Ancestral Presence Quotes

The past lives within the present, and our ancestors breathe through our children.

I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future - the timelessness of the rocks and the hills - all the people who have existed there.

I feel that the ancestors are that covering that will cover me. I feel like I can only be enveloped in them spiritually and physically.

As people who are women, who are Indigenous and live on Indigenous lands, we know, and this is something I understand the older I get, that they don't visit the same way the postman may visit but they do visit. They visit in ways that our modern society often disregards and considers immaterial or unreal.

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.

As Indigenous peoples, we know there is more to the world. We know spirits exist. We know as women, because we're especially attuned to this kind of knowledge, that spirits exist and have a presence in our lives. Some of us are gifted and can communicate with the spirit world. Not everyone has that gift and can perceive the borders between the living and the dead and our society actively discourages us of exploring the knowledge of what many of us have already always known in our cultures.

When the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among the white men shall have become a myth, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless.

Deep under our feet the Earth holds its molten breath, while the bones of countless generations watch us and wait.

Grandmother Hannah comes to me at Pesach and when I am lighting the sabbath candles. The sweet wine in the cup has her breath.... a little winter no spring can melt.

I did marry, I did get pregnant, but as I was giving birth, my daughter and I almost died. We were rushed to the hospital. I had an emergency cesarean and in that moment, in the emergency room, I felt my grandmother come to me. She was with me and when my daughter was born, instead of naming her Hailey, I named her Lucy after my grandmother. Hailey lives in the pages of my books.

In the early days of the Indian Territory, there were no such things as birth certificates. You being there was certificate enough.

The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.

I believe there is a strong familial pull as the influence of beloved ancestors continues with us from the other side of the veil.