Indigenous Knowledge Quotes

“The root of oppression is loss of memory”
― Paula Gunn Allen

“The war between good and evil is in reality an imposition of stupidity and simplicity over wisdom and complexity.”
― Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

“Indians think it is important to remember, while Americans believe it is important to forget.”
― Paula Gunn Allen

“If American society judiciously modelled the traditions of the various Native nations, the place of women in society would be central, the distribution of goods and power would be egalitarian, the elderly would be respected, honoured and protected as a primary social and cultural resource, the ideals of physical beauty would be considerably enlarge (the include "fat", strong-featured women, grey-haired and wrinkled individuals and others who in contemporary american culture are viewed as "ugly")”
― Paula Gunn Allen

“If the Sun is the source of flow in the economy of nature, what is the “Sun” of a human gift economy, the source that consonantly replenishes the flow of gifts? Maybe it is love.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

“we make a grave error when we try to separate individual well-being from the health of the whole.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“Country is the boss.”
― Victor Steffensen

“The patriarchal theory of evolution, no matter how refined and intellectualized is nothing but an apology for racism, sexism, and what we term "androcentrism", defined as an erroneous conception of nature that places man at the centre of creation and denies non-human (and indeed, non-masculine) beings their particular spirituality and their equality in relation to life's balance.”
― Georges E. Sioui, For an Amerindian Autohistory: An Essay on the Foundations of a Social Ethic (Volume 9)

“Buffalo belong to the Creator.”
― Deirdre Havrelock

“Up in the sky, a star twinkled just right. The Buffalo understood.
Millions of heavy-hoofed beasts stormed the heavens, jolting Kokum from bed.”
― Deirdre Havrelock, Buffalo Wild

“Buffalo belong to the Creator.”
― Deidre Havrelock, Buffalo Wild!

“When I stare too long at the world with science eyes, I see an afterimage of traditional knowledge. Might science and traditional knowledge be purple and yellow to one another, might they be goldenrod and asters? We see the world more fully when we use both.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“Proponents of the default assumptions of Western thinking will make the unsurprising claim that this is anthropomorphizing, pro- jecting human characteristics on non-humans. Such an unfortunate coincidence that we have no term for the inverse flaw, assuming that only humans possess what are actually widespread traits. In recent decades, biologists have rediscovered what others never forgot: that other living beings think, feel, learn, play, and can be sad or happy. Ritual, culture, intergenerational learning, and mourning are also being documented in a growing body of research”
― Peter Gelderloss

“Proponents of the default assumptions of Western thinking will make the unsurprising claim that this is anthropomorphizing, projecting human characteristics on non-humans. Such an unfortunate coincidence that we have no term for the inverse flaw, assuming that only humans possess what are actually widespread traits. In recent decades, biologists have rediscovered what others never forgot: that other living beings think, feel, learn, play, and can be sad or happy. Ritual, culture, intergenerational learning, and mourning are also being documented in a growing body of research”
― Peter Gelderloss

“It's so stupid, this idea that land can be owned. Land, which existed long before people... It doesn't belong to us. If anything, the soil owns us. It lets us move around for a bit and then it takes us back.”
― Alistair Mackay, It Doesn't Have to Be This Way

“The ninth sign. A Blue Kachina in the sky. If it occurs, the Fourth World will end, all will die. The Fifth World will commence, but without all living creatures.”
― G.G. Collins, Anasazi Medium

“In my solitude, I am comforted—for I return to the earth, to the beat of time meant for all creatures. I am reminded of my impermanence, of my eventual return to the water, to the soil, to the trees. I am whole, I am complete, I am no longer segregated from my brothers and sisters in creation. They are me, I am them—bound by the same laws, genes, energy, and time. 


I am nothing; I am nature.”
― Sophie Hicks, Fighting Freud: A memoir exploring anger, intergenerational trauma and narcissistic abuse

“So I lived in their midst, always on the fringes, insignificant, and they spoke freely in my presence.
I saw how little regard they had for us, how much they held us in low esteem. They did not know us, and were not really interested in knowing us either. By virtue of their faith, their mission, and their biases, they did not have to: they knew better than us, both what we needed and how we should live.
I cannot discount the unparalleled work they did in education and healthcare. I would not have had a formal education had it not been part of their plan. The free dispensary was always full, rolling back childhood diseases in the region. I saw them clean the most putrid wounds with a straight face. Yet, their mission required locals to forfeit ancestral practices, including our indigenous languages, which we were forbidden from using in their presence. The essence of our being in the world, its core tenet, ingrained in us across generations, was being violently questioned. Their work demanded allegiance, utter surrender, from us.
I did not realise this then, but these demands threw us off balance, divided us, made us doubt ourselves and weakened us. They birthed a cruel conflict in us, putting our loyalty to the test. We were inhabited by this childish and conflicting desire to please and resist them all at the same time.
Our people claimed neither detachment from the world nor dominion over it. We did not have the universe and its mysteries, meant to be conquered, subjugated on one side, and humankind, the mighty owner of it all, on the other.
We were the world and the world was us: water, wind, sand, the past, the future, the living, the dead... we were all woven into the fabric of the world. They, however, had appropriated it, simplified it to make it intelligible and malleable. They had invented words and concepts that dismissed our more complex and comprehensive intuitive understanding of reality. There is no denying that, seen through their eyes, conceptualised in their terms, the world was unmistakeably coherent, logical. For those of us who embraced the mysteries of the world, the encounter was a matter of course, and a tragedy. I doubt we will ever fully grasp the exact extent of our distress.
Today, I believe Western knowledge is both simple and despotic. There is only one God and he is present in church. Education is found only in textbooks. Art is separate from spirituality, confined to specific spaces. The law applies equally to everyone and all values have a price.
The sole measure of success is material. Our paths in life are already charted, marked out, and you can choose to follow... the path assigned to you. A promise of comfort, a ready-made life so enticing it warrants universalisation; a dream no human should be denied. Masters, gurus travel the world to guide lost peoples towards this path of salvation, readily resorting to violence to crush every resistance, driven by the firm conviction that their philosophy is the philosophy and their religion the religion.
Perhaps it spread so far and wide due to the active proselytism inherent to the Western vision of the world, or maybe it was so easy to replicate because it was the most simplistic doctrine ever developed by humans—it did a better job of dismissing our diversity and disregarding the complexity of our being. Our material realities would become more bearable, that was the promise. It mattered not that this would devastate nature and leave our inner beings shuddering with anxiety.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“We have come a long way, but the amount of wisdom we could learn from the Indigenous people and their ecological practices to create sustainable civilizations is multitudinous.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya, Our Nepal, Our Pride

“On a planet with 300 million species and 7 billion humans, one man determining the future is a dangerous idea. It is dangerous for the Earth, because the anthropocentric, reductionist, and mechanistic assumptions by which Gates is guided are at the root of the ecological crisis that has brought us to the brink.”
― Vandana Shiva, One Earth, One Humanity vs. the 1%

“We have been led to identify ourselves with our destructive side - and that which we have become identified, we overvalue and empower. This has been happening for many generations, reinforcing this harmful image of ourselves.”
― Arkan Lushwala, The Time of the Black Jaguar: An Offering of Indigenous Wisdom for the Continuity of Life on Earth

“This planet needs gentler creatures living on it.”
― Miki Mitayn, The Conscious Virus