Native America Quotes & Sayings

And my point was one I think that you'd agree with, which is there's no room in America for a black racist, a Latino racist, or a white racist, or an Asian racist, or a Native American racist. Now, we're either color blind or we're not color blind. — Newt Gingrich

This Levantine spirit developed gradually in Beirut after the Industrial Revolution, as the burgeoning Lebanese silk trade and the invention of the steamboat combined to bring men and women of America and Western Europe in large numbers to the Levant. These settlers from the West were Catholic and Protestant missionaries, diplomats, and merchants, Jewish traders, travelers and physicians; and they brought with them Western commerce, manners, and ideas and, most of all, a certain genteel, open, tolerant attitude toward life and toward other cultures. Their mores and manners were gradually imitated by elite elements of the local native populations, who made a highly intelligent blend of these Western ideas with their own indigenous Arabic, Greek, and Turkish cultures, which had their own traditions of tolerance. "To be a Levantine," wrote Hourani, "is to live in two worlds or more at once, without belonging to either." In — Thomas L. Friedman

The Book of Mormon proposes a new purpose for America: becoming a realm of righteousness rather than an empire of liberty. Against increasing wealth and inequality, the Book of Mormon advocates the cause of the poor. Against the subjection of the Indians, it promises the continent to the native people. Against republican government, it proposes righteous rule by judges and kings under God's law. Against a closed canon Bible and non-miraculous religion, the Book of Mormon stands for ongoing revelation, miracles and revelation to all nations. Against skepticism, it promotes belief; against nationalism, a universal Israel. It foresees disaster for the nation if the love of riches, resistance to revelation, and Gentile civilization prevail over righteousness, revelation and Israel. — Richard L. Bushman

In America the Struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word "Fascism" and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty. For they were thieves not only of wages but of honor. — Sinclair Lewis

The Americas were a great laboratory of evolutionary experimentation, a place where animals and plants unknown in Africa and Asia had evolved and thrived. But no longer. Within 2,000 years of the Sapiens' arrival, most of these unique species were gone. According to current estimates, within that short interval, North America lost thirty-four out of its forty-seven genera of large mammals. South America lost fifty out of sixty. The sabre-tooth cats, after flourishing for more than 30 million years, disappeared, and so did the giant ground sloths, the oversized lions, native American horses, native American camels, the giant rodents and the mammoths. Thousands of species of smaller mammals, reptiles, birds and even insects and parasites also became extinct (when the mammoths died out, all species of mammoth ticks followed them to oblivion). — Yuval Noah Harari

In spite of these disasters, some of the tribesmen continued to fight for their territory, but they were quickly overwhelmed and taken into captivity, placed aboard ships and sold as slaves in the West Indies. At the same time the whites were bringing to America their own slaves whose skins were black. The first shipments of these unfortunates were brought to Jamestown for sale by the Dutch in 1619. Within two decades the British realized what a lucrative trade slavery was, so they ousted the Dutch slave traders and, in 1639, established their own Royal African Company to make massive raids on the native villages of the Dark Continent and bring the chained captives to America to satisfy the ever-growing demand for slave labor.6 In all such matters, the human cruelty inflicted on people of either red skin or black was of precious little concern to the imperious British. — Allan W. Eckert

The sad truth is that, within the public sphere, within the collective consciousness of the general populace, most of the history of Indians in North America has been forgotten, and what we are left with is a series of historical artifacts and, more importantly, a series of entertainments. As a series of artifacts, Native history is somewhat akin to a fossil hunt in which we find a skull in Almo, Idaho, a thigh bone on the Montana plains, a tooth near the site of Powhatan's village in Virginia, and then, assuming that all the parts are from the same animal, we guess at the size and shape of the beast. As a series of entertainments, Native history is an imaginative cobbling together of fears and loathings, romances and reverences, facts and fantasies into a cycle of creative performances, in Technicolor and 3-D, with accompanying soft drinks, candy, and popcorn.
In the end, who really needs the whole of Native history when we can watch the movie? — Thomas King

All of the guests on 'Faces of America' were deeply moved by what we revealed about their ancestry. We were able to trace the ancestry of Native American writer Louise Erdrich back to 438 A.D. We found that Queen Noor is descended from royalty, and that's before she married King Hussein of Jordan. — Henry Louis Gates

The girl was cinnamon colored in the way of Native America after it had been raped by Europe. — Walter Mosley

Environmental policies are driven by a kind of emotional spiritualism that threatens the very foundation of our society. There is increasing evidence of a government-sponsored religion in America. This religion, a cloudy mixture of new-age mysticism, Native American folklore, and primitive Earth worship, is being promoted and enforced by the Clinton administration in violation of our rights and freedoms. — Helen Chenoweth-Hage

America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling on a tree. America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities are closed to him. We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate-We are America! — Carlos Bulosan

In 1492, the natives discovered they were indians, discovered they lived in America, discovered they were naked, discovered that the Sin existed, discovered they owed allegiance to a King and Kingdom from another world and a God from another sky, and that this God had invented the guilty and the dress, and had sent to be burnt alive who worships the Sun the Moon the Earth and the Rain that wets it. — Eduardo Galeano

I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. The turkey is a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. — Benjamin Franklin

Hopis have lived in America longer than anyone. We wanted to explore the concept of Earthly visitation through the eyes of people who have also witnessed the rapid evolution of modern culture. For us, their beliefs ring true on so many levels. Hopi prophecy speaks to the destiny of man...in a universe where we are not alone. — T.J. Wolf

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

Although the pineapple had been widely disseminated for centuries among the native peoples of South and Central America, it didn't figure in European history until 1493. — Kate Christensen

Our way of living together in America is a strong but delicate fabric. It is made up of many threads. It has been woven over many centuries by the patience and sacrifice of countless liberty-loving men and women. It serves as a cloak for the protection of poor and rich, of black and white, of Jew and Gentile, of foreign and native born. Let us not tear it asunder. For no man knows, once it is destroyed, where or when man will find its protective warmth again. — Wendell Willkie

When you look at it objectively, that's what most colonists do - they land then find a way of wiping out their competition. In America is was blankets covered with smallpox and in Australia it was permits to hunt aborigines. If you wipe a whole people from the face of the earth, then there's no one to point fingers at you. It's just their spirits that haunt you and spirits can't do shit. — Alex Latimer

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans. — Stephen Hawking

Names on the Land carries a sympathetic tone regarding Native peoples, but it is the stories of "those who followed" from Europe that form its core. What troubles me is how some readers embrace these namings as America's history, "our" heritage, without asking if there might be other narratives, too. Stewart considers "the naming that was before history" in his first chapter, but not so much the importance of place-making in defining Indigenous traditions and identities in a storied land over time. — Lauret Savoy

C.S. Lewis's Abolition of Man (Appendix). There he lists various universally recognized moral laws and virtues - impartial justice, truthfulness, kindness, mercy, marital fidelity, respect for human life. They have been regarded as true for all from ancient Babylon and Greece to Native America, from Jews and Christians to Hindus and Confucians. — Anonymous

To understand American Indians is to understand America. This is the story of the paradoxically least and most American place in the twenty-first century. Welcome to the Rez. — David Treuer

The expansion of this country was accomplished at the cost of decimation to the Native American population. The American Indian death toll due to the United States' march to the Pacific was massive. Much of the land we stole from the Native Americans is uninhabited to this day; basically, the Indians could have stayed where they were. Had America expanded its boundaries yet been true to its conscience, the American Indian nations could have remained intact. And were there a greater prevalence of Native American philosophy and culture in the United States today, the life of our nation would be immeasurably enriched. — Marianne Williamson

I've always liked country music. It's a certain aspect of America that goes back to the British Isles and the influence is very native to America. — Robert Duvall

Because I cannot write my native language and have no native home anymore, and am amazed by that horrible homelessness of all French-Canadian s abroad in America. — Jack Kerouac

I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America ... He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on. — Benjamin Franklin

It's therapy. [people] say true healing requires honest confrontation, and that can be seen on a macro scale with America and the things that have been swept under the rug, whether it be with the native Americans or slavery, or whatever holocaust that's happened on this soil. — Nate Parker

In America there is really very little knowledge of the literature of the rest of the world. Of the literature of Latin America, yes, But that's not all that different in inspiration from that of America, or of Europe. One must go further. You don't even have to go too far in terms of geography - you can start with the Native Americans and listen to their poetry. — Chinua Achebe

The races are like America's children. White people are the firstborn, so they were Dad's favorite. Black people are the second kids, the abused ones, so they still hate Dad. Latinos are the third, caught in the middle and always trying to make peace between the other siblings. Asians are the youngest, and get good marks in school, but basically are just trying to keep their heads down and not get involved. And Native Americans are the old uncle who owns a house and everyone else in the family was like, "He's not using that! Let's move in! — Colin Quinn

[I] would argue that native-born blacks are so vastly less "African" than actual Africans that calling ourselves 'African American' is not only illogical but almost disrespectful to African immigrants. Here are people who were born in Africa, speak African languages, eat African food, dance in African ways, remember African stories, and will spiritually always be a part of Africa -and we stand up and insist that we, too, are 'African' because Jesse Jackson said so? — John McWhorter

To say that certainly America was very lucky to get a large amount of land, and the native Indians were extremely unlucky to have white men coming over here, is one thing. But to say that the whole of the American prosperity was based on exploiting the indigenous population would be a great mistake. — Amartya Sen

Giving herself a mental shake, she jumped back into the conversation. "It would help if we knew the exact origins of the vampire species. We think the first case of vampirism started around four hundred years ago, here in America, but we don't know where the virus came from, if it was originally airborne - "
Grant took a sip of his purple concoction and grimaced. "You know the vampire legend of their origins, yes?"
"Yes, but the legend is ridiculous."
"Is it?" He had to be kidding.
"Two Native American tribal chiefs kill each other, and then a crow and a raven fight over their bodies, spilling their blood into the men, who afterward rise that night as undead? Um, yes. Ridiculous."
"Some vampires agree with you. Mostly the turned ones. There are also rumors of demons creating the first vampires, but if they are so much as whispered inside these walls, Hunter will shut them down with rare temper. — Larissa Ione

Never has America lost a war ... But name, if you can, the last peace the United States won. Victory yes, but this country has never made a successful peace because peace requires exchanging ideas, concepts, thoughts, and recognizing the fact that two distinct systems of life can exist together without conflict. Consider how quickly America seems to be facing its allies of one war as new enemies. — Vine Deloria Jr.

Politics is the best show in America. I love animals and I love politicians, and I like to watch both of 'em at play, either back home in their native state, or after they've been captured and sent to a zoo, or to Washington. — Will Rogers

There is a delicate-looking plant native to North America called bleeding heart. — Josh Aterovis

How this peculiar grass, native to Central America and unknown to the Old World before 1492, came to colonize so much of our land and bodies is one of the plant world's greatest success stories. I say — Michael Pollan

I see Americans of every party, every background, every faith who believe that we are stronger together: black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American; young, old; gay, straight; men, women, folks with disabilities, all pledging allegiance under the same proud flag to this big, bold country that we love. That's what I see. That's the America I know! — Barack Obama

The values ascribed to the Indian will depend on what the white writer feels about Nature, and America has always had mixed feelings about that. At one end of the spectrum is Thoreau, wishing to immerse himself in swamps for the positive vibrations; at the other end is Benjamin Franklin, who didn't like Nature. [p.91] — Margaret Atwood

In 1803, President Jefferson oversaw the purchase of this land from the French for $15 million. It doesn't sound like much for an area three times the size of France itself but given that they'd stolen it from the Native Americans in the first place, I suppose they couldn't grumble. Once some debts had been wiped and estate agents had taken their commission, Napoleon's France ended up pocketing a little more than $8 million. Which is about how much it cost Pepsi Cola to secure the services of Britney Spears. Times have changed. — Dave Gorman

Now and always, we expect to insist upon it that we are Americans, that America is our native land; that this is our home; that we are American citizens . . . and that it is the duty of the American people so to recognize us. - FREDERICK DOUGLASS A — Elizabeth Dowling Taylor

[Mark] Twain called Congress "the only distinctly native criminal class in America. We've lately sent a United States Senator to the penitentiary." That was a fact. — Hal Holbrook

'Avatar' imaginatively revisits the crime scene of white America's foundational act of genocide, in which entire native tribes and civilizations were wiped out by European immigrants to the American continent. — Annalee Newitz

My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain ... There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. — Chief Seattle

He who runs with the platypus is no more a man than he who swallows chesnuts — Chief Long Spear Who Hunts Beavers

I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or who you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try. — Barack Obama

A native of America who cannot read or write is ... as rare as a comet or an earthquake. — John Adams

Native Americans are not and must not be props in a sort of theme park of the past, where we go to have a good time and see exotic cultures. "What we have done to the peoples who were living in North America" is, according to anthropologist Sol Tax, "our Original Sin. — James W. Loewen

What we did in the 1960s and early 1970s was raise the consciousness of white America that this government has a responsibility to Indian people. That there are treaties; that textbooks in every school in America have a responsibility to tell the truth. An awareness reached across America that if Native American people had to resort to arms at Wounded Knee, there must really be something wrong. And Americans realized that native people are still here, that they have a moral standing, a legal standing. From that, our own people began to sense the pride. — Dennis Banks

Coyote: A small canid (Canis latrans) native to western North America that is closely related to the American wolf and whose cry has often been compared to that of Sippie Wallace and Janis Joplin, amongst others. — Sherman Alexie

I always see America as really belonging to the Native Americans. Even though I'm American, I still feel like a visitor in my own country. — Nicolas Cage

The old legends of America belong quite as much to the blue-eyed little patriot as to the black-haired aborigine. And when they are grown tall like the wise grown-ups may they not lack interest in a further study of Indian folklore, a study which so strongly suggests our near kinship with the rest of humanity and points a steady finger toward the great brotherhood of mankind, and by which one is so forcibly impressed with the possible earnestness of life as seen through the teepee door! If it be true that much lies "in the eye of the beholder," then in the American aborigine as in any other race, sincerity of belief, though it were based upon mere optical illusion, demands a little respect.

After all he seems at heart much like other peoples. — Zitkala-Sa

It is only in the mountains that I can fully appreciate my existence as a man in America, and my own native land — Martin Delany

if I do run away, even with money and a passport, and even to America, I still take heart from the thought that I will not be running to any joy or happiness, but truly to another penal servitude, maybe no better than this one! No better, Alexei, I tell you truly, no better! This America, devil take it, I hate it already! So Grusha will be with me, but look at her: is she an American woman? She's Russian, every little bone of her is Russian, she'll pine for her native land, and I'll see all the time that she's pining away for my sake, that she has taken up such a cross for my sake, and what has she done wrong? And — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I had to tell it because it was the only honorable way to fulfill the promise that I had made on the Red Lake Reservation almost twenty years earlier. This, then - The Wolf at Twilight - is the fruit of that promise. It is the part of Dan's life I had left untold. It takes us to places that for too long have been hidden in shadow and reveals truths about what has been taken from Native people and what the rest of us have lost in that taking. But it also reveals what we may all yet become if we heed Sitting Bull's poignant entreaty and put our minds together to see what kind of lives we can create for the children. I hope you find it worthy of your time. If it opens your eyes to another way of understanding, I am grateful. If it simply entertains you, I am pleased. But what matters most is that it touches you. For it is, above all, a story of Native America, and its goal is to lodge deep in your heart. — Kent Nerburn

By the sandy water I breathe in the odor of the sea,
From there the wind comes and blows over the world,
By the sandy water I breathe in the odor of the sea,
From there the clouds come and rain falls over the world. — Jane Bierhorst

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

When you grow up in middle America you are inculcated from the earliest age with the belief - no, the understanding - that America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth because God likes us best. It has the most perfect form of government, the most exciting sporting events, the tastiest food and amplest portions, the largest cars, the cheapest gasoline, the most abundant natural resources, the most productive farms, the most devastating nuclear arsenal and the friendliest, most decent and most patriotic folks on Earth. Countries just don't come any better. So why anyone would want to live anywhere else is practically incomprehensible. In a foreigner it is puzzling; in a native it is seditious. I used to feel this way myself. — Bill Bryson

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said Allah God has come to fight the battle of justice for the Black man and woman of America and it is He who is plaguing America with the disasters of unusual rain, hail, snow, and soon earthquakes. So if the Black man and woman and the Native Americans, or Indians, are not in the equation of those running for the high office of the Presidency of the United States, if we are not in the equation for justice, then none of these candidates can save America from the Wrath of Allah. — Louis Farrakhan

Not that the Red Indian will ever possess the broad lands of America. At least I presume not. But his ghost will. — D.H. Lawrence

I want to say that further you are not a great chief of this country. That you have no following, no power, no control." Logan continued, "You are on an Indian reservation merely at the sufferance of the government. You are fed by the government, clothed by the government, your children are educated by the government, and all you have and are today is because of the government. If it were not for the government you would be freezing and starving today in the mountains. I merely say these things to notify you that you cannot insult the people of the United States of America or its committees ... the government feeds and clothes and educates your children now, and desires to teach you to become farmers, and to civilize you, and make you as white men.
-Senator John Logan, 1883 — Dee Brown

America, I knew that Negroes had never been allowed to catch the full spirit of Western civilization, that they lived somehow in it but not of it. And when I brooded upon the cultural barrenness of black life, I wondered if clean, positive tenderness, love, honor, loyalty, and the capacity to remember were native with man. I asked myself if these human qualities were not fostered, won, struggled and suffered for, preserved in ritual from one generation to another.) Granny — Richard Wright

Matt Mason must be declared the poet laureate of the Midwest! No other native son celebrates the overlooked America, its unsung citizens (from the anonymous poets to the part-time English teachers), and its expansive indigenous landscape, as well as he does. Mason's poetry is humorous when he wants to be quirky, heartbreaking when he wants to be eloquent, and though he moves effortlessly into other moods and geographies, he always returns to his first and most enduring love (and to what he knows best)-his homeland. — Rigoberto Gonzalez

Those men have never done anything in their lives except stare at the clouds and the stars. The Indians take them food and tobacco, and on certain evenings gather around the fire as they tell their tribesmen all the strange thoughts and dreams which they have had. Huicholes believe that men cannot have pure thoughts if they are required to participate in the daily tasks of life. — Warren Eyster

The native music of North America, the original-roots music of this country, is also the underworld music of this country. — Robbie Robertson

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

Osama bin Laden did not attack on September 11 because there was a dearth of American diplomats willing to talk with him in the Hindu Kush. He did not think America denied its Muslim citizens the right to worship freely. He did not think his native Saudi Arabia was impoverished or short of lebensraum. Instead, he recognized that a series of Islamic terrorist assaults against U.S. interests over two decades had met with what he would judge as insignificant reprisals. And he therefore concluded, in rather explicit and public fashion, that the supposedly decadent Westerners would never fight, whatever the provocation - — Victor Davis Hanson

From the newest arrivals to our Native American brothers and sisters, we are one America. — Jared Polis

You cook the native foods to perfection, Robert Childan thought. What they say is true: your powers of imitation are immense. Apple pie, Coca-Cola, stroll after the movie, Glenn Miller...you could paste together out of tin and rice paper a completely artificial America. Rice-paper Mom in the kitchen, rice-paper Dad reading the newspaper. Rice-paper put at his feet. Everything. — Philip K. Dick

America has faced hardships in the past but we have always mounted a comeback! We defeated the Nazis, we defeated the Native Americans, we defeated the environment, we even defeated the Metric System! Kilos? Sorry, that's drug talk. This is America! Where we eat fruit by the foot, not muesli by the meter. — Stephen Colbert

I realized how Latina I was, and then also, at the same time, how not Latina enough I was, because I'm born and raised in Los Angeles. I speak Spanish, but I don't speak perfect Spanish, not like a native speaker. — America Ferrera

To be homeless in America is to live like a fugitive. The destitute are our own native-born "illegals." — Barbara Ehrenreich

For many years, I have sought and studied Agarikon, an unusual mushroom native to the old growth conifer forests of North America and Europe. — Paul Stamets

The greatest moments of Native History lie ahead of us if a great spiritual renewal and wakening should take place. The Native American has been a sleeping giant. He is awakening. The original Americans could become the evangelists who will help win America for Christ! Remember these forgotten people! — Billy Graham

If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will. If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%? In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries. Anthropologists call this a form of primitive self-expression. In America we call it golf. — Dave Barry

A great many people in North America believe that Canada and the United States, in a moment of inexplicable generosity, gave treaty rights to Native people as a gift. Of course, anyone familiar with the history of Indians in North America knows that Native people paid for every treaty right, and in some cases, paid more than once. The idea that either country gave First Nations something for free is horseshit. — Thomas King

And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are. — Colson Whitehead

You've got to invite Native Americans to the table, and Asians, and Chicanos. You cannot keep us in the back room anymore and give us notations on paper saying this is what you deserve. You have to invite us to the table because America is ours, too. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

I shall rejoin myself to my native country, with new attachments, and with exaggerated esteem for its advantages; for though there is less wealth there, there is more freedom, more ease, and less misery. — Thomas Jefferson

America does not seem to remember that it derived its wealth, its values, its food, much of its medicine, and a large part of its "dream" from Native Americans. — Paula Gunn Allen

The monster in American history is not simply that which destroys. It is a being that must be destroyed. ...There can be no simple border wars in America's conflicts. Every battle is a mythic battle, a struggle against savagery, whether it be a Native American war, the search for a sea monster, or a war on terror. — W. Scott Poole

And why have you burnt our Gods, when others are brought from other Regions by the Spaniards? Are the Gods of other Provinces more sacred than ours? — Bartolome De Las Casas

American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism. — George Santayana

We do not admire their president.
We know why the White House is white.
We do not find their children irresistible;
We do not agree they should inherit the earth. — Alice Walker

The Afrocentric exploration of the black past only scratches the surface. A full examination of the ancestry of those who are referred to in the newspapers as blacks and African Americans must include Europe and Native America. — Ishmael Reed

The native Jewish families in Jerusalem, as well as those in other parts of Palestine, present a marked difference to the Jews of Europe and America. They possess the same physical characteristics - the dark, oblong eye, the prominent nose, the strongly-marked cheek and jaw - but in the latter, these traits have become harsh and coarse. — Bayard Taylor

If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans. - Stephen Hawking — Rick Yancey

Every book in the 'Dreams' cycle dramatizes a particular epoch in the ongoing cultural collision between North America's native peoples and its European colonizers. — Tom Bissell

At the same time that "self-made" entered the nation's lexicon, so did the notion of abject failure. Once reserved to describe a discrete financial episode - "I made a failure," a merchant would say after losing his shop - "failure" in antebellum America became a matter of identity, describing not an event but a person. As the historian Scott Sandage explains in Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, the phrase "I feel like a failure" comes to us so naturally today "that we forget it is a figure of speech: the language of business applied to the soul." It became conventional wisdom in the early nineteenth century, Sandage explains, that people who failed had a problem native to their constitution. They weren't just losers; they were "born losers. — Joshua Wolf Shenk

If the European discovery had been delayed for a century or two, it is possible that the Aztec in Mexico or the Iroquois in North America would have established strong native states capable of adopting European war tactics and maintaining their independence to this day, as Japan kept her independence from China. — Samuel Eliot Morison

Don't think I am not homesick for America. I say 'homesick' advisedly because I am a man with two homes - America, which gave me hospitality for many happy years, and where my daughter was born; and my native England. — Leslie Howard

One leading French naturalist, the Comte de Buffon, famously proposed that climate and other conditions in the New World had led to the inevitable degeneration of its fauna and flora. Buffon's more enthusiastic readers extrapolated from this argument to call into question the virility and intelligence of both America's European settlers and its native inhabitants, the Indians. That sparked a rousing defense of American virtue and vigor from Jefferson, spelled out in his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia.20 — Jonathan Lyons

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. — Mark Twain

It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it. — Eric Hoffer

He had always thought that a Native American should have shot Robert Frost for the outrageous lie of the line "The land was ours before we were the land's." What a scandal that would be, America's best-loved geezer falling in a battle over poetry. — Jim Harrison

The occupation of America (and Columbus's arrival quite clearly was an occupation, no one can deny that) meant that the entire history of the Native Americans was rendered invisible. The land could only be occupied if it was first defined as empty. So it was defined as a wilderness, even though it had been used by native people for millennia. — Vandana Shiva

Swallows The peppered sky chimes in the key of swallows. Arcing northward from Central America, dual citizens of the torn world, though native to the unity, wonderful yet I find myself dispossessed of wonder. Like the birds, we all sleep under bridges of one kind or another. When the core competency of a culture is strategic judgmentalism many things go rancid into the mean and meaningless. The routines set in, the procedures, the long, slow death-drone of sameness. The occasional lone hawk feathers up a bit of mild novelty here and there, then gets wing-clipped by celebritism, homeless in a cage. If my faith was real, I would abandon my luxurious pursuit of a mythopoetic identity and go fetch water for the dying. We are each and all the dispossessed if one child stands at our gates unwelcome. — James Scott Smith

Jefferson, who spent his life collecting books, many of which he donated to the Library of Congress, boasted that America was the only country whose farmers read Homer. "A native of America who cannot read or write," said John Adams, "is as rare an appearance ... as a Comet or an Earthquake. — Azar Nafisi

We [Americans] have a historical trauma when it comes to the past relationships when it comes to Native Americans and the history of how America was created. With this film, it's nice to see that the trauma is presented from a white male that was in the Civil War and that trauma affects him in a way that still exists. — Adam Beach

Why had Ovid lived in Ancient Rome in 20 BCE and not Chicago in 2006 CE? Would Ovid still have been Ovid if he had lived in America? No, he wouldn't have been, because he would have been a Native American or possibly and American Indian or a First Person or an Indigenous Person, and they did not have Latin or any other kind of written language then. So did Ovid matter because he was Ovid or because he lived in ancient Rome? — John Green

Avarice is not unknown in Italy, and Rinaldo Pazzi had imbibed plenty with his native air. But his natural acquisitiveness and ambition had been whetted in America, where every influence is felt more quickly, including the death of Jehovah and the incumbency of Mammon. When — Thomas Harris