Indigenous Quotes

1. "With THC in your system, you don't dream. And you need to. Otherwise it is like losing one of your senses. Dreams are part of your wholeness. ... when you're dreaming, you're not the one calling the shots. So it's a reprieve. ... the dream world had rules in it. You couldn't read a clock in your dreams. It would not give you the time. If the lights were on in a room, you could not turn them off in a dream. ... in indigenous tribes all over the world, the dream world was like church. [p. 247]"
Author: Anne Lamott

2. "Through consciousness, our minds have the power to change our planet and ourselves. It is time we heed the wisdom of the ancient indigenous people and channel our consciousness and spirit to tend the garden and not destroy it."
Author: Bruce Lipton

3. "As it has for America's other indigenous peoples, I believe the United States must fulfill its responsibility to Native Hawaiians."
Author: Daniel Akaka

4. "Adams has shown a nearly inexhaustible desire, leavened with an equal amount of sheer talent- five decades' worth and counting- in an unrelenting effort to stabilize, strengthen, and improve the standing of indigenous peoples, minority groups, and the larger society as well. He is an exemplary Native activist, indeed."
Author: David E. Wilkins

5. "Planting native species in our gardens and communities is increasingly important, because indigenous insects, birds and wildlife rely on them. Over thousands, and sometimes millions, of years they have co-evolved to live in local climate and soil conditions."
Author: David Suzuki

6. "So many indigenous people have said to me that the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that even the most open-minded westerners generally view listening to the natural world as a metaphor, as opposed to the way the world really is. Trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us."
Author: Derrick Jensen

7. "I support the indigenous people anywhere in the planet."
Author: Edward James Olmos

8. "Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed:1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer;2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind."
Author: Eric Hoffer

9. "This is a coca leaf. This is not cocaine. This represents the culture of indigenous people of the Andean region."
Author: Evo Morales

10. "Pride and resentment are not indigenous to the human heart; and perhaps it is due to the gardener's innate love of the exotic that we take such pains to make them thrive"."
Author: Hope Mirrlees

11. "As my grandfather once famously shouted, in a drunken stupor, "You can't have fish tacos if you still have the hook in your mouth!" And while I have no idea what he meant, or how it's relevant, I tell that story to any indigenous Mexican I meet who doesn't speak English. Interestingly, they offer the wisest response possible: they simply nod and smile."
Author: Jarod Kintz

12. "If people can't acknowledge the wisdom of indigenous cultures, then that's their loss."
Author: Jay Griffiths

13. "All definitions of wilderness that exclude people seem to me to be false. African 'wilderness' areas are racist because indigenous people are being cleared out of them so white people can go on holiday there."
Author: Jay Griffiths

14. "Indigenous foods die when no one learns to cook them."
Author: Jean Zimmerman

15. "In indigenous cultures including those of Native Americans, menstruation is viewed a time of positive power, rather than evidence of sin and negative power, or as a feminine inconvenience."
Author: Joan Borysenko

16. "Despite all the hype about local or green food, the single biggest impediment to wider adoption is not research, programs, organizations, or networking. It is the demonizing and criminalizing of virtually all indigenous and heritage-based food practices."
Author: Joel Salatin

17. "The Apology opened the opportunity for a new relationship based on mutual respect and mutual responsibility between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. Because without mutual respect and mutual responsibility, the truth is we can achieve very little."
Author: Kevin Rudd

18. "As nations we should also commit afresh to righting past wrongs. In Australia we began this recently with the first Australians - the oldest continuing culture in human history. On behalf of the Australian Parliament, this year I offered an apology to indigenous Australians for the wrongs they had suffered in the past."
Author: Kevin Rudd

19. "I am deeply committed to the cause of Indigenous Australians, and not just because of the Apology, but the big challenges which lie ahead in closing the gap."
Author: Kevin Rudd

20. "There were waves of genocide that overcame indigenous populations of Oceania and do we have a library of books or films to tell our story? No. We have tourist hula shows and commercials where the "natives" tend to tourists like indentured servants with plastic, lifeless smiles. It's not such a charming picture, is it? The truth is ugly, but so is ignorance or denial of such atrocities and pain."
Author: M.B. Dallocchio

21. "Solutions will not be found while Indigenous people are treated as victims for whom someone else must find solutions."
Author: Malcolm Fraser

22. "We are seeing healing among the stolen generations, and initiatives which are enabling Indigenous people to make their distinctive contribution to our national life."
Author: Malcolm Fraser

23. "There are no quick fixes to Indigenous poverty and social disaster."
Author: Malcolm Fraser

24. "We are lagging far behind comparable countries in overcoming the disadvantages Indigenous people face."
Author: Malcolm Fraser

25. "Yet there are thousands of Indigenous people searching for family members."
Author: Malcolm Fraser

26. "Health economists have estimated that an injection of $250 million per year in Indigenous clinical care, and $50 million in preventative care, is required to provide services at the same level as for any other group with the health conditions of Indigenous Australians."
Author: Malcolm Fraser

27. "If we had, we would have realised sooner that Indigenous organisations are sometimes not the appropriate channel for programmes to help the stolen generations, because many of them play little part in Indigenous associations."
Author: Malcolm Fraser

28. "Whether they are raised in indigenous or modern culture, there are two things that people crave: the full realization of their innate gifts, and to have these gifts approved, acknowledged, and confirmed. There are countless people in the West whose efforts are sadly wasted because they have no means of expressing their unique genius. In the psyches of such people there is an inner power and authority that fails to shine because the world around them is blind to it."
Author: Malidoma Patrice Somé

29. "ELOS INSTITUTE, BRAZIL FROM POWER TO PLAY On the warrior's path, it is up to you to discern which threads have been woven by divine hands and which have been woven by human hands. When you begin to discern the difference, you become a Txucarramãe—a warrior without weapons. … When you discover what you have been doing with your life and how it is you dance through the world, little by little you let go of your weapons, those creations made to kill creations. Suddenly, you discover that when we stop creating enemies, we extinguish the need for weapons. —Kaká Werá Jecupé Indigenous teacher in Brazil"
Author: Margaret J. Wheatley

30. "Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations."
Author: Martin Luther King Jr.

31. "When Europeans arrived on this continent, they blew it with the Native Americans. They plowed over them, taking as much as they could of their land and valuables, and respecting almost nothing about the native cultures. They lost the wisdom of the indigenous peoples-wisdom about the land and connectedness to the great web of life…We have another chance with all these refugees. People come here penniless but not cultureless. They bring us gifts. We can synthesize the best of our traditions with the best of theirs. We can teach and learn from each other to produce a better America…"
Author: Mary Pipher

32. "Indigenous people have discovered that Christianity is not inherently Western but universal - 'translatable' into any cultural idiom."
Author: Nancy Pearcey

33. "The safe places could only be visited; they could only grant a momentary intuition of sanctuary. The moment always came when we had to return to our real life to face the wounds and grief indigenous to our homr by the river."
Author: Pat Conroy

34. "I don't hate redheads! The millionaire men - wealthy men - never pick them. Every time I offer them they say no. I could say the most gorgeous redhead in the world and they'll say no, they don't want it. Now if you ask an Irish guy in Ireland, he says 'yes,' because that's indigenous to that country."
Author: Patti Stanger

35. "Yes, I'm proud to be indigenous. I'm half-Quechua-Huachipaeri from Peru."
Author: Q'orianka Kilcher

36. "I mightn't be a shaman in the indigenous sense, but as a world-bridger between Western culture and the indigenous world, I knew I was playing a shamanistic role. Language was my medicine and with it I would do my best to record my awakening and help heal with my words... The journey isn't over yet."
Author: Rak Razam

37. "The white man is not indigenous to Africa. Africa is for Africans. Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans."
Author: Robert Mugabe

38. "The Chukchee, a people indigenous to Siberia, had their own special way of dealing with unruly winds. A Chukchee man would chant, "Western Wind, look here! Look down on my buttocks. We are going to give you some fat. Cease blowing!" The nineteenth-century European visitor who reported this ritual described it as follows: "The man pronouncing the incantation lets his breeches fall down, and bucks leeward, exposing his bare buttocks to the wind. At every word he claps his hands."
Author: Robert Wright

39. "I'd like to talk about free markets. Information in the computer age is the last genuine free market left on earth except those free markets where indigenous people are still surviving. And that's basically becoming limited."
Author: Russell Means

40. "A racist notion found in neoshamanic circles is placing high value on indigenous wisdom but not on indigenous people."
Author: S. Kelley Harrell

41. "On top of this was the official indigenous Egyptian government that, though it was quite toothless, various British officials periodically felt the need to pretend to consult in order to maintain the appearance that the wishes of the actual inhabitants of Egypt somehow mattered."
Author: Scott Anderson

42. "The purpose of any ceremony is to build stronger relationship or bridge the distance between our cosmos and us. The research that we do as Indigenous people is a ceremony that allows us a raised level of consciousness and insight into our world. Through going forward together with open minds and good hearts we have uncovered the nature of this ceremony"
Author: Shawn Wilson

43. "In more recent years, I've become more and more fascinated with the indigenous folklore of this land, Native American folklore, and also Hispanic folklore now that I live in the Southwest."
Author: Terri Windling

44. "I have a dream, humans were part of aliens on earth.I also dream, that some humans are really indigenous."
Author: Toba Beta

45. "The minute you land in New Orleans, something wet and dark leaps on you and starts humping you like a swamp dog in heat, and the only way to get that aspect of New Orleans off you is to eat it off. That means beignets and crayfish bisque and jambalaya, it means shrimp remoulade, pecan pie, and red beans with rice, it means elegant pompano au papillote, funky file z'herbes, and raw oysters by the dozen, it means grillades for breakfast, a po' boy with chowchow at bedtime, and tubs of gumbo in between. It is not unusual for a visitor to the city to gain fifteen pounds in a week--yet the alternative is a whole lot worse. If you don't eat day and night, if you don't constantly funnel the indigenous flavors into your bloodstream, then the mystery beast will go right on humping you, and you will feel its sordid presence rubbing against you long after you have left town. In fact, like any sex offender, it can leave permanent psychological scars."
Author: Tom Robbins

46. "The problem with politicians getting to know the issues in indigenous townships is that we tend to suffer from what Aboriginal people call the 'seagull syndrome' - we fly in, scratch around and fly out."
Author: Tony Abbott

47. "And I thanked mi papa who'd always said to me that we, los Indios, the Indians, were like the weeds. That roses you had to water and giver fertilizer or they'd die. But weeds, indigenous plants, you gave them nada-nothing; hell you even poisoned them and put concrete over them, and those weeds would still break the concrete,"
Author: Victor Villaseñor

48. "Sensitivity to nature is not an innate attribute of indigenous peoples. It is a consequence of adaptive choices that have resulted in the development of highly specialized peripheral skills. but those choices in turn spring from a comprehensive view of nature and the universe in which man and woman are perceived as but elements inextricably linked to the whole."
Author: Wade Davis

49. "Cultural survival is not about preservation, sequestering indigenous peoples in enclaves like some sort of zoological specimens. Change itself does note destroy a culture. All societies are constantly evolving. Indeed a culture survives when it has enough confidence in its past and enough say in its future to maintain its spirit and essence through all the changes it will inevitably undergo."
Author: Wade Davis

50. "The stubborn of a captive mentality can be clearly seen in the formulation of national development plans in most developing nations where the fundamental meaning and criteria of knowledge and development, modernization and reform, progress and change, happiness, tolerance, pluralism and their respective antonyms - such as under-development and corruption - are all derived from Western frameworks. Sometimes the strangest phenomenon surfaces - such as when the methodology of understanding and teaching indigenous religions is regarded as being uncritical and less objective if it does not utilize the methods developed by Western scholars in the understanding and teaching Western religions and religious texts."
Author: Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud

Indigenous Quotes Pictures