Indigenous Peoples Quotes

“They are caught between one world and another, and they no longer belong anywhere.”
― Alison Croggon, The River and the Book

“This story takes place on stolen land. While Sorrowland is set in a United States with a speculative and amorphous shape, the geography and settings explored are based on areas traditionally stewarded by the Tonkawa, Caddo Nation, and Lipan Apache in what are colonially known as Central and East Texas, as well as on lands historically, inhabited by various Plains nations with shifting territories, including the Apsáalooke/Crow, Oceti Sakowin/Sioux, and Arapaho, in what settlers have designated Wyoming and Montana. No story of the so-called United States is complete without an understanding of its foundation on genocide and dislocation, nor without acknowledgment of the Indigenous people still here fighting the ongoing occupation.”
― Rivers Solomon, Sorrowland

“On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson unlawfully signed the Indian Removal Act to force move southeastern peoples from our homelands to the West. We were rounded up with what we could carry. We were forced to leave behind houses, printing presses, stores, cattle, schools, pianos, ceremonial grounds, tribal towns, churches. We witnessed immigrants walking into our homes with their guns, Bibles, household goods and families, taking what had been ours, as we were surrounded by soldiers and driven away like livestock at gunpoint.

There were many trails of tears of tribal nations all over North America of indigenous peoples who were forcibly removed from their homelands by government forces.

The indigenous peoples who are making their way up from the southern hemisphere are a continuation of the Trail of Tears.

May we all find the way home.”
― Joy Harjo, An American Sunrise

“In my community, we are taught that leadership qualities include humility, compassion, a sense of fairness, the ability to listen, preparation and carry-through, a love for the people, and a strong spiritual center that begins with a connection to Earth.”
― Joy Harjo, Catching the Light

“In ancient times, when the world was cold, prosperous, and flourishing, it was a birthing place for our people. Newly married couples traveled to the cove, spending their first days as husband and wife. It is where love began.”
― Lily H. Tuzroyluke, Sivulliq: Ancestor

“I would rather not speak with history but history came to me.
It was dark before daybreak when the fire sparked.
The men left on a hunt from the Pequot village here where I stand.
The women and children left behind were set afire.
I do not want to know this, but my gut knows the language of bloodshed.
Over six hundred were killed, to establish a home for God’s people, crowed the Puritan leaders in their Sunday sermons.
And then history was gone in a betrayal of smoke.
There is still burning though we live in a democracy erected over the burial ground.”
― Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems

“Something about it will make sense. The bullets been coming from miles. Years. Their sounds will break the water in our bodies, tear sound itself, rip our lives in half. The tragedy of it all will be unspeakable, the fact that we've been fighting for decades to be recognized as present-tense people, modern and relevant, alive, only to die in the grass wearing feathers.”
― Tommy Orange (author)

“I do not think I was capable of understanding, as I was only six. My mother became distant and shut her feelings as she left me. How could she explain to me—a six-year-old—what was going to happen to me? This was a hopeless situation for both of us. A mother giving up her child to strangers is one of the hardest things to do, and I would soon know what alone meant.”
― Karen Chaboyer, They Called Me 33: Reclaiming Ingo-Waabigwan

“There can be no question that the entirety of the continental United States has been expropriated from its original, indigenous inhabitants, with incalculably harmful consequences accruing to them in the process. From a moral perspective, it should be equally clear that no humane solution to the overall issues confronting any American radical can reasonably be said to exist, should it exclude mechanisms through which to safeguard the residual land base and cultural identities of these people.”
― Ward Churchill, Marxism and Native Americans

“I surveyed the country that had cost us so much trouble, anxiety and blood, and that now caused me to be a prisoner of war. I reflected upon the ingratitude of the whites when I saw their fine houses, rich harvests and everything desirable around them; and
recollected that all this land had been ours, for which I and my people had never received a dollar, and that the whites were not satisfied until they took our village and our graveyards from us and removed us
across the Mississippi.”
― Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak (Black Hawk)

“Ghost Dancers Rise: At the 500th anniversary of Columbus's landing, tribal leaders gathered in Washington, DC, for a ceremony in front of the Capitol. They could have dwelt on the catastrophes that were Columbus's legacy, but instead they closed the ceremony with these words:

We stand young warriors
In the circle
At dawn all storm clouds disappear
The future brings all hope and glory,
Ghost dancers rise
Five-hundred years.”
― Eldon Yellowhorn, Kathy Lowinger

“But the Mohawk call themselves the Kanienkeha - People of the Flint - and flint does not melt easily into the great American melting pot”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

“It's time we stop celebrating October 11 as Columbus Day and consider it as "Repentance Day", to acknowledge, and make amends for, the appalling atrocities committed by mindless and heartless oppressors like Columbus.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Veins Ignite: Either Integration or Degradation

“Unknown Indigenous people don’t receive any help, they vanish as silently as they have lived.”
― Jean-Philippe Soulé

“Unknown Indigenous peoples don’t receive any help; They vanish as silently as they have lived.”
― Jean-Philippe Soulé, Dancing with Death: An Inspiring Real-Life Story of Epic Travel Adventure

“Letters and diaries sometimes bring us close to grand moments or touching scenes in the history of Euro-Americans, but harkening back to the thoughts and feelings of the less powerful, we meet only silence”
― Camilla Townsend, Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs

“When Marquette asked his [Algonquin] guides what people lived on this river, they replied, "mihsoori", or "wehmihsoori" which in their Algonquin language describes a wooden canoe... Missouri is therefore translated as "people of wood canoes.”
― Michael E. Dickey, The People of the River's Mouth: In Search of the Missouria Indians (Volume 1)

“Language is one way of determining relationships among American Indian nations. The Missouria are of the Siouan-language family, speaking a dialect known as the Chiwere. Other tribes speaking this dialect were the Ho Chunk (Winnebago), the Wahtohtana (Otoe, and the Baxoje (Ioway). William Clark said these tribes spoke the same language and correctly surmised they were "once one great nation.”
― Michael E. Dickey, The People of the River's Mouth: In Search of the Missouria Indians (Volume 1)

“Popular belief considers Christopher Columbus as some sort of hero, while in reality he was a murderer. While the world admires him as a brave explorer, all this brainless buffoon did was sail around the Caribbean and slaughtered innocent natives who greeted him with nothing but hospitality. You don't discover a land where people are already living. On top of that, when someone invades their land and starts looting, pillaging and slaughtering, he is neither brave, nor an explorer, he's just a petty thief and brut.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Veins Ignite: Either Integration or Degradation

“How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.”
― Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak (Black Hawk)

“Gud skapte mennesket i sitt bilde
dáža ville omskape samen
i sitt”
― Mary Ailonieida Sombán Mari, Beaivváš mánát/Leve blant reptiler

“My children tell stories of the ancient world, the old world. They search for Little People on the tundra, little beings not taller than a human hand. They tell stories of strong men who stayed underwater for days. The strong men cupped their hands against the ocean floor, breathing with pockets of air made by their cupped hands. My children try to forget death by telling these old stories. They’ve carried dead bodies to the graveyard with their own youthful hands.”
― Lily H. Tuzroyluke, Sivulliq: Ancestor

“The healers drained our old blood in the arms or back of the knee. They tattooed ancient symbols on our bodies, especially children. Tattoos protect our spirits.”
― Lily H. Tuzroyluke, Sivulliq: Ancestor

“Instead, I think of my husband hunting in the foothills surrounded by fog, walking on tawny rocks and smoky green lichen, like we did in our early days of marriage when we wandered in the country on our dog sled, unrushed, unhurried, filled, and content.”
― Lily H. Tuzroyluke, Sivulliq: Ancestor

“In ancient times, at this shallow cove, the Koyukon attacked our people. The women fought alongside the men, running half-naked from their homes to show their courage. The Elders took the children into their umiaqs, fleeing to the sea. The Elders shielded the children’s eyes but could not shield their ears, and land went silent. The Elders and children buried the Inupiaq and Koyukon people side-by-side on the stilts of the whalebone, then they journeyed north to begin again.”
― Lily H. Tuzroyluke, Sivulliq: Ancestor

“On an idyllic summer day, we walked through the meadows and hillsides, sitting in circles, laughing and filling sacks of cottongrass, salmonberries, crowberries, cranberries, mountain alder, northern golden rod, and rose hip roots. We collected cloudberry tea and Labrador tea, and wild celery. The Elders walked together, laughing, talking of the old days when they would travel to the Messenger Feasts, across the channel to Siberia, or south to trade in Qikiqtaġruk. We’d mix a dessert of fresh berries and lard, whipping and whipping the lard until fluffy.”
― Lily H. Tuzroyluke, Sivulliq: Ancestor

“Imagine if we natives went to the cemeteries in your cities and dug up your beloved relatives, pulled off rings, watches, and clothes, and called them "artifacts," then carried the bones over to the university for study so we could understand you. Consider that there are more bones of native people in universities and museums for study, than there are those of us living.”
― Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems

“Given that the United States purportedly annexed Hawai'i in 1898, before these statements were negotiated, those who cite them apply them retroactively. In this logic Hawai'i is merely occupied by the United States; kingdom nationalists argue that Hawai'i was never colonized: therefore decolonization is an inappropriate political strategy. Because the Hawaiian nation afforded citizenship to people who were not Kanaka Maoli [native people to Hawai'i] - and because of its status as an independent state - kingdom nationalists tend to distance themselves from Indigenous rights discourse as well.”
― J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism

“The status of domestic dependent nation that would be granted Native Hawaiians through a process of federal recognition does not recognize the kingdom's history of sovereign existence or take into account the unjust occupation or overthrow of the monarch inflicted by the U.S. government. At the same time, relying on presently existing international law regarding Indigenous Peoples also has the limitation that in tis present state such law still gives priority to existing nation-states and puts the preexisting rights of Indigenous People as nations on a back burner.”
― J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism

“Secretary Gu said that if we left the mountains with our reindeer, it would also be a way of protecting the forest. Roaming reindeer damaged the vegetation and disturbed the balance of the ecosystem. And anyway, wild animals are protected now so hunting is prohibited.
Only a people that is willing to lay down it's hunting rifles, he added, is a truly civilised people with a promising future.

I really wanted to tell him that our reindeer have always kissed the forest. Compared to the loggers who number in the tens of thousands, we and our animals are just a handful of dragonflies skimming the water's surface. If the river that is this forest has been polluted, how could it be due to the passage of a few dragonflies?

But I didn't say any of that to him.”
― Chi Zijian