Native American Humor Quotes

I'm a freak with power. ~ Sherman Alexie

Bah! Doesn't matter. Don't want him for our Ayah. She should marry within her kind, a good Chinese boy - "
Mari had to smile. Mr. Hsu rarely took to foreigners, and this was yet another proof of how easy it was for Ayah to worm her way into people's hearts. She was just so ... sweet. Even when she was also so freaking stubborn, she was just too sweet about it.
"You do remember she's American, right?" Mari teased.
"No," Mr. Hsu snapped, "I don't." He ended the call. ~ Marian Tee

I have made a short excursion into the new world which the Indian dwells in, or is. He begins where we leave off. ~ Henry David Thoreau

We jettisoned our medical practices of the 1780s while retaining the Constitution. But Native American medicinal practitioners who abandon their traditional ways to embrace pasteurization from France and antibiotics from England are seen as compromising their Indian-ness. We can alter our modes of transportation or housing while remaining "American". Indians cannot and stay "Indian" in our eyes. ~ James W. Loewen

We believe profoundly in silence-the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. ~ Charles Alexander Eastman

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

An environmental revolution is taking shape in the United States. This revolution has touched communities of color from New York to California and from Florida to Alaska - anywhere where African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans live and comprise a majority of the population. Collectively, these Americans represent the fastest growing segment of the population in the United States. They are also the groups most at risk from environmental problems. ~ Robert D Bullard

But if the Vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet;for such things are of Spirit, and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost. ~ Black Elk

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

Congressional Republicans refused to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act because they objected to the protection it gave immigrants, transgender women, and Native American women. (Speaking of epidemics, one of three Native American women will be raped, and on the reservations 88 percent of those rapes are by non-Native men who know tribal governments can't prosecute them. ~ Rebecca Solnit

I'm proud of my Native American heritage, ~ Elizabeth Warren

Man's obsession with his own wants is taking him further from those without whom happiness cannot be found. It is taking him from his people. ~ Anasazi Foundation

Nosferatu is the daddy of modern American sex. ~ Andrei Codrescu

Laila Lalami has fashioned an absorbing story of one of the first encounters between Spanish conquistadores and Native Americans, a frightening, brutal, and much-falsified history that here, in her brilliantly imagined fiction, is rewritten to give us something that feels very like the truth. ~ Salman Rushdie

Arizona faces unique healthcare challenges including uncompensated care for illegal immigrants, and the large number of Native Americans who live in remote and isolated areas of the state. ~ Rick Renzi

I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. ~ Chief Joseph

You got what you deserved. Now be a man and confess to what most of us already know. ~ Stacy Buck

We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabulary of science we desire. We want a language of that different yield. A yield rich as the harvests of the earth, a yield that returns us to our own sacredness, to a self-love and resort that will carry out to others. ~ Linda Hogan

Everyone who's born in the Western Hemisphere is a Native American. We are all Native Americans. ~ Russell Means

There is nothing so American as our national parks. The scenery and the wildlife are native. The fundamental idea behind the parks is native. It is, in brief, that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us. The parks stand as the outward symbal of the great human principle. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

As Native Americans, we believe the Rainbow is a sign from the Spirit in all things. It is a sign of the union of all people, like one big family. The unity of all humanity, many tribes and peoples, is essential. ~ Thomas Banyacya

In the Native American tradition ... a man, if he's a mature adult, nurtures life. He does rituals that will help things grow, he helps raise the kids, and he protects the people. His entire life is toward balance and cooperativeness. The ideal of manhood is the same as the ideal of womanhood. You are autonomous, self-directing, and responsible for the spiritual, social and material life of all those with whom you live. ~ Paula Gunn Allen

He crouched at the care window and looked in. "What a lovely family you have. What a charming family. They're all lovely. Except for that one." His finger jabbed the glass. "That one's a bit ugly."
The American stepped towards him. "What? What did you say?"
"Oh, don't worry. I'm sure his personality makes up for his face. ~ Derek Landy

The Lord has never indicated that black skin came because of being less faithful. Now, the Indian; we know why he has changed, don't we? The Book of Mormon tells us that; and he has a dark skin, but he has promise there that through faithfulness, that they all again become a white and delightsome people. ~ LeGrand Richards

You know, if you're an American and you're born at this time in history especially, you're lucky. We all are. We won the world history Powerball lottery. ~ Bill Maher

And I thought, y'know, I mean…this is crazy. I mean, the only thing that determines what country you belong to is where you happened to be born? What is a country, anyway? It's not, y'know, "purple mountain's majesty" or "fruited plains," whatever the hell that means. I mean, America isn't a place, it's an ideal. It could happen in the Sahara Desert and still be America. For that matter, I'm the child of immigrants. My father's lived and worked in this country for the past three decades. And he's somehow more or less American than some redneck who uses Osama bin Laden for toilet paper? How the hell do you measure something like that? ~ Phillip Andrew Bennett Low

In those days I imagined racism as a tumor that could be isolated and removed from the body of America, not as a pervasive system both native and essential to that body. From that perspective, it seemed possible that the success of one man really could alter history, or even end it. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions. ~ George Carlin

The white woman across the aisle from me says 'Look,
look at all the history, that house
on the hill there is over two hundred years old, '
as she points out the window past me

into what she has been taught. I have learned
little more about American history during my few days
back East than what I expected and far less
of what we should all know of the tribal stories

whose architecture is 15,000 years older
than the corners of the house that sits
museumed on the hill. 'Walden Pond, '
the woman on the train asks, 'Did you see Walden Pond? '

and I don't have a cruel enough heart to break
her own by telling her there are five Walden Ponds
on my little reservation out West
and at least a hundred more surrounding Spokane,

the city I pretended to call my home. 'Listen, '
I could have told her. 'I don't give a shit
about Walden. I know the Indians were living stories
around that pond before Walden's grandparents were born

and before his grandparents' grandparents were born.
I'm tired of hearing about Don-fucking-Henley saving it, too,
because that's redundant. If Don Henley's brothers and sisters
and mothers and father hadn't come here in the first place

then nothing would need to be saved.'
But I didn't say a word to the woman about Walden
Pond because she smiled so much and seemed delighted
that I thought to b ~ Sherman Alexie

If any class deserves to be protected and assisted by the government, it is the class who are banished from their native land in search of the bare means of subsistence" Charles dickens, american notes ~ Joseph O'Connor

The Holy Land is everywhere ~ Black Elk

The earth was created by the assistance of the sun, and it should be left as it was. The country was made without lines of demarcation, and it is no man's business to divide it. ~ Chief Joseph

The Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Woodrow Wilson has just made the decision to take part in World War I. What was he feeling then? Did he know the possible outcomes of his decision? Did he feel the burden of American lives on his shoulders? He probably said something like: "Goddamn. I love America but this could be the worst decision in American history." Don't worry yourself Woody, it wasn't. ~ Zachary Crosby

We must relearn how to cry. A strong man cries; it is the weak man who holds back his tears. ~ Archie Fire Lame Deer

Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus should we do, for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World. ~ Black Elk

The devolution of American culture takes another great step forward ~ Michael Chabon

At her first bleeding a woman meets her power.
During her bleeding years she practices it.
At menopause she becomes it.
Traditional Native American saying ~ Lucy H. Pearce

Officers have been trying for hundreds of years to outsmart soldiers and have still not learned that it cannot be done. We can always count on the native ingenuity of the American GI to save us from ourselves, and to win wars. ~ Colin Powell

Elvis Presley's death deprives our country of a part of itself. He was unique, irreplaceable. More than twenty years ago, he burst upon the scene with an impact that was unprecedented and will probably never be equaled. His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture. His following was immense. And he was a symbol to people the world over of the vitality, rebelliousness and good humor of this country. ~ Jimmy Carter