Anishnaabe Quotes

“she never asked for recognition, because she wasn't doing it to be recognized. she did it because it filled her up.

she just carefully planted those seeds.
she just kept picking up those pieces.
she just kept visiting those old ones.
she just kept speaking her language and sitting with her mother.

she just kept on lighting that seventh fire every time it went out.

she just kept making things a little bit better, until they were.”
― Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Islands of Decolonial Love: Stories & Songs

“The trees were making their spring sounds, popping and cracking, the snow blowing by and whooshing against her skin, and spring birds making their small and distinctive calls”
― Aimée Craft, Treaty Words: For As Long As the Rivers Flow

“It seemed to Chickadee that those houses held the powers of the world. The ones who built and lived in those houses were making an outsize world. An existence he'd never dreamed of. Almost a spirit world, but one on earth. Chickadee could see that they used up forests of trees in making the houses. He could see that they were pumping up the river and even using up the animals. He thought of the many animals whose dead hides were bound and sold in St. Paul in one day. Everything that the Anishinabeg counted on in life, and loved, was going into this hungry city mouth. This mouth, this city, was wide and insatiable. it would never be satisfied, thought Chickadee dizzily, until everything was gone.”
― Louise Erdrich, Chickadee

“…for as long as the sun shines, the grass grows, and the rivers flow. Like the original treaty.”
― Aimée Craft, Treaty Words: For As Long As the Rivers Flow

“Every person was born with a set of spiritual instructions or understandings, my girl. It’s what we do with it that defines us as human beings.”
― Aimée Craft, Treaty Words: For As Long As the Rivers Flow

“The buffalo provided the fuel for fires that smoked their own meat.”
― Louise Erdrich, Chickadee

“This time, the rapids sent them through a dark tunnel that seemed timeless, blind, malevolent. A yawning throat of water.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Porcupine Year

“He wondered if he would ever see the inside of one of those houses whose great windows blared sheaves of light. They made huge blurred spears that reached out into the balmy spring darkness.”
― Louise Erdrich, Chickadee

“Although she lived in town, Old Tallow was so isolated by the force and strangeness of her personality that she could have been surrounded by a huge dark forest. She had never had any children, and each of her three husbands had slunk off in turn during the night, never to be seen again. Nobody knew exactly what it was that Tallow, in her younger days, had done to drive them off. It had probably been something terrible. After the last husband left, her face seemed to have gotten old suddenly, though the rest of her hadn’t weakened. She was a rangy woman over six feet in height. She was powerful, lean, and lived surrounded by ferocious animals more wolf than dog.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Birchbark House

“Each of Old Tallow’s feet seemed to take up as much space as a small child, but Omakayas didn’t mind. Warily, but completely, she loved the fierce old woman.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Game of Silence

“She told the holy stories and the funny stories, the aadizookaanag that explained how the world came into being, how it continued to be made.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Game of Silence

“The prairie almost seemed to mock them with its beauty. Every inch of their skin was covered with bites upon bites. Their faces were purple and swollen. The mosquitoes bit through cloth, they bit through hair, they were implacable. Every being suffered. Yet they kept moving.”
― Louise Erdrich, Chickadee

“Life had sprung up along the trail. The thin film of green in the trees had become a cloud of new leaves. Robins, bluebirds, vireos, finches, songbirds of all types made the brush along the trail a wall of sharp melody.”
― Louise Erdrich, Chickadee

“Animikiins used all his skills. But the earth is good at swallowing up all traces of people. At last, in spite Animikiins's great powers, they lost his trail.”
― Louise Erdrich, Chickadee

“Firekeepers are men who strike the fire at ceremonies. They're taught to use flint and steel or wood. They keep the fire going the entire time. We have a four-day period after someone passes away when their spirit travels to the next world. Firekeepers tend the fire for four nights and four days during Enjaakid—that's what the crossing-over journey is called. Takes lots of firewood to keep it going that long.”
― Angeline Boulley, Sisters in the Wind

“Do you know what Gimiwan means?" I ask.

"It means 'rain.”
― Angeline Boulley, Sisters in the Wind

“Gichimanidoo is our word for God. Creator. Gih-CHEE-man-ih-doe is perfect. We humans are flawed.”
― Angeline Boulley, Sisters in the Wind