Native Quotes

“Finding an access to the ‘open public space’ is the challenge that really matters in life. We may know that everyone might feel like an alien to someone else or sometimes even to oneself, whether native, foreigner or exile, whether assimilated or singular, whether straight or gay. Be that as it may, a basic premise for the safeguard of self-fulfillment is the availability of a comforting maneuvering ground for one and all and an opportunity to enter a 'space of appearance' with a gate to a ‘citizenship of the world’. ("His master's voice" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“You have to stand guard over the development and maintenance of Islamic democracy, Islamic social justice and the equality of manhood in your own native soil.”
― Muhammad Ali Jinnah

“The misfortune of a young man who returns to his native land after years away is that he finds his native land foreign; whereas the lands he left behind remain for ever like a mirage in his mind.
However, misfortune can itself sow seeds of creativity.

---- Afterword to "Hothouse" Brian Aldiss”
― Brian Aldiss, Hothouse

“Sólo se sentía la tranquilidad sorda de las aguas, las cuales parecía que se despeñaban en el abismo.”
― Popol Vuh

“Our task is to build cultural fortresses to protect our emerging nativeness. They must be strong enough to hold at bay the powers of consumerism, the powers of greed and envy and pride. One of the most effective ways for this to come about would be for our universities to assume the awesome responsibility to both validate and educate those who want to be homecomers -- not necessarily to go home but to go someplace and dig in and begin the long search and experiment to become native.”
― Wes Jackson, Becoming Native to This Place

“Pensaron cómo harían brotar la luz, la cual recibiría alimento de eternidad. La luz se hizo entonces en el seno de lo increado. Contemplaron así la naturaleza original de la vida que está en la entraña de lo desconocido.”
― Popol Vuh

“No one taught me to be Native American. My mother taught me that I was, but she did not have the context for what that heritage meant. My grandmother mentioned it very little, even though it was visible in her features. Yet from my earliest memories, being Native has always been an integral part of my identity. Even though I was raised far from my tribe, far from any tribe, I heard the drumbeat of our traditions in my heart. My name is Leah Kallen Myers. I am the last member of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe in my family line.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“Chapter 90: [This] Countryside
I swear by [this] countryside, you are a native settled on this land, as well as any parent and whatever he may father. We have created man under stress. Does he reckon that no one can do anything against him? He says: "I have used up piles of money!" Does he consider that no one sees him? Have we not granted him both eyes, a tongue and two lips, and guided him along both highroads? Yet he does not tackle the Obstacle!

What will make you realize what the Obstacle is?

It means redeeming the captive, or feeding some orphaned relative on a day of famine or some needy person in distress.

Then he will act like someone who believes, recommends patience and encourages mercifulness. Those will be the companions on the right-hand side, while the ones who disbelieve in Our signs will be companions on the sinister side: above them a fire will hem them in.”
― T. B. Irving, A Translation Of The Meaning Of The Noble Qur'an

“The phrase "low man on the totem pole" was coined by a White man in the 1940s to mean a person with no respect, status, or power. He clearly did not consult the Natives who carve the poles. They honor the figures they represent by immortalizing them in precious old-grown red cedar. Each member of the totem pole is significant, but the one on the bottom is often given the most reverence. They are the one who holds up everyone else; they are the one who starts the story.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“The bear is a symbol of motherly love and familial strength in the fiercest way. A mother bear will not allow her children to come to harm, but she will not coddle them either. No one dares come between the mother and her cubs, but still her cubs must keep up with her and learn to be strong themselves.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“Gabby transferred to my school in the fourth grade. She had blonde hair and blue eyes and was tanner than most of the other White girls in my class for no apparent reason. In one of my clearer memories of her, her face is snarled and in a shrill, whiny voice she is saying to me, "Stop lying, you're not an Indian!"

Nine-year-old me didn't have many years of experience with racism. This was the first time someone had even questioned the validity of my ethnicity, let alone outright called me a liar. Back then, I didn't have the ability or knowledge to point to the media representation of Native Americans to show Gabby how she had been taught to think that my culture was gone. At nine years old I lacked the words to explain that her ignorance did not and would never define who I was. Those tools simply hadn't been given to me yet. So I punched her in the face.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“I sat to take in the view. The wind blew just hard enough to push my heavy, unkept hair back. I filled my lungs with the cool air and felt roots begin to take hold. I had always been a restless person, even at this early point in life, and this was a new experience: peace. I felt as though the trees and earth of the mountain reached up into my soul and curled around it, making it whole. The inky blackness I had yet to name, the dark pit that buzzed just below my surface and corroded my thoughts, was quieted. For a moment, it was like I didn't feel it at all.

When my mom asked me what was wrong, I told her exactly how I felt as best I could.

"My home is in Georgia, but my soul is at home here.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“My home is in Georgia, but my soul is at home here.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“Up to 95 percent of the original Native American population, estimated at roughly twenty million people, disappeared after the invasion of European colonizers.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“Up to 95 percent of the original Native American population, estimated at roughly twenty million people, disappeared after the invasion of European colonizers. While there was direct violence toward Native Americans, many of these deaths can be attributed to the introduction of smallpox. Smallpox is a virus that is spread when one comes into contact with infected bodily fluids or contaminated objects such as clothing or blankets. The virus then finds its way into a person's lymphatic system. Within days of infection, large, painful pustules begin to erupt over the victim's skin.

In school curriculums, this has often been taught as an unfortunate tragedy, an accidental side effect of trade, and therefore a reason to claim that the Europeans did not commit genocide. However, in recent years, many historians have recognized that the spreading of smallpox was an early form of biological warfare, one which was understood and used without mercy from at least the mid-1700s. Noted conversations among army officials include letters discussing the idea of "sending the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes" and using "every stratagem to reduce them." Another official, Henry Bouquet, wrote a letter that told his subordinates to "try to Innoculate [sic] the Indians, by means of Blankets, as well as to Try Every other Method, that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race." They followed through on their plan, giving two blankets and a handkerchief from a Smallpox Hospital alongside other gifts to seal an agreement of friendship between the local Native tribes and the men at Fort Pitt, located in what is now western Pennsylvania.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“No one wanted to use the word 'murder' then, using instead words more apt to talking about a pest problem than a human race. Even today the United States still has not officially recognized genocide in its history.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“Even today the United States still has not officially recognized genocide in its history.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“We're on our way to the Grand Canyon!" the woman said. She used big gestures and smiled too wide in her "I Heart Albuquerque" tank top. She was clearly a morning person.
"Oh, that's cool!" Miranda said, equally as cheery. "We're from Arizona. You're going to love it; it's beautiful there."
"That's what we've heard!" She leaned down, pressing both of her hands into the table. "And we paid for the tour into the Canyon. We're going to go down into it and see real, live Indians!"
Miranda immediately began to laugh. She bent over her plate of muffins, body shaking and eyes squeezed shut. The woman's face was blank, then slowly morphed into offended confusion. Her hands were still pressed into the table, and she turned her full attention toward me; now her posture looked more like a cop conducting an interrogation. She said nothing but her face shouted, 'What's so funny?'
"She's laughing because I'm actually Native American," I said. I resisted the urge to do jazz hands at this woman, and instead offered up whatever a fake smile looks like at too-damn-early in the morning.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“I wanted to devour this woman's dignity. Congratulations for what exactly? For having a family who made it through genocide? For being part of the slim population of surviving Native Americans post-colonization? An anger simmered in my throat, begging to be let loose on this stupid woman who was there to simply enjoy her vacation. How dare she remain blissfully unaware of the modern existence of Native Americans when all she had seen were movies making us look like history? As mad as I was, I knew it wasn't her fault and I couldn't muster up the energy to boil my anger into a response.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“Indian boarding schools began in 1860, with the first school being established on the Yakima Indian Reservation in Washington State. These schools were designed to take Native American youths and mold them into members of "civilized society"; to make them White. The schools taught the basics of education, such as arithmetic, but also taught the students to practice Christianity and that the political structures of the United States were ideal for everyone. The actual goal was to eradicate every ounce of Native cultures.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“Pratt created the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and his motto was "kill the Indian, save the man." At this school, and others that would open and follow in its wake, tens of thousands of Native children faced abuse and neglect. They were often forcibly removed from their homes and taken to these schools that were sometimes across the country from their original lives. When they arrived, the children were forced to cut their hair and change their names. They were made to become White in look and label, stripped of any semblance of Native heritage. The children were not allowed to speak their Native tongues, some of them not knowing anything else. They were prohibited from acting in any way that might reflect the only culture they had ever known.
At Pratt's Carlisle Indian Industrial School alone, the numbers revealed the truth of what this treatment did. Of the ten thousand children from 141 different tribes across the country, only a small fraction of them ever graduated. According to the Carlisle Indian School Project, there are 180 marked graves of Native children who died while attending. There were even more children who died while held captive at the Carlisle school and others across the county. Their bodies are only being discovered in modern times, exhumed by the army and people doing surveys of the land who are finding unmarked burial sites. An autograph book from one of the schools was found in the historical records with one child's message to a friend, "Please remember me when I'm in the grave."
The US Bureau of Indian Affairs seemed to think Pratt had the right idea and made his school the model for more. There ended up being more than 350 government-funded boarding schools for Natives in the United States. Most of them followed the same ideology: Never let the children be themselves. Beat their language out of them. Punish them for practicing their cultures.
Pratt and his followers certainly killed plenty of Indians, but they didn't save a damn thing.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“The salmon is a symbol of prosperity and determination to the Coast Salish tribes, the band of tribes in the Pacific Northwest of which the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe is a part. She defies nature, swimming upstream to provide for the people of the land. Yet she must sacrifice herself to give that abundance to others. Her determination comes at a deep personal cost.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“Most White people saw me as Hispanic, and people of other races often thought I was the same as them.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“The first wave of guilt came with images of the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. The pipeline was constructed to transport crude oil through the Dakotas into Illinois. It was voted on and decided by White men and given permission not through voluntary easements, as was originally required, but instead through forced condemnations and evictions. The Standing Rock Sioux disagreed with the pipeline, as it was likely to destroy their ancestral burial grounds and taint their water supply with viscous, black poison. Their voices went unheard.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“When the construction was announced to continue as planned, the tribe and their allies came together. People from across two hundred tribes and beyond to other communities came together to try and protect their water, their lives. They were met with forces from the National Guard and seventy-five other law enforcement agencies across the country. These forces used concussion grenades and automatic rifles against civilians. They spent hours shooting them with water cannons in subfreezing temperatures to try and make them give in.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“I was working towards my bachelor's degree in creative writing at Arizona State University when videos, pictures, and stories from these protests started blooming across my Facebook feed. I saw Native people holding their ground and being ground down by the opposing police force. I saw them bitten by dogs and hosed down and maimed by rubber bullets hitting their faces and bodies, all while bright white words scrolled across the bottom of the video, explaining the situation and giving statistics.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“Everything was an excuse. The felt so concrete, so real at the time. Now they are wispy, pathetic. I was terrified. If I participated in the world I moved closer to, then I would have to stomach the chance that I might fail at every task I tackled.
I didn't want to fail at being Native. Being Native to me then meant not only having the experience of all of these cultural things, but also being decent at them. I wanted to feel a peace in myself that cultural things brought me, but I had never felt so out of my depth. Failure felt imminent.
But I couldn't fail at something I never had the chance to try. So the excuses continued to pour from me, sweetly apologetic to hide the stench of the rotting fear that created them.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“Many jokes were about colonizers who claim to be Native because of some distant person in their family's history. The most common joke, and one I have told, is about someone being one-sixteenth Cherokee since their great-great-grandmother was a Cherokee princess.
I laugh at these jokes even as I worry that they would make that joke about me since I am one-eighth. I cackle and like the videos, and feel the flicker of pain in the back of my mind that screams that, if I ever had children, these videos would be about them.”
― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

“I’d advise looking into what types of frogs are native to your area so you know what to expect and when the best time to look is.”
― Aesop Rock

“Environmentalists like to say that defeats are permanent, victories temporary. Extinction, like death, is forever, but protection needs to be maintained. But now, in a world where restoration ecology is becoming increasingly important, it turns out that even defeats aren't always permanent. Across the United States and Europe, dams have been removed, wetlands and rivers restored, once-vanished native species reintroduced, endangered species regenerated.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities