Tribal Identity Quotes

“There are 566 Indian tribes, bands, and Alaska Native villages recognized by the BIA, and no one could be expected to know the name of every one.”
― Mark Edwin Miller, Claiming Tribal Identity: The Five Tribes and the Politics of Federal Acknowledgment

“A host of scholars who have studied surviving southeastern Indian groups conclude that few if any of these peoples possess cultures that do not bear the mark of significant contact with nonindigenous societies. Even the most “traditional,” such as the Seminoles of Florida, whom Nancy O. Lurie describes as “Contact-Traditional,” were significantly altered from precolonial days by the time pioneer “salvage” ethnologists described their cultural traits and created laundry lists that have since become benchmarks for defining aboriginal culture in the region. To many more traditional reservation-based groups, having surviving Indian cultural traits is extremely important to proving authenticity, although they are not required for acknowledgement via the BIA process. The existence of surviving Indian cultural traits is highly persuasive to most observers in proving that a group still exists as a viable tribal community.”
― Mark Edwin Miller, Claiming Tribal Identity: The Five Tribes and the Politics of Federal Acknowledgment

“We, tribals, we have no history or historian to chronicle the wars we fought, number of people we killed. We have no King, no President and no prince or princess to nurture. We have no God or goddess to worship. It is air, water, fire, trees, rivers and land; our benefactors, we nurtured and take succour from.”
― Amar Mudi

“Thus, she begin her own journey. Along the way, she will transform into Unniyachi, the aboriginal mother, into Kanchana Seetha and Sree Kurumba; into Vanadurga, the goddess of the forest, and Jaladurga, the goddess of the water; and into Kali, the primordial power.

She will ride the waves between life and myth into the darkness of stories that are brighter than light.

Through fields of marigolds to the slope of Kannanthalikunnu...

To forest verges where the chempakam blooms...
To screw-pine-scented canal banks...
To riverbanks red with the blood of revolution...

Through it all, Manjadikunnu will keep her company, silently, as the night of stories unfolds.”
― Sheela Tomy, Valli