Quotes About Culture

it has a quality other countries call cultural imperialism, which, we have found, means a tasty culture that other peoples readily enjoy, an infective culture, if you will, from which ideas and usages spread quickly.

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.

At the halfway point of any drunken night, there is a moment when an Indian realizes he cannot turn back toward tradition and that he has no map to guide him toward the future.

I know only, like, five Indians in our whole tribe who have never drunk alcohol. And my grandmother was one of them. Drinking would shut down my seeing and my hearing and my feeling, she used to say. Why would I want to be in the world if I couldn't touch the world with all of my senses intact? (158)

Well of course man. We Indians have lost everything. We lost our native land, we lost our languages, we lost our songs and dances. We lost each other. We only know how to lose and be lost.

I didn't literally kill Indians. We were supposed to make you give up being Indian. Your songs and stories and language and dancing. Everything. We weren't trying to kill Indian people. We were trying to kill Indian culture.

it's like this white-Indian thing has gotten out of control. And the thing with the blacks and the Mexicans. Everybody blaming everybody...I don't know what happened. I can't explain it all. Just look around at the world. Look at this country. Things just aren't like they used to be.' 'Son, things have never been like what you think they used to be.

Traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger. I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other. It was like being Indian was my job, but it was only a part-time job. And it didn't pay well at all.

That's one more thing people don't know about Indians: We love to talk dirty.

I realized that my mother had not taught us the tribal language because she knew her children would not be strong enough to carry the responsibility of being the last fluent speakers. She protected us from that spiritual burden. She protected us from that loneliness.

I bet you a million dollars there are less than five books in this whole house. What kind of life can you have in a house without books?

Oh, no, no, you've got that all wrong. You're not required to respect elders. After all, most people are idiots, regardless of age. In tribal cultures, we just make sure that elders remain an active part of the culture, even if they're idiots. Especially if they're idiots. You can't just abandon your old people, even if they have nothing intelligent to say. Even if they're crazy.

What's so funny?' asked Peone. 'Catholic cops are funny,' said Lester. 'You were listening?' 'Yeah.' 'Yeah? Catholic Indians are funny.' 'There's lots of Catholic Indians.' 'There's lots of Catholic cops.

Sherman Alexie

More and more, he heard his spine playing stick games through his skin, singing old dusty words, the words of all his years.

How can we imagine a new language when the language of the enemy keeps our dismembered tongues tied to his belt?

What is it like to be a Spokane Indian without wild salmon? It is like being a Christian if Jesus had never rolled back the stone and risen from his tomb.

He sang 'Stairway to Heaven' in four different languages but never knew where that staircase stood.

I don't recall the moment when I officially became a storyteller—a talented liar—but here I must quote Simon Ortiz, the Acoma Pueblo writer, who said, "Listen. If it's fiction, then it better be true.

I am a zero on the rez. And if you subtract zero from zero, you still have zero. So what's the point of subtracting when the answer is always the same?

Because they don't want to be perfect, because only God is perfect, Indian people sew flaws into their powwow regalia. My family always sewed one yellow bead somewhere on our regalia. But we always hid it so that you had to search really hard to find it.

I was dancing for my soul and for the soul of my tribe. I was dancing for what we Indians used to be and who we might become again.

If you want to make a white man cry, despite the amount of time it's been since he last wept aloud, then all you have to do is employ "baseball" and "father" in three consecutive sentences.

If God really loved Indians, he would have made us white people.