Native American Poet Quotes

So Lightning says to Mud,
"What would happen if I struck your blood?"
And Mud says, "Brother,
It would hurt,
And make me the mother
Of every living thing.
But, Fire Boy, you ain't lifting my grass skirt
Until you burn me a ring. ~ Sherman Alexie

Why should you take by force that from us that which you can have by Love? Why should you destroy us, who have provided you with food What can you get by war? ~ Chief Powhatan

There is much to be learned from the world around us - far more than we normally comprehend. The Ancient Ones knew this well - most particularly the wise teachers among them - those who, in the Navajo tongue, were called "Anasazi. ~ Anasazi Foundation

I like Celtic folk music, Native American music, and any kind of early music. There isn't a lot of music that I don't like ... except for Show Tunes. ~ Terri Windling

Yes, I am Irish and Indian, which would be the coolest blend in the world if my parents were around to teach me how to be Irish and Indian. But they're not here and haven't been for years, so I'm not really Irish or Indian. I am a blank sky, a human solar eclipse. ~ Sherman Alexie

The White Man goes into his church and talks about Jesus. The Indian goes into his tipi and talks with Jesus. ~ Quanah Parker

Let's put to rest one cliché. You can sell refrigerators to Eskimos. The people of Savoonga are Yupiks, the westernmost of the Eskimo tribes, closer to Siberians than American Eskimos in their appearance, and their customs, and their distinctive, liquidly sibilant native language. And, yes, they all have refrigerators. In the winter, food gets freezer burn if left out in the elements. Eskimos need refrigerators to keep their food warm. ~ Gene Weingarten

Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes; but they are excluded from the banquet. Plenty revels over the fields; but theyare starving in the midst of its abundance: the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden; but they feel as reptiles that infest it. ~ Washington Irving

In one Native American folk tale, a grandfather explains to his grandson that he has two wolves inside him. One wolf fills him with hope and reminds him how wonderful his life is, and the other fills him with doubt and convinces him that nothing is worth the effort. The grandson asks, concerned for his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The grandfather replies, "Whichever one I feed. ~ Anonymous

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

No matter how hard I try to forget you, you always come back to my thoughts
When you hear me singing I am really crying for you. ~ Jane Bierhorst

The only good Indian is a dead Indian ~ William Tecumseh Sherman

Life on
Life on the reservation
Life on the reservation is dirty
Life on the reservation is dirty, filthy
Life on the reservation is dirty, filthy dogs.

(Dena Colhoff, student) ~ Timothy P. McLaughlin

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. ~ Mark Twain

Children, language, lands: almost everything was stripped away, stolen when you weren't looking because you were trying to stay alive. In the face of such loss, one thing our people could not surrender was the meaning of land. In the settler mind, land was property, real estate, capital, or natural resources. But to our people, it was everything: identity, the connection to our ancestors, the home of our nonhuman kinfolk, our pharmacy, our library, the source of all that sustained us. Our lands were where our responsibility to the world was enacted, sacred ground. It belonged to itself; it was a gift, not a commodity, so it could never be bought or sold. These are the meanings people took with them when they were forced from their ancient homelands to new places. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

Ironically, Adolf Hitler displayed more knowledge of how we treated Native Americans than American high schoolers today who rely on their textbooks. Hitler admired our concentration camps for American Indians in the west and according to John Toland, his biographer, "often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination - by starvation and uneven combat" as the model for his extermination of Jews and Gypsies (Rom people).94 ~ James W. Loewen

WEST SALEM ~ October 2011
A sudden vision, fraught with malevolence and darkness, obscured her sight. The face of a menacing figure turned from the shadows of his grisly handiwork and stared at Sorcha.
Her muscles tensed. By the Goddess, could he see her?
Please! No!
She wanted to scream, to run, but the vision ensnared her into the horrific moment like a fly in a spider's web. ~ Cherie De Sues

Mni Wiconi means "water is life". It's a historical time in history, where we are facing something dire. Even with the assault on the water, the new hope is the miracle birth of the child. ~ Faith Spotted Eagle

My family is Native American, and I was raised with Native American ceremonies. ~ Eric Balfour

Westerners who go native with Chinese ideas are called 'eggs' - outside white, inside yellow -, and are often systematically excluded from their expat community's activities, let alone the financial support system. ~ Thorsten J. Pattberg

That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye and no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice.
I'm traveling heavy with illusions. ~ Sherman Alexie

It was clearly the Native American curse on the white man in action. After taking their land and converting everything that was holy and good into money, the white man became aged and foolish and then gambled all that money away at Native American casinos. The power of this magic was indisputable and in evidence all around me. Senior citizens chain smoked and dumped money into the machines, staring with eyes that only reacted to the prospect of making a buck from risk and self-destruction. Especially if this were enhanced by the notion of a fate that had their interests in mind in a way loosely connected to their Christian God who usually took their side in racial relations, if history were to be a judge. ~ Carl-John X. Veraja

Perhaps the best example for the continuing power and importance of traditional religions in the modern world comes from Japan. In 1853 an American fleet forced Japan to open itself to the modern world. In response, the Japanese state embarked on a rapid and extremely successful process of modernisation. Within a few decades, it became a powerful bureaucratic state relying on science, capitalism and the latest military technology to defeat China and Russia, occupy Taiwan and Korea, and ultimately sink the American fleet at Pearl Harbor and destroy the European empires in the Far East. Yet Japan did not copy blindly the Western blueprint. It was fiercely determined to protect its unique identity, and to ensure that modern Japanese will be loyal to Japan rather than to science, to modernity, or to some nebulous global community.
To that end, Japan upheld the native religion of Shinto as the cornerstone of Japanese identity. In truth, the Japanese state reinvented Shinto. Traditional Shinto was a hodge-podge of animist beliefs in various deities, spirits and ghosts, and every village and temple had its own favourite spirits and local customs. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the Japanese state created an official version of Shinto, while discouraging many local traditions. This 'State Shinto' was fused with very modern ideas of nationality and race, which the Japanese elite picked from the European imperialists. Any element in Buddhism, Confuciani ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The idea of full dress for preparation for a battle comes not from a belief that it will add to the fighting ability. The preparation is for death, in case that should be the result of conflict. Every Indian wants to look his best when he goes to meet the great Spirit, so the dressing up is done whether in imminent danger is an oncoming battle or a sickness or injury at times of peace. ~ Wooden Leg

Being Indian has never been about returning to the land. The land is everywhere or nowhere. ~ Tommy Orange

The forest is the first cathedral. I felt that from the time I was a child. I credit my mother with that. I used to think it came from her Native-American side. Whichever it was, she instinctively connected with nature, and taught me that. ~ Alice Walker

He who runs with the platypus is no more a man than he who swallows chesnuts ~ Chief Long Spear Who Hunts Beavers

We use a Native American tradition of the talking stick. You sit and pass it around and whoever has the stick has to talk. Some people just hold it. Others really share. ~ Lisa Bonet

Give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way. ~ Native American Saying

None of us know how long we have, but we do have a choice in whether we love or hate. And every day that we rob people of the ability to live their lives to the fullest, we are undermining the most precious gift we are given as humans.

[... E]ach time we ask anyone - whether they are transgender, Black, an immigrant, Muslim, Native American, gay, or a woman - to sit by and let an extended conversation take place about whether they deserve to be respected and affirmed in who they are, we are asking people to watch their one life pass by without dignity or fairness. That is too much to ask of anyone. ~ Sarah McBride

Now I would say at any given moment in American life, there are probably 45 poets in airplanes vectoring across the country heading towards ... I don't know if anyone's reading it, but poets are still flying around the country going from lectern to lectern.That circuitry has become very well-established. ~ Billy Collins

United States Government needs to acknowledge and respect our sovereignty, treaties, traditional Native American values, and our human rights as a people, which under the law as written we deserve, and which should be protected. ~ Leonard Peltier

The wolf turned to Rachel. She was afraid to run, afraid fleeing would make it chase her. Somewhere in the stored files of her mind, she remembered one should not look directly at a menacing dog, but she couldn't take her eyes from it. ~ G.G. Collins

But it is an American thing to love one's roots. American nationality, I mused, is a very special and unique phenomenon in the world. In America, but for Native Americans, all of our forebears hailed from somewhere else. And for all the grief that brought my parents to America, it translates into my good fortune to be born an American. In this hypnotic moment of clarity, I knew where I belonged. ~ Marianne Meyerhoff

I was inspired by Colin Farrell in the fact that he's Irish and has freckles but with black hair. I'm a bunch of different things, Irish, Polish, Native American, and French, but I wanted to tap into that Irish side and be freckle-y with black hair, so that's what I did. ~ Jojo

Some of us came to the cities to escape the reservation. We stayed after fighting in the Second World War. After Vietnam, too. We stayed because the city sounds like a war, and you can't leave a war once you've been you can only keep it at bay--which is easier when you can see and hear it near you, that fast metal, that constant firing around you, cars up and down the streets and freeways like bullets. ~ Tommy Orange

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so. ~ Gore Vidal

They're on their way to the foreign-language wing. That's no surprise. The foreign kids are always here, like they need to breathe air scented with their native language a couple times a day or they'll choke to death on too much American. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

You don't watch many movies, do you?"
"Fraid not," he said. "I never had much interest in movies. 'Sides that, the nearest cinema was almost two hours from my home."
"What about cable TV?"
"No cable."
"Satellite?"
"Nope."
"No Internet either?"
He shook his head.
"Are you serious?" she asked, incredulous. "How did you ever survive?"
"Where I come from, there was always something more interesting to do outside."
"And where was that?" she asked. "Mars? ~ Victoria Vane

Thanksgiving began in 1621 when Native Americans sat down with a bunch of undocumented pilgrims. They had dinner and the pilgrims never left. ~ Jay Leno

As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I became civilized. ~ Charles Alexander Eastman

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I reached the age of 70, because I have cultivated an association of multicultural intellectuals who are informed and alert to whatever "tricknology" that's laid on us by the powers that be. These include White ethnic intellectuals- people who know their roots- as well as Native American, Asian American, Hispanic and Black intellectuals. These are thirty, forty-year associations with some of the best minds around. Minds that are ignored by the media. ~ Ishmael Reed

1
Cain lifts Crow, that heavy black bird
and strikes down Abel.

Damn, says Crow, I guess
this is just the beginning.

2
The white man, disguised
as a falcon, swoops in
and yet again steals a salmon
from Crow's talons.

Damn, says Crow, if I could swim
I would have fled this country years ago.

3
The Crow God as depicted
in all of the reliable Crow bibles
looks exactly like a Crow.

Damn, says Crow, this makes it
so much easier to worship myself.

4
Among the ashes of Jericho,
Crow sacrifices his firstborn son.

Damn, says Crow, a million nests
are soaked with blood.

5
When Crows fight Crows
the sky fills with beaks and talons.

Damn, says Crow, it's raining feathers.

6
Crow flies around the reservation
and collects empty beer bottles

but they are so heavy
he can only carry one at a time.

So, one by one, he returns them
but gets only five cents a bottle.

Damn, says Crow, redemption
is not easy.

7
Crow rides a pale horse
into a crowded powwow
but none of the Indian panic.

Damn, says Crow, I guess
they already live near the end of the world. ~ Sherman Alexie

Each of the three cultures in New Mexico during the mid-1800s (Caucasian, Hispanic, and Native American) were actively involved in kidnapping each other. As competition and fighting occurred between the three races, cruelty and violence were rampant on all sides. Yet, some captives found kindness among their captors. ~ Noel Marie Fletcher