Quotes from Joseph Bruchac

this is not the time to become lost in sorrow. We must do something and not just wait to be victims.

That story I loved so much as a child has become all too real to me now. But I'm not the boy in that old story who could run forever without tiring. I don't have a bow and arrow. No weapons at all.

A year is plenty of time to fit in, right? Like a square peg is going to fit into a round hole if you just give it time? You could say that when I arrived here in the middle of my seventh-grade year I settled into a well-defined niche that was purely my own and remains so in eighth grade. The niche of a minuscule, mouthy Mohawk misfit. And nothing is going to change that.

She's always suggesting books like a literary marriage broker, wedding readers to the titles just right for them.

This," I said, "could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

He's taken courses on things like animal tracking, making a fire with a bow drill, building survival shelters in the forest. Now, my being an Indian, you might imagine I would know about all that stuff. But most Indian kids, even those on the rez, are not learning those things anymore. They're too busy doing all the things other kids do—watching DVDs, playing Xbox games, and downloading rap music on their iPods.

But I didn't care. I just wanted to be close to them and feel their presence. I felt as if I were in there with them, looking out of their eyes, sharing their thoughts.

Stories are so strong because they are alive. A story is like someone you trust to take your hand, lead you on a journey, and then bring you back home again.

No one should feel guilty about the past. Unless they're not doing anything about the present.

General Kuribayashi

However, despite our lack of facial hair, every Navajo recruit was still expected to put soap on his face each morning and scrape away his imaginary beard. What you did in boot camp did not have to make sense. You just had to do it.

All of those cases were clearly marked on the side in English: U.S.A. FOOD RELIEF It was indeed the very same food donated by Americans to Japan before the war. The Japanese military government had stolen it from their own hungry people.

Let me have clear thoughts, clear speech, and a good path to walk this day," I prayed as I watched the rising sun.

During World War One, our country had used other Indians, Cherokees and Chickasaws, to send messages in their own language to confuse the enemy.

As the battle for Iwo Jima raged all around us, our voices held it together.

Why are all those dogs tied to people like that? Don't they have any lives of their own?

It was the way so many people wanted to see Indians - not as real human beings, but as symbols of something fierce and untamed.

Never forget, grandchildren, that we must always see all other people as human beings, worthy of respect.

It was easier for me to run now because all us code talkers had the new lighter portable radio units. But it was not just because the new unit on my back was lighter that I ran so much faster. I no longer had forty pounds of TBX radio to hide behind and I needed to get to cover as fast as I could.

Our ancestors saw what war does to human beings. When we must fight other humans, injure and kill them, we also injure a part of ourselves. Our spirits become sick from contact with the enemy.

Waiting is something you get used to when you're Native American.

So, when all of our people did not stop raiding, the Americans made war on all of the Navajos. They burned our crops, killed our livestock, and cut down our peach trees. They drove our people into exile. They sent us on the Long Walk.

I leaned way back to gaze at the blanket of blue sky where a few small clouds hung, white as the fleece of a new lamb. "Even out on the ocean," Bill said, "Father Sky will be above us. We will never be forgotten by the sky.

Everyone called that plane Washing Machine Charlie," Sam said.