Quotes from Tomson Highway

The most explicit distinguishing feature between the North American Indian languages and the European languages is that in Indian, there is no gender. In Cree, Ojibway, etc., unlike English, French, German, etc., the male-female-neuter hierarchy is entirely absent. So that by this system of thought, the central hero figure from our mythology - theology, if you will - is theoretically neither exclusively male nor exclusively female, or is both simultaneously.

Some say that Weesaceechak left this continent when the white man came. We believe she/he is still here among us - albeit a little the worse for ear and tear - having assumed other guises. Without the continued presence of this extraordinary figure, the core of Indian culture would be gone forever.

As a certain philosopher of ancient Greece once put it, the difference between the historian and poet/storyteller is that where the historian relates what happened, the storyteller tells us how it might have come about.

He narrowed his eyes to slits so that he could peer into the eyes of this shameless, strutting personage to whom, apparently, modesty was unknown. He took careful note of the fact that the king - "Lucy," the priest called him - was not glaring venomously. King Lucy was grinning, King Lucy was having a good time.

Wars start when two parties haven't taken the time to learn each other's tongues.

You never told us how to spend time alone in the midst of half a million people. Here, stars don't shine at night, trees don't speak.

You can sell a woman? In cities, it's done all the time, all the time. It's like selling meat.

There were many bloody period in human history, many of them occurring right here in North America.

Look. What use is there pretending to be what you are not? You and me and your little brother, we're the only three Indians in a school filled with two thousand white middle-class kids. We can't let them walk all over us.

Them little ol' priests, the things they did? Pooh! No wonder us Indian folk are all the shits.