Indigenous people believe that Man belongs to the World; civilized people believe that the World belongs to Man. — Daniel Quinn
A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people. — Mahatma Gandhi
Ecosystems majorly shape culture — but then that culture can be exported and persist in radically different places for millennia. — Robert M. Sapolsky
Here in Australia, we’re fortunate enough to have one of the richest and oldest continuing cultures in the world. This is something we should all be proud of and celebrate. — Aboriginal proverbs
Aboriginal people are key because they have a different sense of where we belong and how we interact with nature. — David Suzuki
No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive. — Mahatma Gandhi
National liberation is necessarily an act of culture — Amilcar Cabral
The vitality of a culture is in its capacity to assimilate foreign influences. The culture that's defensive and closed condemns itself to decadence. — Juan Goytisolo
Culture is everything. Culture is the way we dress, the way we carry our heads, the way we walk, the way we tie our ties - it is not only the fact of writing books or building houses. — Aime Cesaire
A culture is a total way of life. It embraces what people ate and what they wore; the way they walked and the way they talked; the manner in which they treated death and greeted the newborn. — Walter Rodney
A national culture, if it is to flourish, should be a constellation of cultures, the constitutes of which, benefiting each other, benefit the whole. — T. S. Eliot
The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit. — Wade Davis
Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures. — Cesar Chavez
You should always respect what you are and your culture because if your art is going to mean anything, that is where it comes from. — Romare Bearden
The true foundation of all culture is the knowledge and understanding of water. — Viktor Schauberger
Short Indigenous Culture Quotes
Your culture sets your expectation for what is 'normal.' — James Clear
Multi-culture is the real culture of the world - the pure race doesn’t exist. — Keanu Reeves
Culture arises and unfolds in and as play... culture itself bears the character of play. — Johan Huizinga
Culture is not a biologically transmitted complex — Ruth Benedict
Culture opens our hearts to one another. And the currency in culture is not money, but trust. — Yo-Yo Ma
We are increasingly recognising and accepting, respecting and celebrating, our cultural diversity. — Julie Bishop
Indigenous Culture Image Quotes
You dont have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
Indigenous People Quotes
We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism. — Rigoberta Menchu
I am against the fact that a settler minority should impose an entire system of values on an indigenous people. — Steven Biko
To annihilate indigenous populations eventually paves the way to our own annihilation. They are the only people who practice sustainable living. We think they are relics of the past, but they may be the gatekeepers to our future. — Arundhati Roy
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.
We must respect each other's right to choose a collective destiny, and the opportunity to develop the legal and political rights for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples so that we may enjoy the right to maintain our culture, our heritage and our land, as a united Australia. — Jackie Huggins
Although we are in different boats you in your boat and we in our canoe we share the same river of life. — Oren Lyons
We have our eye on the same destination – a sustainable future where Indigenous people are recognized for their wisdom and honored for their culture – there is no problem taking a different path to reach that place. — Aboriginal proverbs
I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.
Through consciousness, our minds have the power to change our planet and ourselves. It is time we heed the wisdom of the ancient indigenous people and channel our consciousness and spirit to tend the garden and not destroy it. — Bruce H. Lipton
Baldness that appears to be normal is a disease in Europe, almost all of them are bald, and that is because of the things they eat; while among the indigenous peoples there are no bald people, because we eat other things. — Evo Morales
As it has for America's other indigenous peoples, I believe the United States must fulfill its responsibility to Native Hawaiians. — Daniel Akaka
As it has for America's other indigenous peoples, I believe the United States must fulfill its responsibility to Native Hawaiians. — Daniel Kahikina Akaka
Indigenous Quotes
If the society that we're talking about is a society that starts wars all over the world, degrades indigenous cultures, is misogynistic in itself, if that's the society we're talking about, then it's not a bad thing if hip-hop did degrade that society. — KRS-One
All of this got me thinking about the history of the westward expansion, and got me to wondering how the exploration of the Solar System would be changed if there were an indigenous presence out there. — Sarah Zettel
To reach your heart, as every indigenous tribe I know has told me, you must first remember your Divine Mother... Your Mother is alive and very much conscious... Earth is not a rock, she has a name and a personality in the cosmos. And believe me, she knows your name. — Drunvalo Melchizedek
Your culture is your brand
My stiffest earthly assignment is ended and my major life's work is done. My country is now free and I have been honoured to be its first indigenous head of state. What more could one desire in life? — Nnamdi Azikiwe
Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison with those of other continents. In those centuries, Africans were politically free and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and their cultures truly indigenous. — Haile Selassie
We live in an age that's repeating itself endlessly. We're getting closer again to the techno-chic world we saw in Atlantis that occurs in countless planes. It's indigenous to enlightenment. — Frederick Lenz
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
I believe very firmly that indigenous populations had a really good, intuitive understanding of why we're here. And we're trying to gain that same understanding through psychology and intellect in modern civilization. — Serj Tankian
Dear Iranian nation, your children have placed the first indigenous satellite into orbit. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Then, I realized that there is an indigenous presence in the Solar System. It's us. So, then, I got to wondering what would happen if a more technologically advanced society moved next door to us, the way we moved next door to the American Indians. — Sarah Zettel
In more recent years, I've become more and more fascinated with the indigenous folklore of this land, Native American folklore, and also Hispanic folklore now that I live in the Southwest. — Terri Windling
Native American Culture Quotes
Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples. — Rigoberta Menchu
Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library. — Luther Standing Bear
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. — Luther Standing Bear
Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home. — Tecumseh
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that a man's heart away from nature becomes hard. — Luther Standing Bear
In the end, there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will be determined by the government that has been responsible for doing everything in its power to destroy Native American cultures. — Winona LaDuke
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. — Rick Renzi
Instead of kids just hearing about beads and baskets and fringe, and about what 'was' and 'were,' we present Native American culture as a living contemporary culture. — Buffy Sainte-Marie
Native Americans are not and must not be props in a sort of theme park of the past, where we go to have a good time and see exotic cultures. “What we have done to the peoples who were living in North America” is, according to anthropologist Sol Tax, “our Original Sin. — James W. Loewen
Native American Indian Quotes
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
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. — Crazy Horse
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. — Chief Dan George
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. — Crazy Horse
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. — John Trudell
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children — Chief Seattle
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. — John Trudell
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. — Chief Joseph
Wisdom and peace come when you start living the life the creator intended for you. — Geronimo
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. — Maria Tallchief
Native American Quotes
If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you'll learn things you never knew you never knew. — Pocahontas
Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South, I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native State? — Robert E. Lee
May the stars carry your sadness away, may the flowers fill your heart with beauty, may hope forever wipe away your tears. And, above all, may silence make you strong. — Chief Dan George
Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty. — Chief Joseph
One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk. — Crazy Horse
There is a direct connection between violence against the Earth and violence against women. — Lee Maracle
At the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit. And that center is really everywhere. It is within each of us. — Black Elk
Earth does not belong to us; we belong to earth. Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints. — Chief Seattle
The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. — Chief Seattle
Cows run away from the storm while the buffalo charges toward it - and gets through it quicker. Whenever I’m confronted with a tough challenge, I do not prolong the torment, I become the buffalo. — Wilma Mankiller
Indian Tribes Quotes
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. — George III
"I used to think the world was broken down by tribes," I said. "By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not." — Sherman Alexie
Infectious diseases introduced with Europeans, like smallpox and measles, spread from one Indian tribe to another, far in advance of Europeans themselves, and killed an estimated 95% of the New World's Indian population. — Jared Diamond
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. — Charles Alexander Eastman
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. — Tecumseh
I'm so sick and tired of hearing about slavery. You think slavery didn't exist in Africa? Even Indian tribes. — David Duke
No contact with savage Indian tribes has ever daunted me more than the morning I spent with an old lady swathed in woolies who compared herself to a rotten herring encased in a block of ice. — Claude Levi-Strauss
Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man ... cannot be exempt from the common destiny. — Chief Seattle
From several of the Indian tribes inhabiting the country bordering on Lake Erie purchases have been made of lands on conditions very favorable to the United States, and, as it is presumed, not less so to the tribes themselves. — James Monroe
[last words] What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. — Crowfoot
Native American Indian Inspirational Quotes
Where no one intrudes, many can live in harmony. — Chief Dan George
How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right. — Black Hawk
Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles. — Black Elk
Don't let yesterday use up too much of today. — Will Rogers
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. — Mary Brave Bird
If a man loses anything and goes back and looks carefully for it, he will find it. — Sitting Bull
Old age is not as honorable as death, but most people seek it. — David Gemmell
Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new sweet earth and the Great Silence alone. — Charles Alexander Eastman
Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus should we do, for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World. — Black Elk
Listen, or your tongue will make you deaf. — Terri Farley
Aboriginal Quotes
If Australia is The Lucky Country, the Aborigines must be the unluckiest people in the world. — Frank Hardy
The more you know the less you talk. — A. R. Rahman
The majority of Aboriginals do not want handouts because they realise that welfare is killing them. — Pauline Hanson
The Pilgrim Fathers landed on the shores of America and fell on their knees; then they fell upon the aborigines. — American Proverbs
My art speaks and will continue to speak, transcending barriers of nationality, language and other forces that may be divisive, fortifying the greatness of the spirit that has always been the foundation of the Ojibwa people. — Norval Morrisseau
If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is tied up with mine, then let us work together. — Lilla Watson
Let no-one say the past is dead, the past is all about us and within. — Oodgeroo Noonuccal
I wasn't aware of the impact that I had made on the lives of Aboriginal people until I did a bit of travelling and visited various communities throughout Victoria. To see the way that my people looked at me and to know that I made a difference to them was an honour. — Lionel Rose
Present governments are encouraging separatism in Australia by providing opportunities, land, moneys and facilities available only to Aboriginals. — Pauline Hanson
I'm going to win it for my country. I'm the first Aboriginal to win this. Isn't that something? I wish my Dad was alive to see it. He'd be as proud as I am. — Lionel Rose
Indian Culture Quotes
The true India resides in its villages. — Charan Singh
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. — Luther Standing Bear
The purification required is not of untouchables but of the so-called superior castes. — Mahatma Gandhi
Indian culture certainly gives the Indian mind, including the mind of the Indian scientist, the ability to think out of the box. — Roland Joffe
I kept on trying to use so many media and ideas in my work because our horizon is so vast and Indian culture is so rich that I think what we are today, culturally, we have a unique position and I don't think one lifetime is enough to encompass it. — M. F. Husain
The mystery school continued throughout the greater Egyptian civilization, which was the second age of humankind and later on into the third age of humankind when the Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan high cultures flourished — Frederick Lenz
Like almost everyone else in America, I grew up believing the myth of the objective scientist. Fortunately I was raised on the edges of two very distinct cultures, western European and American Indian. — Vine Deloria Jr.
The major adventure is to claim your authentic, true being, which is not culturally given to you. The culture will not explain to you how to be a real human being. It will tell you how to be banker, politician, Indian chief, masseuses, actress, whatever, but it will not give you true being. — Terence McKenna
We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man's mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from Coca-cola and hamburger cultural backgrounds. — Steven Biko
The role of globalization is to homogenize all cultures, and to turn them into commodified markets, and therefore, to make them easier for global corporations to control. Global corporations are even now trying to commodify all remaining aspects of national cultures, not to mention indigenous cultures. — Jerry Mander
For Indigenous peoples , the impact of separating us from our heritage goes directly to the heart that pumps life through our peoples. To expect a people to be able to enjoy their culture without their cultural heritage and their sacred belongings is equivalent to amputating their legs and digging up the ground and asking them to run a marathon. — Mick Dodson
An indigenous feminism has been present in every culture in the world and in every period of history since the suppression of women began. — Robin Morgan
We focus on bringing back Indigenous languages, ceremonies, cultures, traditions - all that was lost over the past 150 years. This is how we'll generate hope - for all Canadian people. — Perry Bellegarde
We need to return to learning about the land by being on the land, or better, by being in the thick of it. That is the best way we can stay in touch with the fates of its creatures, its indigenous cultures, its earthbound wisdom. That is the best way we can be in touch with ourselves. — Gary Paul Nabhan
I find a difference between what gets called world music - a fusion of western music and music from different cultures in more of a modernized version - and Explorer Series stuff, which is completely undiluted indigenous folk music. That's a lot more powerful than a lot of the super-processed stuff that comes out now. — Glenn Kotche
I started studying indigenous cultures and I was really inspired by their life styles and the way that they lived. Part of that was knowing how to survive in the wild and knowing how to heal themselves from the plants that grew around them. — Shailene Woodley
We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means--all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity. — Derrick Jensen
As nations we should also commit afresh to righting past wrongs. In Australia we began this recently with the first Australians - the oldest continuing culture in human history. On behalf of the Australian Parliament, this year I offered an apology to indigenous Australians for the wrongs they had suffered in the past. — Kevin Rudd
Shamanism is a kind of universal spiritual practice with indigenous cultures around the world, and one important element of it is taking care of spirits. — Daniel Pinchbeck
The thing we often forget to talk about, or perhaps we take for granted, is our country’s dazzling beauty. Our natural environment is so much a part of Australia’s art, writing, music and culture, both indigenous and non indigenous. — Quentin Bryce
Wherever wolves run free, indigenous cultures have revered them as symbols of loyalty, free will, fearlessness and unity. But wolves haven't had it easy in North America, where negative myths prevail. Fear-based stereotypes and use of public lands for cattle ranching have resulted in Mother Nature's dogs being aggressively persecuted to the point of near extinction. — Zoe Helene
Indigenous people have discovered that Christianity is not inherently Western but universal - 'translatable' into any cultural idiom. — Nancy Pearcey
If people lose their land, they have nothing. You lose your land - you lose your culture, you lose self. — Richard Gere
In the case of my country, Guatemala, 65% of the inhabitants are indigenous. The constitution speaks of protection for the indigenous. Who authorized a minority to protect an immense majority? It is not only political, cultural and economic marginalization, it is an attempt against the dignity of the majority of the population. — Rigoberta Menchu
There seems also to be a tremendous risk to indigenous cultures if we insist that all scholarship be conducted in English. We are, for example, dealing with ancient and very highly-developed cultures in Korea, Japan, China and the Middle East. What is the impact on cultural and scholarly vitality forcing everyone to do their work in English? I do not have an answer, but this issue has been very much on my mind. — Henry Rosovsky
There is something about the light, the heat (physical and perhaps metaphysical), the vibrancy of street life, and the rawness and disjointedness of much of the tropical world that has moved and disturbed me - in places where the indigenous culture is often transformed by an external northern culture (sometimes my own... I suspect that one has a few serious creative obsessions in life. I certainly cannot seem to escape this one. — Alex Webb
The problem is that those of us sympathetic with the plight of indigenous people view them as quaint and colorful, but somehow reduced to margins of history as the real world [(our world)] moves on We will be known as an era in which we stood by and either actively endorsed or passively accepted the massive destruction of both biological and cultural diversity on the planet. — Wade Davis
He [Hugo Chavez] put poverty at the heart of political debate. Rightly so, given the country's immense inequality and poverty. He invested heavily in social programs such as literacy, health clinics, and education. He promoted Venezuela's indigenous culture and urged compatriots to take pride in its pre-Columbian history. He called time on the US treating Latin America as its backyard. — Rory Carroll
It seemed [there are] musical nodes on the planet where cultures meet and mix, sometimes as a result of unfortunate circumstances, like slavery or something else, in places like New Orleans and Havana and Brazil. And those are places where the European culture and indigenous culture and African culture all met and lived together, and some new kind of culture and especially music came out of that. — David Byrne
If people can't acknowledge the wisdom of indigenous cultures, then that's their loss. — Jay Griffiths
Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers. ...How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis? — Robert Jensen
Many of the tribal reservations today remain mired in poverty and alcoholism because many native [sic] Americans continue to cling to the darkness of indigenous superstition instead of coming into the light of Christianity and assimilating into Christian culture. — Bryan Fischer
The term Hispanic, coined by technomarketing experts and by the designers of political campaigns, homogenizes our cultural diversity (Chicanos, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans become indistinguishable), avoids our indigenous cultural heritage and links us directly with Spain. Worse yet, it possesses connotations of upward mobility and political obedience. — Guillermo Gomez-Pena
The indigenous peoples understand that they have to recover their cultural identity, or to live it if they have already recovered it. They also understand that this is not a favor or a concession, but simply their natural right to be recognized as belonging to a culture that is distinct from the Western culture, a culture in which they have to live their own faith. — Samuel Ruiz
Citizenship has not delivered Indigenous Australians the same quality of life other Australians expect. Basic human rights involve health, housing, education, employment, economic opportunity, and equality before the law, and respect for cultural identity and cultural diversity. These human rights must be capable of being enjoyed otherwise they are empty gestures. — Jackie Huggins
Cultural survival is not about preservation, sequestering indigenous peoples in enclaves like some sort of zoological specimens. Change itself does note destroy a culture. All societies are constantly evolving. Indeed a culture survives when it has enough confidence in its past and enough say in its future to maintain its spirit and essence through all the changes it will inevitably undergo. — Wade Davis
In Conclusion
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