Native American Dream Quotes

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. One thing we know: our god is also your god. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator. ~ Chief Seattle

I cured with the power that came through me. ~ Black Elk

Grandfather, Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean to hear my feeble voice. ~ Black Elk

In the two centuries that have passed since 1776, millions upon millions of Americans have worked and taken up arms, when necessary, to make [the American] dream a reality. We can be proud of what they have accomplished. Today, we are the world's oldest republic. We are at peace. Our nation and our way of life endure. And we are free. ~ Gerald R. Ford

No person can maximize the American Dream on the minimum wage. ~ Benjamin Todd Jealous

Many of the people who are most considered anti-American would love to partake of the American dream: the unspoken slogan of many protesters outside U.S. embassies abroad is really: 'Yankee go home, but take me with you.' ~ Shashi Tharoor

We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans. ~ Max Beerbohm

I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, we shall be one. ~ Crazy Horse

So there's that change of general consciousness, and then there's this boom after the war, this expansion into the West. It was like the 1950s. The American economy was pumping at top speed. The kinds of people who would move into these communities and organize their lives around a utopian dream now had dreams about the West. ~ Christine Jennings

I've got a chart here that shows our debt-to-GDP ratio. And while we did run deficits in the past, we now number our debt in trillions rather than in billions. And I think that represents a long-term danger, especially to the, the American dream. ~ Mark Kirk

Above all, I wanted to be appreciated as a prima ballerina who happened to be a Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina, ~ Maria Tallchief

Before there was an American Story, before Paterson spread before Oscar and Lola like a dream, or the trumpets from the Island of our eviction had even sounded, there was their mother, Hypatia Belicia Cabral: a girl so tall your leg bones ached just looking at her, so dark it was as if the Creatrix had, in her making, blinked. ~ Junot Diaz

I am extremely conscious of my tribalism. And when you talk about tribalism, you talk about living in a black and white world. I mean, Native American tribalism sovereignty, even the political fight for sovereignty and cultural sovereignty is a very us versus them. And I think a lot of people in this country, especially European Americans and those descended from Europeans don't see themselves as tribal. ~ Sherman Alexie

The American Dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. ~ James Truslow Adams

First known as "waste people," and later "white trash," marginalized Americans were stigmatized for their inability to be productive, to own property, or to produce healthy and upwardly mobile children - the sense of uplift on which the American dream is predicated. The American solution to poverty and social backwardness was not what we might expect. Well into the twentieth century, expulsion and even sterilization sounded rational to those who wished to reduce the burden of "loser" people on the larger economy. In ~ Nancy Isenberg

But, my dear friend Wildfire," said Carl Peterson laying his hand on the Indian's shoulder, "this is not a policy to live by."

"Then let it be a policy to die by," defiantly spoke the Indian. "If we cannot be free, let us die. What is life to a caged bird, threatened with death on all sides? ~ S. Alice Callahan

It's alive and well everywhere. Native Americans get a lot of crap in the West and south west. Muslims get treated like crap in just about every country in the Western world lately. Black people are mistreated in some parts of the US still. There are black people who are racist against white people. I've recently encountered someone who decided they couldn't tolerate my presence because I'm catholic, which according them makes me a pedophile, Satan worshipper and a whore.

I've even encountered discrimination from people over seas for being American. Especially with my cousin's friends from England. They were rude to me the entire visit. They thought that I had to be an ignorant, xenophobic, racist slob just because I was from America and they spent most of the time trying to pick a fight with me to prove it.

Racism exists, but don't take the comments you read online seriously. A good 80-90% of those are trolls looking for attention or a bored teenager who thinks it's funny to be an idiot. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Plot-wise, there's nothing particularly groundbreaking about 'Scalped.' It starts off as something we've seen plenty of times before: the story of an undercover FBI agent infiltrating a criminal organization and the story of the guy at the head of that organization. The twist was always the setting: a modern-day Native American reservation. ~ Jason Aaron

There is too much sour grapes for my taste in the present American attitude. The time to denounce the bankers was when we were all feeding off their gold plate; not now! At present they have not only my sympathy but my preference. They are the last representatives of our native industries. ~ Edith Wharton

If proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream. ~ Michelle Obama

I advise you to be suspicious of any black American whose family does not claim a blood connection to Native Americans. That's a clear sign of a racial infiltrator who has not done enough research. ~ Baratunde R. Thurston

The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, andagain, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him. ~ Henry David Thoreau

We need to forge a whole new energy and American Dream. ~ Will.i.am

Pop art is
the American Dream, optimistic, generous, and naive! ~ Robert Indiana

I'm sure you're gonna be taught, if you haven't already, that the people that were here, the Native Americans were beautiful, they were wonderful, they were at one with nature, and these evil white Europeans like Columbus came in and killed them and took them, imprisoned them, stole what was theirs, took it for ourselves. ~ Rush Limbaugh

[The is] a mistaken belief that [the word Indian] refers somehow to the country, India. When Columbus washed up on the beach in the Caribbean, he was not looking for a country called India. Europeans were calling that country Hindustan in 1492 ... Columbus called the tribal people he met "Indio," from the Italian in dio, meaning "in God." ~ Russell Means

Much of the gay white movement seeks to be included in the american dream and is angered when they do not receive the standard white male privileges, misnamed as "american democracy". Often, white gay men are working not to change the system. This is one the reasons why the gay male movement is as white as it is. Black gay men recognize, again by the facts of survival, that being Black, they are not going to be included in the same way. ~ Audre Lorde

Love was love, one could find it with anyone, one could find it anywhere. It was just that you could never keep it. Not unless you were ready to die for it. ~ Norman Mailer

Max asked, 'Why death, do you think?'
'The Iroquois say that the world was too full, so the men and women got together, separately, to find an answer. The men came up with the idea of not having any more children. But the women refused to give up having babies. Death was their answer.'
Max nodded. He took a deep breath. It felt like he hadn't breathed like that in month, maybe years. ~ Francesca Lia Block

The American dream is shrinking because some of our leaders want it to shrink. Decline, in other words, has become a policy objective. And if this decline continues at the current pace, America as we know it will cease to exist. In effect, we will have committed national suicide. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

A distorted sense of danger isn't just psychologically taxing; it also encourages us to perceive risk where there isn't any. Steeping in ominous stories can make people into threats themselves. The news is full of examples of how ambient anxiety gets turned against people of color going about their daily lives - taking a nap in the student lounge; walking down the street; selling lemonade. I thought of the woman who called the cops on two Native American brothers who were on a college tour at Colorado State. The teenagers made the woman "nervous," she told the 911 operator. "If it's nothing, I'm sorry. But it actually made me like feel sick and I've never felt like that." Many people are feeling sick these days, for many reasons. But we should all be careful about the stories we tell ourselves to explain why. ~ Rachel Monroe

Everything the Power of the World does is in a circle. The Sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball and so are all the stars. The Wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles ... The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. ~ John Neihardt

Robert Hayward THE THIRTEENTH STEP Ancient Solutions to Contemporary Problems of Alcoholism and Addiction Using the Timeless Wisdom of the Native American Church Ceremony ~ Robert Hayward

She liked a very particular kind of plot: the sort where the pirate kidnaps some virgin damsel, rapes her into loving him, and then dispatches lots of seamen while she polishes his cutlass. Or where the Highland clan leader kidnaps some virginal English Rose, rapes her into loving him, and then kills entire armies Sassenachs while she stuffs his haggis. Or where the Native American warrior kidnaps a virginal white settler, rapes her into loving him, and then kills a bunch of colonists while she whets his tomahawk. I hated to get Freudian on Linda, but her reading patterns suggested some interesting insight into why she is such a bitch. ~ Nicole Peeler

There is not one Indian in the whole of this country who does not cringe in anguish and frustration because of these textbooks. There is not one Indian child who has not come home in shame and tears. ~ Rupert Costo

This team just wasn't good enough today, but they had the unity I always wanted. To have an American team like this has always been a dream of mine. ~ Bela Karolyi

Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

The American Dream is ownership ... a house, a car, a vacation home and, even better, your own business ~ Mario Batali

It was our belief that the love of possessions is a weakness to be overcome ... Children must early learn the beauty of generosity. They are taught to give what they prize most, that they may taste the happiness of giving ... The Indians in their simplicity literally give away all that they have - to relatives, to guests of other tribes or clans, but above all to the poor and the aged, from whom they can hope for no return. ~ Charles Alexander Eastman

We cordially believe in the rights of property. We think that normally and in the long run the rights of humanity, coincide with the rights of property ... But we feel that if in exceptional cases there is any conflict between the rights of property and the rights of man, then we must stand for the rights of man. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

[Grover} Cleveland, this product of good conscience and self-help, with his stern ideas of purity, efficiency, and service, was a taxpayer's dream, the ideal bourgeois statesmen for his time: out of heartfelt conviction he gave to the interests what many a lesser politician might have sold them for a price. He was the flower of American political culture in the Gilded Age. ~ Richard Hofstadter

You've got to invite Native Americans to the table, and Asians, and Chicanos. You cannot keep us in the back room anymore and give us notations on paper saying this is what you deserve. You have to invite us to the table because America is ours, too. ~ Jimmy Santiago Baca

Just to have the opportunity to play an American in America is a dream come true for me. ~ Andrew Lincoln

We're not so free that we don't have to listen to rules, and laws, and regulations. Those are important. But the spirit, the freedom of the spirit, that's what I think of American Dream, that we are free here to do what we want to do, what we set out to do. ~ Martha Stewart

He's cutting the heart out of the American dream to own a home and have a good job ... and still he's popular

Tip O'Neill on Ronald Reagan ~ Chris Matthews

Jesus is ready to set us free from the heavy yoke of an oppressive way of life. Plenty of wealthy Christians are suffocating from the weight of the American dream, heavily burdened by the lifeless toil and consumption we embrace. This is the yoke from which we are being set free. And as we are liberated from the yoke of global capitalism, our sisters and brothers in Guatemala, Liberia, Iraq, and Sri Lanka will also be liberated. Our family overseas, who are making our clothes, growing our food, pumping our oil, and assembling our electronics
they too need to be liberated from the empire's yoke of slavery. Their liberation is tangled up with our own. ~ Shane Claiborne

The facts of my native world, I came to understand that my country was a galaxy, and this galaxy stretched from the pandemonium of West Baltimore to the happy hunting grounds of Mr. Belvedere. I obsessed over the distance between that other sector of space and my own. I knew that my portion of the American galaxy, where bodies were enslaved by a tenacious gravity, was black and that the other, liberated portion was not. I knew that some inscrutable energy preserved the breach. I felt, but did not yet understand, the relation between that other world and me. And I felt in this a cosmic injustice, a profound cruelty, which infused an abiding, irrepressible desire to unshackle my body and achieve the velocity of escape. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Just because I'm Native American doesn't mean I can track furniture through the wilderness." She deepened her voice: "'Yes, kemosabe. A three-legged table passed this way an hour ago.' Heck, I don't know. ~ Rick Riordan

Your grandparents came of age in the Great Depression, when everyday life was about deprivation and sacrifice, when the economic conditions of the time were so grave and so unrelenting it would have been easy enough for the American dream to fade away. ~ Tom Brokaw

Usually called by his guffaw-inducing initials, IRS, Schyster was the standout grappler Mike Rotunda functionally repackaged as Ted DiBiase's financial planner. Indisputably his best angle was the time he took issue with Native American wrestler Tatanka for failing to pay taxes on a ceremonial headdress. ~ David Shoemaker