Native People Quotes

“The boys are afraid of Opal, like she was always afraid of her mom. Something about how brief and direct she is. Maybe hypercritical too, like her mom was hypercritical. It’s to prepare them for a world made for Native people not to live but to die in, shrink, disappear. She needs to push them harder because it will take more for them to succeed than someone who is not Native. It’s because she failed to do anything more than disappear herself. She’s no-nonsense with them because she believes life will do its best to get at you. Sneak up from behind and shatter you into tiny unrecognizable pieces.”
― Tommy Orange, There There

“Whose voice was first sounded on this land? The voice of the red people who had but bows and arrows. [...] What has been done in my country I did not want, did not ask for it; white people going through my country. [...] When the white man comes in my country he leaves a trail of blood behind him. [...] I have two mountains in that country--the Black Hills and the Big Horn Mountain. I want the Great Father to make no roads through them.”
― Red Cloud

“It is hard to follow the white man's way. We Native people must use our own way, use what our own hearts tell us, no matter what we talk about - welfare, housing, problems in marriage, spirituality.”
― Rita Joe, Song of Rita Joe: Autobiography of a Mi'kmaq Poet