Indigenous People Quotes & Sayings

Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men ... One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him. This is what our society needs - not new ideas and inventions; important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen, but persons who can "be", that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves. — Rollo May

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

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

The Mapuche are our indigenous people from the south, the Patagonia. They are a vey wise and luminous ancient cavitation, which is completely opposite to where Nazism was headed. In the novel [Wakolda], the theme of racial purity and the Nazi obsession with it was much more developed. — Lucia Puenzo

I was shocked when I moved to Sydney how very few indigenous people I came across. And so when I go to places like Maroubra or Redfern or Waterloo or Erskineville, I feel more at home because of the people I'm around - anywhere I can see a face that reflects someone that looks like my family, I feel much more at home. — Shari Sebbens

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. — Malidoma Patrice Some

The problem is that after two centuries of conflict about just who was wanted in the Australian nation the term 'Australia' both includes and excludes. There are still people for whom 'Australian' means predominatly Anglo-Celtic white people whose parents were born here before 'New Australians' came as migrants after the Second World War. A common alternative to 'white people' (who from an Aboriginal perspective might be more genially called 'whitefellas') is 'Europeans'. This makes an incongruous appeal to history. Politically the colonisers were British, but they includes people of many nationalities. It's an odd usage, as when you see a sign in a national park telling you 'Europeans' brought the invasive weeds and pests. They brought the sign and the concept of a park too, and 'they', in a complex sense, are 'us'. — Nicholas Jose

I don't really think of most non-English as people, more or less indigenous squirrels that I fancy to kick around with my snakeskin French Persian Boots — Thom Yorke

There are certain regions in the country where the indigenous people eat dogs. — Jessica Hagedorn

We are lagging far behind comparable countries in overcoming the disadvantages Indigenous people face. — Malcolm Fraser

I support the indigenous people anywhere in the planet. — Edward James Olmos

For Indigenous peoples , the impact of separating us from our heritage goes directly to the heart that pumps life through our peoples. To expect a people to be able to enjoy their culture without their cultural heritage and their sacred belongings is equivalent to amputating their legs and digging up the ground and asking them to run a marathon. — Mick Dodson

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 ... — Mary Pipher

The category of Other is as original as consciousness itself. The duality between Self and Other can be found in the most primitive societies, in the most ancient mythologies; the division did not always fall into the category of the division of the sexes ( ... ) No group ever defines itself as One without immediately setting up the Other opposite itself. It only takes three travelers brought together by chance in the same train compartment for the rest of the travellers to become vaguely hostile 'others'. Village people view anyone not belonging to the village as suspicious 'others'. For the native of a country, inhabitants of other countries are viewed as 'foreigners'; Jews are the 'others' for anti-Semites, blacks for racist Americans, indigenous people for colonists, proletarians for the propertied classes. — Simone De Beauvoir

We are at last being recognised as the indigenous people of this country whom must share in its future. This is not a day of national mourning for us. We must leave history behind us and look forward. — Galarrwuy Yunupingu

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 — Shawn Wilson

Another reason we know that language could not determine thought is that when a language isn't up to the conceptual demands of its speakers, they don't scratch their heads dumbfounded (at least not for long); they simply change the language. They stretch it with metaphors and metonyms, borrow words and phrases from other languages, or coin new slang and jargon. (When you think about it, how else could it be? If people had trouble thinking without language, where would their language have come from-a committee of Martians?) Unstoppable change is the great given in linguistics, which is not why linguists roll their eyes at common claims such as that German is the optimal language of science, that only French allows for truly logical expression, and that indigenous languages are not appropriate for the modern world. As Ray Harlow put it, it's like saying, Computers were not discussed in Old English; therefore computers cannot be discussed in Modern English. — Steven Pinker

In a society where all are related, simple decisions require the approval of nearly everyone in that society. It is society as a whole, not merely a part of it, that must survive. This is the indigenous understanding. It is the understanding in a global sense. We are all indigenous people on this planet, and we have to reorganize to get along. — Rebecca Adamson

The whole military structure in Haiti that existed until the early 1990s was put in place by the American occupation. At the top there were Southern white officers, who led an army that crushed the indigenous resistance - the cacos. A high-ranking U.S. officer said when he arrived, "To think these niggers speak French!" Later, Haitian officers attended the notorious School of the Americas at Fort Benning. The threat from the U.S. is something that is always hanging over people's heads: If we don't behave, we'll have occupation again. — Edwidge Danticat

If you can imagine the one family continuously occupying the same land for 40,000 years or more, using it not just to sustain life but as a place of reverence and worship, where every tree, rock and waterhole had significance, you will get some understanding of the importance of land to indigenous people. — Tania Major

From this vantage point, Christianity has nothing - absolutely nothing - to teach Indigenous people about how to live in a good way on this land. In fact, Christians have only demonstrated that there is something profoundly wrong with the cosmology and worldview behind more than five centuries of carnage - carnage that has yet to even slow down. Christians have so much negative history and dogma to overcome within their own tradition, I do not believe the religion is even salvageable. The world is deep in the throes of an ecological crisis based in Western economies of hyper-exploitation. The planet will not survive another 500 years of Christian domination. — Brian McLaren

A good government is one with a duty to help everyone, to maximise his or her potential: Indigenous people, people with disabilities, and our forgotten families.We will not leave anyone behind. — Warren Mundine

In many Latin American countries, the historic ties of Catholic bishops with the political elite rendered them less sensitive to the conditions of the poor and especially of indigenous people. — Moises Naim

An indigenous culture with sufficient territory, and bilingual and intercultural education, is in a better position to maintain and cultivate its mythology and shamanism. Conversely, the confiscation of their lands and imposition of foreign education, which turns their young people into amnesiacs, threatens the survival not only of these people, but of an entire way of knowing. It is as if one were burning down the oldest universities in the world and their libraries, one after another - thereby sacrificing the knowledge of the world's future generations. — Jeremy Narby

The people of Hispaniola had their lives unjustly and savagely taken by professed Jesus followers, and they were not, as we all know, the only ones to meet such a fate. Millions of their Indigenous sisters and brothers on Turtle Island were killed at the hands of other Europeans, as nation after imperial nation, bearing Christ on their lips and crosses on their military standards, followed suit.21 — Brian D. McLaren

As an indigenous leader from Bolivia, I know what exclusion looks like. Before 1952, my people were not allowed to even enter the main squares of Bolivia's cities, and there were almost no indigenous politicians in government until the late 1990s. — Evo Morales

Baldness that appears to be normal is a disease in Europe, almost all of them are bald, and that is because of the things they eat; while among the indigenous peoples there are no bald people, because we eat other things — Evo Morales

Indigenous people have been tracking the same 'psychic virus' for many centuries, calling it 'wetiko' in Cree (windigo in Ojibwa, wintiko in Powhatan), a term that refers to a biologically wicked person or spirit who terrorizes others by means of evil acts. — Paul Levy

European settlers coming to a foreign land, settling there, and either committing genocide against or expelling the indigenous people. The Zionists have not invented anything new in this respect. — Noam Chomsky

The true essence of reconciliation is more than making friends with nonindigenous people. Our motto is united Australia, one that respects the land and the heritage of its indigenous peoples and provides justice and equity for all. I think reconciliation is about changing the structures that govern us and trying to influence opinion leaders in whatever way we can. — Jackie Huggins

Indigenous people all over the world take quite a lot of trouble with their hair and their clothes. — Michelle Paver

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

The US empire rests on a grisly foundation: the massacre of millions of indigenous people, the stealing of their lands and, following this, the kidnapping and enslavement of millions of black people from Africa to work that land. Thousands died on the seas while they were being shipped like caged cattle between continents.
'Stolen from Africa, brought to America' - Bob Marley's 'Buffalo Soldier' contains a whole universe of unspeakable sadness. — Arundhati Roy

We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man's mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from Coca-cola and hamburger cultural backgrounds. — Steven Biko

In August 1917, white, Black, and Muskogee tenant farmers and sharecroppers in several eastern and southern Oklahoma counties took up arms to stop conscription, with a larger stated goal of overthrowing the US government to establish a socialist commonwealth. These more radically minded grassroots socialists had organized their own Working Class Union (WCU), with Anglo-American, African American, and Indigenous Muskogee farmers forming a kind of rainbow alliance. Their plan was to march to Washington, DC, motivating millions of working people to arm themselves and to join them along the way. After a day of dynamiting oil pipelines and bridges in southeastern Oklahoma, the men and their families created a liberated zone where they ate, sang hymns, and rested. By the following day, heavily armed posses supported by police and militias stopped the revolt, which became known as the Green Corn Rebellion. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

We seem to have lost the wisdom of the indigenous people, which dictated that in any major decision, the first consideration was 'How will this decision we're making today affect our people in the future? These days, decisions are made based on the bottom line. — Jane Goodall

the journey of going from 'I' to 'We'. "When two indigenous Quechuans meet sixteen thousand feet atop a mountain in Peru for the first time, often they set a challenge. Let's say the challenge is a race. In their society, whoever wins the race is duty bound to coach the loser until he has attained a similar competency. In return, the loser teaches the victor a new skill. This interdependence helps both people. Both win, as does society. Ayni, the art of reciprocation, ensures that their society as a whole grows together. — Kevin Kelly

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. — Robert Wright

Everything, including your set of hand-blown green glass dishes with the tiny bubbles and imperfections, little bits of sand, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous aboriginal people of wherever, well, these dishes all get blown out by the blast. Picture floor-to-ceiling drapes blown out and flaming to shreds in the hot wind. — Chuck Palahniuk

If you're Filipino, you're the beaner of the Asian community 'cause you're just like us. You're indigenous people that got banged by some Spaniards. That's why you have names like Kwan Ping Del Toro. — Carlos Mencia

Understand indigenous healing will also heal other nations and peoples. We've all been living on broken ugly systems built on genocide and slavery. Strengthening and empowering others, in whatever capacity, also helps the self. — Red Haircrow

The indigenous people of five continents were facing an intractable enemy from a sixth continent that was convinced that they had the right to steal the land on other — Mark Kurlansky

Most governments in Latin America have failed to recognize the rights of indigenous people and their right to their own traditional territories. — Bianca Jagger

The Caribbean is such an apocalyptic place, whether it's the decimation of the indigenous populations by the Europeans, whether it's the importation of slaves and their subsequent being worked to death by the millions in many ways, whether it's the immigrant processes which began for many people, new worlds ending their old ones. — Junot Diaz

A city like Bombay, like New York, that is a recent creation on the planet and does not have a substantial indigenous population, is full of restless people. Those who have come here have not been at ease somewhere else. And unlike others who may have been equally uncomfortable wherever they came from, these people got up and moved. As I have discovered, having once moved, it is difficult to stop moving. — Suketu Mehta

The truth is nobody can own anything. That was an unheard-of concept among indigenous people. We invented that. — Tom Shadyac

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. — Bruce Lipton

I watched the enormity of the clouds for several minutes. What I wanted to experience in the water, I realized, was how life of the reef was layered and intertwined. I now had many individual pieces at hand: named images, nouns. How were they related? What were the verbs? Which syntaxes were indigenous to the place? I asked a dozen knowledgeable people. No one was inclined to elaborate- or they didn't know. "Did you see the octopus?" Someone shouted after the dive. Yes, I thought, but who among us knows what it was doing? What else was THERE, just then? WHY? — Barry Lopez

Various Turkish people invaded southwest Asia during the Middle Ages and carved an empire for themselves from lands occupied by the indigenous Semitic and Indo-European inhabitants. — John Shimkus

The domestic dog is an ancient companion of humans, and it is possible that domestication was taking place as we ourselves were emerging as a separate species. This helps us understand the close and symbiotic relationship between dogs and humans. I think it is reasonable to say that our attitude to animals and to nature is part of what defines us as humans. When we are in harmony with nature and treat other species with respect, we elevate ourselves as human beings. I believe this is a spiritual and ethical matter. Of course, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and many indigenous and ancient religions endorse this attitude, but I think it applies whatever your personal belief system. Respect for nature and kindness to animals are, I believe, fundamental human values, just as respect for and kindness to other people should be. I hope that the stories which follow help to illustrate that belief as it is actually lived, and hopefully, does so in an entertaining way. — Stewart McFarlane

Intellectual traditions emerging from populations that have always been the constitutive other in the development of the properly free citizen - indigenous people, populations labeled physically or mentally unfit, black people, migrants, women, prisoners - have always produced robust critiques of the what Dylan Rodriguez calls "white bourgeois freedom." — Dean Spade

Yet there are thousands of Indigenous people searching for family members. — Malcolm Fraser

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. — Jay Griffiths

As people who are women, who are Indigenous and live on Indigenous lands, we know, and this is something I understand the older I get, that they don't visit the same way the postman may visit but they do visit. They visit in ways that our modern society often disregards and considers immaterial or unreal. — Sandra Cisneros

Indigenous people believe that Man belongs to the World; civilized people believe that the World belongs to Man. — Daniel Quinn

In the animated Dreamworks movie Prince of Egypt the ancient Egyptians are drawn to appear more Arab than African. But the ancient Egyptians came originally from Africa's interior to the south. They were not Arabs, not people from Arabia, but indigenous Africans. Egyptian civilization was thousands of years old by the time the Arabs, with a modest army under General 'Amr ibn as- 'As, entered in December of 639 A.D. — Randall Robinson

Though many non-Native Americans have learned very little about us, over time we have had to learn everything about them. We watch their films, read their literature, worship in their churches, and attend their schools. Every third-grade student in the United States is presented with the concept of Europeans discovering America as a "New World" with fertile soil, abundant gifts of nature, and glorious mountains and rivers. Only the most enlightened teachers will explain that this world certainly wasn't new to the millions of indigenous people who already lived here when Columbus arrived. — Wilma Mankiller

In every Indigenous community I've been in, they absolutely do want community infrastructure and they do want development, but they want it on their own terms. They want to be able to use their national resources and their assets in a way that protects and sustains them. Our territories are our wealth, the major assets we have. And Indigenous people use and steward this property so that they can achieve and maintain a livelihood, and achieve and maintain that same livelihood for future generations. — Rebecca Adamson

What Australia was before is the fullest Australia has ever been ... as created and made and valued by indigenous people. The white man came here and took it away, took it away and replaced it ... — Galarrwuy Yunupingu

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. — Derrick Jensen

Along with the mystical wonderment and sense of ecological responsibility that comes with the recognition of connectedness, more disturbing images come to mind. When applied to economics, connectedness seems to take the form of chain stores, multinational corporations, and international trade treaties which wipe out local enterprise and indigenous culture. When I think of it in the realm of religion, I envision smug missionaries who have done such a good job of convincing native people everywhere that their World-Maker is the same as God, and by this shoddy sleight of hand have been steadily impoverishing the world of the great fecundity and complex localism of belief systems that capture truths outside the Western canon. And I wonder - if everything's connected, does that mean that everything can be manipulated and controlled centrally by those who know how to pull strings at strategic places? — Malcolm Margolin

As ever, the original inhabitants of Turtle Island are entirely overlooked. Mysteriously, the only time indigenous people are guaranteed a mainstream Amerikkan mention is on Thanksgiving.
Again, to contextualize, this would be be kinda like someone busting into your house and robbing you blind, then sending you postcards once a year to remind you how much they are enjoying all of your stuff, and getting annoyed with you if you don't respond with appreciation for their thoughtfulness. — Inga Muscio

I noticed - and this is one of the people don't understand of Tony [Abbot] - he grew. To me he grew as opposition leader. He come in - he wasn't really good at the beginning when he was opposition leader. He won the confidence of the Australian people and got the job as Prime Minister. He grew in Indigenous affairs. To me, we just totally disagreed in it, but now we're very much one on one on it. — Warren Mundine

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. — Russell Means

Knowing European manhood's boundaries to be porous and needing reinforcement, and meeting Indigenous possibilities that threw such boundaries into question, early conquerors invoked berdache as if assigning a failure to differentiate sex to Indigenous people, but they did so to define sexual normativity for them all. Thus, if colonial observers invoked berdache to mark Indigenous difference, the aim was to teach both colonial and Indigenous subjects the relational terms of colonial heteropatriarchy. — Scott L. Morgensen

Here's the reality. The image of a white Jesus has been used to justify enslavement, conquest, colonialism, the genocide of indigenous peoples. There are literally millions of human beings whose lives have been snuffed out by people who conquered under the banner of a white god. — Tim Wise

To annihilate indigenous populations eventually paves the way to our own annihilation. They are the only people who practice sustainable living. We think they are relics of the past, but they may be the gatekeepers to our future. — Arundhati Roy

It is the fight for a new economy, a new energy system, a new democracy, a new relationship to the planet and to each other, for land, water, and food sovereignty, for Indigenous rights, for human rights and dignity for all people. When climate justice wins we win the world that we want. We can't sit this one out, not because we have too much to lose but because we have too much to gain. . . . We are bound together in this battle, not just for a reduction in the parts per million of CO2, but to transform our economies and rebuild a world that we want today. — Naomi Klein

Argentina is really in a different category because they butchered all their Indian or indigenous people in the war of the desert in 1850s. Which sets them aside from their neighbors in a macabre way. — John Gimlette

There are people all over Australia who use their homes as hubs that they travel from, and they encourage their indigenous people to continue to stay there. — Andrew Forrest

The problem now is that young people, young indigenous people, are not so interested in preserving traditional knowledge. So for them, seeing that it was important for us and for the outside world, this traditional knowledge, it was a big deal to them. — Ciro Guerra

As stripped of our ancestral knowledge as we Settlers seem to be, we defy the position of patriarchal dominance and undermine the notion of cultural superiority when we reclaim the roots of our authentic indigenity. It is our birthright as human beings to declare our true status as People of the Earth (as it is for all cultural groups), and if we collectively reject the delusional separation from nature that Empire has forced upon us, we move back into right relationship with Earth Community. Anchoring ourselves deeply into our earth-honoring culture and reclaiming our EIK (European Indigenous Knowledge) is a powerful blow against the monolith of cultural imperialism. (Page 43, Chapter 6, "We All Have IK") — Pegi Eyers

Fall into the cavern of my mind, and together there, we will dine. — Brad Jensen

Christopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere, leading to their near extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass. — James W. Loewen

I am against the fact that a settler minority should impose an entire system of values on an indigenous people. — Steven Biko

I think the relationship of indigenous people to their environment ... that those were ethical omnivores. — James Cromwell

Indeed the offset market has created a new class of "green" human rights abuses, wherein peasants and Indigenous people who venture into their traditional territories (reclassified as carbon sinks) in order to harvest plants, wood, or fish are harassed or worse...The added irony is that many people being sacrificed for the carbon market are living some of the most sustainable, low-carbon lifestyles on the planet. — Naomi Klein

Native people - about two-thirds of the uranium in the United States is on indigenous lands. On a worldwide scale, about 70 percent of the uranium is either in Aboriginal lands in Australia or up in the Subarctic of Canada, where native people are still fighting uranium mining. — Winona LaDuke

Many people who are drawn to work about racism and transphobia may be new to thinking deeply about colonialism and indigenous resistance in their North America. — Dean Spade

Look, without our stories, without the true nature and reality of who we are as People of Color, nothing about fanboy or fangirl culture would make sense. What I mean by that is: if it wasn't for race, X-Men doesn't sense. If it wasn't for the history of breeding human beings in the New World through chattel slavery, Dune doesn't make sense. If it wasn't for the history of colonialism and imperialism, Star Wars doesn't make sense. If it wasn't for the extermination of so many Indigenous First Nations, most of what we call science fiction's contact stories doesn't make sense. Without us as the secret sauce, none of this works, and it is about time that we understood that we are the Force that holds the Star Wars universe together. We're the Prime Directive that makes Star Trek possible, yeah. In the Green Lantern Corps, we are the oath. We are all of these things - erased, and yet without us - we are essential. — Junot Diaz

Many years ago, I started a foundation [Wayuu Taya Foundation] to help improve the life of Latin American indigenous people, providing them with food, medical attention, education, and also focusing on sustainability. — Patricia Velasquez

For Indigenous people, the goal for our land is definitely about protection, but it's also about use. We see ourselves as so integrated with our territory that our protection is tied to our use and our use is tied to our protection. We use the resources on our territory to live. — Rebecca Adamson

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

Galeano emphasized the import of nature in the European "conquest/invasion" of Latin America and the subsequent and ongoing colonial project. And he "located" the divorce of nature and people's communion within - and as fundamental to - the venture of Western civilization.1 The growing recognition, particularly in the "Souths" of the world today, that Western civilization is in crisis, and the propositions coming from Abya-Yala (the name, originally from the Cuna language, that indigenous peoples collectively give to the Americas today) for radically distinct life-models and visions interlaced with and in nature, give Galeano's words pragmatic substance. Galeano's words also, in a sense, establish the importance of location and place; that is to say, of the place and location from which we think the world, and act, struggle, and live in and with it. — Federico Luisetti

[Jazz] is a music of freedom and wonder. It's our indigenous art form, and I'm still blessed to travel around the world and people lay out the carpet for us, so it's quite touching. — Charles Lloyd

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

This is a coca leaf. This is not cocaine. This represents the culture of indigenous people of the Andean region. — Evo Morales

The most important thing is the indigenous people are not vindictive by nature. We are not here to oppress anybody - but to join together and build Bolivia, with justice and equality. — Evo Morales

When it comes to nuclear technology, the Iranian people are very sensitive. It is a part of our national pride, and nuclear technology has become indigenous. — Hassan Rouhani

When a journalist pressed Werner for a clear answer on the "Is Earth f**ked" question, he set the jargon aside and replied, "More or less."4 There was one dynamic in the model, however, that offered some hope. Werner described it as "resistance" - movements of "people or groups of people" who "adopt a certain set of dynamics that does not fit within the capitalist culture." According to the abstract for his presentation, this includes "environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by Indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups." Such mass uprisings of people - along the lines of the abolition movement and the civil rights movement - represent the likeliest source of "friction" to slow down an economic machine that is careening out of control. — Naomi Klein

The problem is that those of us sympathetic with the plight of indigenous people view them as quaint and colorful, but somehow reduced to margins of history as the real world [(our world)] moves on We will be known as an era in which we stood by and either actively endorsed or passively accepted the massive destruction of both biological and cultural diversity on the planet. — Wade Davis

It is a common error to assume that the lack of a formal education means that shoemakers, weavers, peasants or indigenous peoples cannot be intellectuals. We may even find it difficult to believe that they could acquire a significant book collection, let alone be interested in or engage in philosophy or pass on proper knowledge, not just 'culture' or 'traditions,' to others. Such a misunderstanding excludes many people from history because it assumes they can have no impact on history, or even be affected by it.
Story of a Death Foretold: The Coup Against Salvador Allende, September 11, 1973 — Oscar Guardiola-Rivera

What we cannot expect is that the people least responsible for this crisis will foot all, or even most, of the bill. Because that is a recipe for catastrophic amounts of carbon ending up in our common atmosphere. Like the call to honor our treaties and other land-sharing agreements with Indigenous peoples, climate change is once again forcing us to look at how injustices that many assumed were safely buried in the past are shaping our shared vulnerability to global climate collapse. — Naomi Klein

I am trying to stop being mystified. Important to concentrate on good hard facts. But which facts? One week before mu eighteenth birthday, on August 8th, did Pakistani troops in civilian clothing cross the cease-fire line in Kashmir and infiltrate the Indian sector, or did they not? In Delhi, Prime Minister Shastri announced "massive infiltration ... to subvert the state:; but here is Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's Foreign Minister, with his riposte: "We categorically deny any involvement in the rising against tyranny by the indigenous people of Kashmir". — Salman Rushdie

Over the past seventy years the various identity struggles have to some degree remediated the great wrongs that have been done to workers, people of color, Indigenous Peoples, women, gays and lesbians, and the disabled, while helping to humanize our society overall. But they have also had a shadow side in the sense that they have encouraged us to think of ourselves more as determined than as self-determining, more as victims of 'isms' (racism, sexism, capitalism, ableism) than as human beings who have the power of choice. For our own survival we must assume individual and collective responsibility for creating a new nation - one that is loved rather than feared and one that does not have to bribe and bully other nations to win support. — Grace Lee Boggs

Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, its because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this so strong, the experience so recent, that we can't quite bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much of. As for hat we were like before we met you, I no longer care. No periods of time over which my ancestors held sway, no documentation of complex civilisations, is any comfort to me. Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you. — Jamaica Kincaid

As the Navajo and Christian activist Mark Charles explains, when citizens of the thirteen British colonies composed the Declaration of Independence, among their complaints against King George was that he didn't allow them to apply the Doctrine of Discovery to the people of the lands to their west.22 The Declaration described the indigenous peoples as "merciless Indian savages," clearly not counted among the "all men" whom God supposedly "created equal. — Brian D. McLaren

Power ... Military success is not sufficient to win: economic development, institution-building and the rule of law, promoting internal reconciliation, good governance, providing basic services to the people, training and equipping indigenous military and police forces, strategic communications, and more of these, along with security, are essential ingredients for long-term success ... — Robert M. Gates

In 2006, I entered the presidential palace in the main square of La Paz as the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Our government, under the slogan 'Bolivia Changes,' is committed to ending the colonialism, racism and exclusion that many of our people lived under for many centuries. — Evo Morales

The indigenous peoples of the great tourist spots seem to lose their souls. All cultural, religious, and political efforts and ideals are crippled since the culture is engaged only in luring ever more tourists. It is not the contact with an essentially foreign population that corrupts the inhabitants of the great foreign resorts. It is the contact with great masses of people who are seeking fir the moment only well-being and not salvation that weakens and devalues the indigenous population. — Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig