Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.
— Crazy Horse
Jaw-dropping American Indian quotations
I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells.
For when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, we shall be one.
If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other.
If you do not talk to them you will not know them and what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears, one destroys.
I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole earth will become One Circle again.
We’re not Indians and we’re not Native Americans.
We’re older than both concepts. We’re the people, we’re the human beings.
Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. Its five hundred years later and they still cant see us. We are still invisible.
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children
I am tired of talk that comes to nothing It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises. There has been too much talking by men who had no right to talk. It does not require many words to speak the truth.
Above all, I wanted to be appreciated as a prima ballerina who happened to be a Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina.
Wisdom and peace come when you start living the life the creator intended for you.
One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk.
At the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit.
And that center is really everywhere. It is within each of us.
Where no one intrudes, many can live in harmony.
An Indian is an Indian regardless of the degree of Indian blood or which little government card they do or do not possess.
How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.
There is no death, only a change of worlds.
[The is] a mistaken belief that [the word Indian] refers somehow to the country, India. When Columbus washed up on the beach in the Caribbean, he was not looking for a country called India. Europeans were calling that country Hindustan in 1492.... Columbus called the tribal people he met "Indio," from the Italian in dio, meaning "in God."
We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything, and that he never forgets; that hereafter he will give every man a spirit-home according to his deserts: if he has been a good man, he will have a good home; if he has been a bad man, he will have a bad home. This I believe, and all my people believe the same.
We were told that they wished merely to pass through our country.
. . to seek for gold in the far west . . . Yet before the ashes of the council are cold, the Great Father is building his forts among us. . . . His presence here is . . . an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we then to give up their sacred graves to be allowed for corn?
It is essential to our interest and the security of our colonies that the several nations or tribes of Indians... who live under our protection, should not be molested or disturbed.
Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles.
The voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers.
Now, of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American westward expansion without any of the guilt.
Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.
The American Indian is of the soil, whether it be the region of forests, plains, pueblos, or mesas. He fits into the landscape, for the hand that fashioned the continent also fashioned the man for his surroundings. He once grew as naturally as the wild sunflowers, he belongs just as the buffalo belonged.
Brothers, we must be united; we must smoke the same pipe; we must fight each other's battles; and more than all, we must love the Great Spirit.
All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian.
The land is sacred. These words are at the core of your being. The land is our mother, the rivers our blood. Take our land away and we die. That is, the Indian in us dies.
Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library.
Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
Children must early learn the the beauty of generosity.
They are taught to give what they prize most, that they may taste the happiness of giving.
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.
It takes a strong effort on the part of each American Indian not to become Europeanized. The strength for this effort can only come from the traditional ways, the traditional values that our elders retain.
We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth as wild. Earth was beautiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.
Native Americans had only stone and wooden weapons and no animals that could be ridden. Those military advantages repeatedly enabled troops of a few dozen mounted Spaniards to defeat Indian armies numbering in the thousands.