Indigenous Language Quotes

I think we should get more behind te reo. Being able to see a friend and have a conversation, it would be great if we could get to that stage.

A young man who is here speaks the Panis language, and in many other respects, is preferable.

Where does this outcry about nationality, this emphasis on an indigenous language and history come from but the German universities, where learned fools have provoked the spirit of a quiet, sensible nation to madness and crime? There is the cradle of you Slavomania

I often pick up papers and books which have all kinds of pictures and marks in them, but I cannot understand them as a white person does. They have a way of communicating by the use of written symbols and figures; but before they could do that, they had to have an understanding among themselves. You are learning that, and I was very much pleased to hear you are reading.

It's an old Aboriginal word meaning 'Let's get together and have fun'. They gave us the word because they had no further need for it.

On the night of the 1st of September we observed for the first time signs of the natives being in the neighbourhood. Fires were seen on the low land near Cape Frederick Henry, and at daylight we saw the natives with our glasses.

I remember from my earliest years people speaking, you know, in a certain kind of rhythm and telling stories and sharing experiences in a way that was different in Indian country than it was other places. And I was really struck by this and obviously very affected by it, because it's always come out in my songs.

It was real Cheyenne. I would get the translations the night before, but it was very difficult because it was not like any other language you would be familiar with.

English is my language because of the history, and what I try to do - and I did that in 'Carpentaria' in particular - is to write in the way we tell stories and in the voice of our own people and our own way of speaking.

I came from a family that was pretty insularly Cherokee. We kept to ourselves - the white people were there, and we were here, and it was practically a segregated kind of thing.

'Dances with Wolves' really started the movement, using subtitles for Lakota Sioux and showing Indians as interesting, complex people - not just the enemy - and giving a lot of unknown Indian actors work.

My Indigenous heritage is something I hold close to my heart.

When I was in south Sudan, people used to rap in my village. But the rapping was more in the mother tongue, Nuer.

We need only look to our Navajo Code Talkers during World War II to see the value that Native languages bring not only to their culture, but to the security of all Americans.

I'm connected with my indigenous roots.

I'm very influenced by landscapes, not so much the way places look as the way the names sound. In this country we've got so many cultures, and the place names - the Spanish names and the Indian names, which are so incredibly musical.

A community, once it realises that its language is in danger, can get its act together and introduce measures which can genuinely revitalise. You've seen it happen in Australia with several Aboriginal languages. And it's happening in other countries, too.

I don't know whether I'm half, quarter or what. I just know I'm aboriginal.