Alaina

“Listen, baby, it makes me happy you want to know, but learning about your heritage is a privilege. A privilege we don’t have. And anyway, anything you hear from me about your heritage does not make you more or less Indian. More or less a real Indian. Don’t ever let anyone tell you what being Indian means. Too many of us died to get just a little bit of us here, right now, right in this kitchen. You, me. Every part of our people that made it is precious. You’re Indian because you’re Indian because you’re Indian,”
― Tommy Orange, There There

“Their illness is honesty, for they live in a world of lies, ruled by those who surrendered all the good things that God gived them for money, living on stolen land, taken from people whose spirits dance all around us like ghosts.”
― James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“It was a future they couldn’t quite see, where the richness of all they had brought to the great land of promise would one day be zapped into nothing, the glorious tapestry of their history boiled down to a series of ten-second TV commercials, empty holidays, and sports games filled with the patriotic fluff of red, white, and blue, the celebrants cheering the accompanying dazzle without any idea of the horrible struggles and proud pasts of their forebears who had made their lives so easy.”
― James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“And with that they left, and I hated them for their politeness, hated that they seemed perfectly nice and yet they were out here doing this heinous thing, hunting for the sake of it, not to survive, not to eat, only to feel power over another creature.”
― Charlotte McConaghy, Once There Were Wolves