American Indians Quotes

Then, I realized that there is an indigenous presence in the Solar System. It's us. So, then, I got to wondering what would happen if a more technologically advanced society moved next door to us, the way we moved next door to the American Indians.

The perpetuation of slavery, the exile and extermination of American Indians, and the passage of Jim Crow laws weren't carried out at the bidding of a few malefactors of great wealth.

Before any final solution to American history can occur, a reconciliation must be effected between the spiritual owner of the land - American Indians - and the political owner of the land - American Whites. Guilt and accusations cannot continue to revolve in a vacuum without some effort at reaching a solution.

The white people should go back to Europe, and the country should be returned to the American Indians. This is the future I would like to see for the so-called United States.

We, as Indian tribes, should be able to prosecute non-Indians on tribal lands. But on Indian land, we have no ability to prosecute anyone but another Indian. American Indians having status as a foreign nation is good for us, but it's not good in some ways if we don't have the jurisdictional power that the federal government claims.

Being is a spiritual proposition. Gaining is a material act. Traditionally, American Indians have always attempted to be the best people they could. Part of that spiritual process was and is to give away wealth, to discard wealth in order not to gain.

There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived or at any other time in history. Does this sound like a record of genocide?

I'd love to work more with the American Indians, my people.

For a subject worked and reworked so often in novels, motion pictures, and television, American Indians remain probably the least understood and most misunderstood Americans of us all.

They [the American Indians] have claims on the magnanimity and, I may add, on the justice of this nation which we must all fill. We should become their real benefactors; we should perform the office of their Great Father, the endearing title which they emphatically give to the Chief Magistrate of our Union.

I thought about the treaties made by Wm. Pitt with the inhabitants of America… I flattered myself that since I wished to emulate the Quaker in sincerity, the Kaffers would follow the example of the American Indians.

American popular culture has long been marked by an absence of empathy for American Indians. Westerns doubled as a campaign against so-called savages in a way that desensitized us to the savages we'd become.

The Democratic Party has learned from the terrible mistakes of the past. Our platform requires that we honor, fulfill, and strengthen the federal government's trust responsibility to American Indians. We take this responsibility seriously.

When it comes to American Indians, mainstream America suffers from willful blindness.

I don't think a lot of people in America understand what Indians are. And that's our fault, a little. We tend to forget our roots a bit. As kids we think, If I'm too Indian, I'll be put in a box, and people will think of me as different. They'll think I'm weird, because I eat Indian food or my name is difficult to pronounce.

I played a Siamese girl from Thailand. I played an Arabian girl. I did a lot of American Indians. I never, ever was able to do a part without assuming some kind of accent.

So, one of the things I was doing with the aliens in The Quiet Invasion was creating that advanced society which had ideas about morality and proper use of natural resources that were radically different from ours, as the Europeans were from the American Indians.

In 'Shadow Tag,' Erdrich creates scenes from a fictional marriage, that of two American Indians, Irene and her painter husband Gil, that suggest some of the worst psychological torments and stresses of real life.

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.

Economic and health statistics, as well as police-violence statistics, shed light on the pressures on American Indian communities and individuals: Indian youths have the highest suicide rate of any United States ethnic group.

'Legality' is a mad phrase to use when it comes to the founding of nations. Australia was founded on illegality. For the Americans to go in and dispossess the American Indians was illegal.

Young people and Indian people need to know that we existed in the 20th Century. We need to know who our heroes are and to know what we have done and accomplished in this century other than what Olympic athletes Jim Thorpe and Billy Mills have done.

With their own record of killing 12 million American Indians and supporting slavery for four decades after the British abolished it, Americans wish to project their historical guilt on to someone else.

Those traumas when it comes to the historical past generation to generation; our children, our grandchildren, our future grandchildren learn these behaviors. We have to know that they exist and we have to take care of those traumas and learn to heal from them. This movie shows that perspective from Scott's character, and I love it. It shows the American Indians as the ones who respect and help out when people are needed. It's a nice little twist.

The Indians were well mounted and felt proud and elated because they had been made United States soldiers.