Native American Heritage Quotes

The land was ours before we were the land’s She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people ...

When I was a boy, I would ask about my family history, about my bloodlines. We really didn't know that much. We had a little Indian in us from the Oklahoma Trail of Tears.

What's nice about 'Skinwalkers' is it's allowing an audience to see a different Indian perspective... I think, for myself, I'm trying to put the Indian perspective in a different dimension.

I know who I am and can deal with the use of Indian mascots... But I know it can be demeaning to a group of people. Maybe it would be all right if they were truly honoring the people and are giving due respect to the people they are representing.

[Woman Walks Ahead] is from me being a very bizarre child. From the age of about 8 to the age of about 15, I was obsessed with Native Americans.

I loved Westerns for different reasons as an adult. It is not only our only native brand of storytelling - the only one that's not influenced by Europeans and not something that's done better by the French - but I also love the sensuality of the Western. The sights, sounds, and smell of a Western are very exciting.

When people ask me where my roots are, I look down at my feet, and I see the roots of my soul grasping the earth. They are here... in the Southwest... I still live in New Mexico.

When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland, I believed - completely, wholeheartedly, without reservation or pause - that the Cleveland Indians were named to honor a Native American ballplayer named Louis Sockalexis, who played for Cleveland in the late 19th Century.

I remember hearing stories from my mother and father about their parents and grandparents when they were taken off the reservation, taken to the boarding schools, and pretty much taught to be ashamed of who they were as Native Americans. You can feel that impact today.

Millions of dollars have been expended to excavate and transport to museums the tools, weapons, and other artifacts of Indians--but scarcely a penny has been spent to save the living descendants of those who made them

My great-grandfather was the last ruler of the Choctaw Nation, and from birth, I was taught that my role was to restore the power and the glory to my bloodline.

I'm a Native American actress.

I go to South Dakota for ceremonies when I have the time. And when you learn what the Indian peoples have gone through to hold onto their culture and traditions... wow, it's an amazing story.

I know what I write about seems exotic to a lot of people, but not for me. I pulled up to an old trading post and saw a few elderly Navajos sitting on a bench. I felt right at home.

It's a bit of a sore spot, the Thanksgiving in Indian country.

No one except Hollywood stars and very rich Texans wore Indian jewelry. And there was a plethora of dozens if not hundreds of athletic teams that in essence were insulting us, from grade schools to college. That's all changed.

I have spoken to many, many Indian chiefs who say they have no objection whatsoever to the nickname.

At issue when professional sports teams take the name of Native Americans is the problem of mimicry: having appropriated the land and wealth of America's vanquished peoples, settler culture then appropriates the supposed values and spirit of the vanquished as well.

I'm proud of being part Cherokee, and I think it's time all us Indians felt the same way.

My grandfather, Jesse Bowman, was of Abenaki Indian descent. He could barely read and write, but I remember him as one of the kindest people I ever knew. I followed him everywhere. He showed me how to walk quietly in the woods and how to fish.

I always see America as really belonging to the Native Americans. Even though I'm American, I still feel like a visitor in my own country.

The one thing about Lumbee people is that there's so many stereotypes about Native Americans, especially reservation Native Americans, and we all tend to get lumped under that umbrella. But the Lumbee are non-reservation. I grew up no different than anybody would in normal American communities.

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.

I want to tell you that if the Great Spirit had chosen anyone to be the chief of this country, it is myself.

Growing up in my mother's Pueblo household, I never imagined a world in which I would be represented by someone who looked like me.