

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• Once you have felt the Indian dust, you will never be free of it.

  Rumer Godden

  Dust, Felt

  Rumer Godden (2011). “The Peacock Spring”, p.31, Pan Macmillan

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• North America is not altogether to blame with regard to her Indians. If the Indian had been more susceptible to higher culture, violence and arms would not have been used against him, as is now the case.

  Fredrika Bremer

  America, Culture, Arms

  Fredrika Bremer (1856). “The Homes of the New World: Impressions of America”, p.51

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• to the Indian, politics are what the weather is to an Englishman. Politics are an introduction to a stranger on a train, they are the standard filler for embarrassing silences in conversation, they are the inevitable small talk at any social gathering.

  Santha Rama Rau

  Weather, Silence, India

  Santha Rama Rau (1945). “Home to India”

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• I've run into more discrimination as a woman than as an Indian.

  Wilma Mankiller

  Running, Discrimination

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• The American public has difficulty believing ... [that] injustice continues to be inflicted upon Indian people because Americans assume that the sympathy and tolerance they feel toward Indians is somehow 'felt' or transferred to the government policy that deals with Indians. This is not the case.

  Leslie Marmon Silko

  Believe, Government, People

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• We are the land. To the best of my understanding, that is the fundamental idea that permeates American Indian life.

  Paula Gunn Allen

  Land, Ideas, Understanding

  Paula Gunn Allen (2015). “The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions”, p.99, Open Road Media

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• The mystery school continued throughout the greater Egyptian civilization, which was the second age of humankind and later on into the third age of humankind when the Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan high cultures flourished

  Frederick Lenz

  School, Egyptian Civilization, Chinese

  Frederick Lenz (1994). “Surfing the Himalayas: conversations and travels with Master Fwap”, Interglobal Seminars

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• I have become an environmentalist, because it is over the environment that the last of the Indian Wars will be fought.

  Mary Brave Bird

  War, Lasts, Environment

  Mary Brave Bird, Richard Erdoes (2007). “Ohitika Woman”, p.274, Grove Press

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• There is Indian time and white man's time. Indian time means never looking at the clock. ... There is not even a word for time in our language.

  Mary Brave Bird

  Time, Mean, Men

  Mary Brave Bird, Richard Erdoes (2007). “Ohitika Woman”, p.37, Grove Press

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• The joke used to be that in every Indian home, there is the mother, father, children, grandparents, and the anthropologist.

  Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

  Mother, Children, Father

  Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (2012). “From the River's Edge”, p.16, Living Justice Press

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• The tribal attitude said, and continues to say, that Gay people are especially empowered because we are able to identify with both sexes and can see into more than one world at once, having the capacity to see from more than one point of view at a time. And that is also an Indian way of seeing.

  Judy Grahn

  Sex, Attitude, Gay

  Judy Grahn (1990). “Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds”

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• Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a culture shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don't use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work.

  Steve Jobs

  Powerful, Impact, America

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• We live in a trans period. Contemporary issues of sexuality, for example - the exciting aspects of them - have to do with transgenderedness. And there's trans-nationality. There are people like me, for example. I mean, what am I? Am I Indian? Am I American? And I'm not alone in being between things.

  Vijay Seshadri

  Mean, Issues, People

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• Every time somebody makes an Indian movie...Cher on a horse with a headdress and a miniskirt...the fashion industry cashes in.

  Buffy Sainte-Marie

  Fashion, Horse, Cash

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• As a woman who grew up in a village in India, I've spent my whole life fighting tradition. There's no way that I want to be a traditional Indian housewife.

  Arundhati Roy

  Fighting, India, Village

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• I know a lot about being white - because I have to, I live in the white world. A white person doesn't live in the Indian world. I have to be white every day.

  Sherman Alexie

  White, World, Persons

  Interview with Joelle Fraser, www.english.illinois.edu. 2001.

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• The percentage of Indian kids doing some sort of artistic work is much higher than in the general population - painting, drawing, dancing, singing. The creation of art is still an everyday part of Indian culture, unlike the dominant culture, where art is sort of peripheral.

  Sherman Alexie

  Art, Kids, Drawing

  Interview with Joelle Fraser, ir.uiowa.edu. 2000.

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• The present Indian government, however, is neither able or willing to accept the challenge and to provide the leadership in breaking the resistance of urban and rural interests.

  Paul A. Baran

  Government, Challenges, Able

  "The Political Economy Of Growth" by Paul A. Baran, Ch. 7, (p. 226), 1957.

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• First generation Indian immigrants are mass guinea pigs. When a race that subsisted on plants for centuries subsists on a meat-dominated diet, it scares me to know what's in store for them

  Siddharth Katragadda

  Race, Pigs, Scare

  "Dark Rooms: A Saga". Book by Siddharth Katragadda, 2002.

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• Formal education in British India was remarkable for its lack of connection with its Indian environment. Like the African persuaded to cover his nakedness with a Mother Hubbard, we wore mental Mother Hubbards, and they were often a sad fit. Our textbooks had been compiled by Englishmen for English children, of whom there were none in my school and few in any school in India.

  Nayantara Sahgal

  Mother, Children, School

  Nayantara Sahgal (1963). “From fear set free”

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• There are a number of places on marine charts where even the most weathered sailors point and say, "Right there, nothing can go wrong. Everything has to go right." One place is the turbulent passage south of Cape Horn. Another is the dead center of the Indian Ocean.

  Abby Sunderland

  Ocean, Marine, Numbers

  Abby Sunderland, Lynn Vincent (2011). “Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas”, p.9, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• I will never forget the feeling of walking into my home, a place that while drifting helpless in the middle of the Indian Ocean I wondered if I would ever see again.

  Abby Sunderland

  Ocean, Home, Feelings

  Abby Sunderland, Lynn Vincent (2011). “Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas”, p.195, Thomas Nelson Inc

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