Quotes About Tradition

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.

My father went on a legendary drinking binge. My mother went to church every single day. It was all booze and God, booze and God, booze and God.

But I stopped crying when I noticed that very few people were being openly emotional. I'd never seen that many stoic people at a funeral. I'd never experienced a silent and polite funeral. My tribe doesn't bury our dead that way. We wail, weep, and tell dirty jokes at graveside.

Like a good Indian, he knew when to talk and when to remain silent. Like a good Indian, he knew there was never a good time to talk.

Adam and Eve covered their privates with fig leaves; the first Indians covered their privates with their tiny hands.

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.

My mother and grandmother's conversation doesn't belong in the cloud.   That old song is too sacred for the Internet.   So

the earth is our grandmother and that technology has become our mother and that they both hate each other.

we worship the salmon because we eat salmon

After all, one doesn't choose his culture nearly as much as one trips and falls into it.

Sharon was Apache, and I was Spokane, but we practiced our tribal religions like we practiced Catholicism: We loved all of the ceremonies but thought they were pitiful cries to a disinterested god.

Your mother was a goatherder. (Savitar) It's an honorable profession. (Takeshi) Yeah, for a goat. (Savitar)

We're multigenerational Squires. (Carl) Which means what? You prance around with tinfoil armor and plastic swords pretending to be knights? (Nick)

Mardi Gras, baby. Mardi Gras. Time when all manner of weird shit cuts loose and parties down.

We come from a long line of people who live to read boring texts – I think it may be why we all die young. Complete boredom. (Geary)

I've even delivered a few of their babies. (Wulf) Really? (Cassandra) Oh, yeah. You have to love the days before modern roads, and hospitals when I was up to my elbows in placenta. (Wulf)

Institutions do all the things that are supposed to be bad. They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity. But they often save us from our weaknesses and give meaning to life.

I grew up going to church three times a week in my family. It's been a center of my life.

Nothing reveals more about the inner life of a people than their arts.

The guru is a tremendous tradition because is a guide, it's a guide to life, and we can guide energetically, we can guide in our thought, we can have a prayer that travels wonderful things.

I grew up in a conservative household. That was the life of the time in Egypt: a conservative, middle-class household.

I've been doing African dance all my life.