Quotes About Indigenous

A few scattered accounts, collected and combined together, may lead us to two certain conclusions: 1. That all the American Indians are one kind of people; 2. That they are the same as the people in the northeast of Asia.

The red aborigines, Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names, Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco, Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla, Leaving such to the States, they melt, they depart, charging the water and the land with names. -from Starting from Paumanok

There can be no question that the entirety of the continental United States has been expropriated from its original, indigenous inhabitants, with incalculably harmful consequences accruing to them in the process. From a moral perspective, it should be equally clear that no humane solution to the overall issues confronting any American radical can reasonably be said to exist, should it exclude mechanisms through which to safeguard the residual land base and cultural identities of these people.

Is soul the stem and body the blossom — or body our stem, with soul its indigenous bloom?

The Spanish were the first to arrive on this island, which they called Cayo Hueso, or Island of Bones. That's because the bones of the indigenous

They built cities, terraced hillsides and irrigated fields, shaped the land with intentional fires, and cleared forests, all of which contributed directly to deforestation, soil depletion and erosion. In forgetting all these works, the myth of the Ecological Indian infantilises and denies agency to native peoples, erases civilisations and replaces them with imaginary wildernesses. It too is an act of conquest.

On his first voyage, Columbus kidnapped some ten to twenty-five American Indians and took them back with him to Spain.55 Only seven or eight arrived alive, but along with the parrots, gold trinkets, and other exotica, they caused quite a stir in Seville. Ferdinand and Isabella provided Columbus with seventeen ships, twelve hundred to fifteen hundred men, cannons, crossbows, guns, cavalry, and attack dogs for a second voyage.

Indian history is the antidote to the pious ethnocentrism of American exceptionalism, the notion that European Americans are God's chosen people. Indian history reveals that the United States and its predecessor British colonies have wrought great harm in the world. We must not forget this—not to wallow in our wrongdoing, but to understand and to learn, that we might not wreak harm again.

Bartolomé de Las Casas

No sensible Indian person," wrote George P. Horse Capture, "can celebrate the arrival of Columbus."90 Cherishing Columbus is a characteristic of white history, not American history.

When I was in Mexico, I was told how mescaline was extracted from the peyote cactus.

One of the most powerful voices speaking out against the overexploitation, or even theft, of indigenous wisdom by Western corporations is the philosopher and environmental activist Dr. Vandana Shiva. Of particular concern for her is the patenting of products derived from an indigenous plant. She sees this as a new sort of colonialism: "In the old way they took over the land—now they are taking over life.

How can we possibly say the root of the Canadian approach to citizenship and immigration comes from Europe or the United States? I mean, we just don't do the same things. What I've said, very simply, is that unlike other colonies, for the first 250 years approximately, indigenous people were either the dominant force or an equal force.

We want to govern with our indigenous ancestors' models: That means a different concept of participation, community work and honesty.

Some environmentalists have had the feeling that Indians are not good stewards. I've always been critical of that.

Everybody in America who didn't come over the Bering Strait ice bridge stole his land from somebody else.

If we had, we would have realised sooner that Indigenous organisations are sometimes not the appropriate channel for programmes to help the stolen generations, because many of them play little part in Indigenous associations.

Certainly no university president, at least to my knowledge, has ever stood up and said 'this land is unceded, meaning it's not ours, so we're going to give some of it back.'

That's why, white America, we had no objection to (and indeed supported mightily) the "big government" intervention known as the Homestead Act, passed in 1862, which gave over 200 million acres of essentially "free" land to white families: land that had been confiscated from indigenous people or from Mexico and was then made available to white settlement.

Chief Sealth, appalled at how his emerald garden had been trashed so quickly, wrote a letter in 1854 to President Franklin Pierce. "The whites, too, shall pass, perhaps sooner than the other tribes," he wrote with the help of a translator. "Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in waste.

The tribes may have been numerous, but the overall population was plummeting. When the results of the 1900 census were published, the government counted only 237,000 Indians in a country of 76 million people. This was the lowest number ever, scholars and Indian authorities said, down from perhaps as many as 10 million at the time of white contact in 1492.

Their humanity has been forgotten," Grinnell said of the predominant way most outsiders looked at Indians—as either savages or victims.

I want to work with kids and help develop them, show them the right way, the right morals and attitude into how to become a better footballer. Australia has many different cultures but I'd like to bring in the indigenous style, bring their competitiveness, athleticism and raw ability into the frame.

Somehow, as the reading public has internalized narratives about American national and regional pasts, we have forgotten that Detroit is ancient, that Detroit is indigenous, and that Detroit has a long-standing black presence. We have misplaced the knowledge that most of the Midwest was French…We have never deeply considered the reality that slavery existed even in the Midwest…and in Canada where a 'mythology' of a black 'haven' holds sway.