Indigenous Culture Quotes

“Kandiaronk: I have spent six years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that’s not inhuman, and I genuinely think this can only be the case, as long as you stick to your distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’. I affirm that what you call money is the devil of devils; the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils; the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one could preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity, – of all the world’s worst behaviour. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false, and all because of money. In the light of all this, tell me that we Wendat are not right in refusing to touch, or so much as to look at silver?”
― David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

“I’d been a snowflake. Without my specialness, I melted,” she says.”
― Louise Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God

“I am afraid. As afraid today as I was then. For my children, and for the good green world.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“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

“Only Indigenous people are real Canadians, Kiwis,
and Aussies, everybody else is an immigrant.
Before you yell slurs at an immigrant of today,
Start by heading back to Europe yourself.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“If you are not indigenous, you are an immigrant.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth

“Flashlights there are plenty,
Sun there is but one.
Rushmores there are plenty,
Everest there is but one.

Rushmore leers as a criminal monument,
While Everest stands as a gentle giant.
Arrogance goes together with brutality,
While valor and virtue go hand in hand.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Rowdy Scientist: Handbook of Humanitarian Science

“We go and do the things that you're calling exploring and adventuring ... and [for us] it's just regular life.”
― Gayle Kabloona

“In a world run by the indigenous, no ethnicity is the second race.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace