27+ Paula Gunn Allen Quotes On Education, Family And Civil War

Paula Gunn Allen was a Native American poet, literary critic, and activist of Laguna Pueblo, Sioux, and Lebanese heritage. She was a prominent voice in the fields of Native American literature and feminist theory. Her works often focus on the struggles of Native American women and the importance of reclaiming Native American identity and culture. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Paula Gunn Allen on education, family, life.

Top 10 Paula Gunn Allen Quotes

1. Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist.
2. Medicine people are truly citizens of two worlds, and those who continue to walk the path of medicine power learn to keep their balance in both the ordinary and the non-ordinary worlds.
3. ... America has amnesia. ... Certainly, there is a passion for memory loss in American thought. ... Americans may be the world champion forgetters.
4. Hoop Dancer is a rendering of my understanding of the process by which one enters into timelessness -- that place where one is whole.
5. Idealization of a group is a natural consequence of separation from the group; in other words, it is a by-product of alienation.
6. An odd thing occurs in the minds of Americans when Indian civilization in mentioned: little or nothing.
7. It's a little-known linguistic curiosity that the name Jehovah or Jaweh is the same name as Eve; Havva, the counterpart name in Farsi, the language spoken by the Persians, means either Jaweh or Eve.
8. True shamans live in a world that is alive with what is to rationalist sight unseen, a world pulsing with intelligence.
9. In America, law substitutes for custom.
10. In the native world, major gods come in trios, duos, and groups. It is the habit of non-natives to discover the supreme being, the one and only head god, a habit lent to them by monotheism.

Paula Gunn Allen Short Quotes

• The shadows cannot speak.
• The root of oppression is the loss of memory.
• As long as we avoid the creative, we are condemned to reaction.
• Indians think it is important to remember, while Americans believe it is important to forget.

Paula Gunn Allen Quotes About Life

The Indians used to be the only inhabitants of the Americas, but times change. Having perceived us as belonging to history, they are free to emote over us, to re-create us in their history-based understanding, and dismiss our present lives as archaic and irrelevant to the times. — Paula Gunn Allen

We are the land. To the best of my understanding, that is the fundamental idea that permeates American Indian life. — Paula Gunn Allen

I am not especially defined by my sex life, nor complete without it. — Paula Gunn Allen

Breath is life, and the intermingling of breaths is the purpose of good living. This is in essence the great principle on which all productive living must rest, for relationships among all the beings of the universe must be fulfilled; in this way each individual life may also be fulfilled. — Paula Gunn Allen

Paula Gunn Allen Famous Quotes And Sayings

Healing the self means committing ourselves to a wholehearted willingness to be what and how we are-beings frail and fragile, strong and passionate, neurotic and balanced, diseased and whole, partial and complete, stingy and generous, twisted and straight, storm-tossed and quiescent, bound and free. — Paula Gunn Allen

My mother told me stories all the time... And in all of those stories she told me who I was, who I was supposed to be, whom I came from, and who would follow me... That's what she said and what she showed me in the things she did and the way she lives. — Paula Gunn Allen

We are the women of daylight; of clocks and steel foundries, of drugstores and streetlights, of superhighways that slice our days in two. Our dreams are pale memories of themselves, and nagging doubt is the false measure of our days. — Paula Gunn Allen

The hoop dancer dances within what encircles him, demonstrating how the people live in motion within the circling spirals of time and space. They are no more limited than water and sky. At green corn dance time, water and sky come together, in Indian time, to make rain. — Paula Gunn Allen

In the Native American tradition... a man, if he's a mature adult, nurtures life. He does rituals that will help things grow, he helps raise the kids, and he protects the people. His entire life is toward balance and cooperativeness. The ideal of manhood is the same as the ideal of womanhood. You are autonomous, self-directing, and responsible for the spiritual, social and material life of all those with whom you live. — Paula Gunn Allen

America does not seem to remember that it derived its wealth, its values, its food, much of its medicine, and a large part of its "dream" from Native Americans. — Paula Gunn Allen

For the American Indian, the ability of all creatures to share in the process of ongoing creation makes all things sacred. — Paula Gunn Allen

Human beings need to belong to a tradition and equally need to know about the world in which they find themselves. — Paula Gunn Allen

Humor is widely used by Indians to deal with life. Indian gatherings are marked by laughter and jokes, many directed at the horrors of history, at the continuing impact of colonization, and at the biting knowledge that living as an exile in one's own land necessitates. . . . Certainly the time frame we presently inhabit has much that is shabby and tricky to offer; and much that needs to be treated with laughter and ironic humor. — Paula Gunn Allen

Life Lessons by Paula Gunn Allen

1. Paula Gunn Allen's work emphasizes the importance of reclaiming one's heritage and culture, as well as the need to be mindful of the ways in which colonization has impacted native communities.
2. Through her work, she encourages readers to think critically about the power dynamics that exist between colonizers and the colonized, and how these dynamics can be challenged.
3. Her work also emphasizes the importance of storytelling as a way to preserve and celebrate a culture's history and values.