Reservations American Quotes & Sayings

Congressional Republicans refused to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act because they objected to the protection it gave immigrants, transgender women, and Native American women. (Speaking of epidemics, one of three Native American women will be raped, and on the reservations 88 percent of those rapes are by non-Native men who know tribal governments can't prosecute them. — Rebecca Solnit

Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations. — Sherman Alexie

All that remains of the garden city in our own day are traffic-free enclaves, islands in a sea of traffic where the pedestrian leads a legally protected by languishing existence, comparable to that of the North American Indians on their reservations ... In reality the modern urbanist regards the city as a gigantic centre of production, geared to the efficient transport of workers and goods, to the accommodation of people and the storage of wares, to industrial and commercial activity. The rest, that is to say creativity, life, is optional and comes under the heading of recreation and leisure activities. — Tom McDonough

Perhaps the greatest definition I think of character and quality is people who when they're truly great rather than making you feel that tall they make you feel that tall, that they're greatness as it were improves you. — Stephen Fry

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. — Martin Luther King Jr.

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

Rogue factories on the other side of the border, most of them also on Native American reservations, pumped out millions of cheap, untaxed, generic cigarettes a year. You couldn't blame the Indians. We took their land; they were giving us cancer. — Daryl Gregory

There has been a vigorous acceleration of health, resource and education programs designed to advance the role of the American Indian in our society. Last Fall, for example, 91 percent of the Indian children between the ages of 6 and 18 on reservations were enrolled in school. This is a rise of 12 percent since 1953. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I have this terrific make-up man. But he's expensive. I have to bring him in from Lourdes. — Bob Hope

In every career, you are balancing or negotiating tricky waters. But, I think that's been something nice that comedy has been able to give me a little bit more. I have the ability to laugh at myself and hopefully not take all of this whole world too seriously. — Anna Faris

I am an expert witness because I say I am. — Don Henley

I have been very interested in the number of kids who have read the Sherlock Holmes books after reading the Mary Russell books. That's great. That's more or less how I rediscovered the Holmes books. — Laurie R. King

Are you there God? It's me, Margaret. I just told my mother I want a bra. Please help me grow God. You know where. — Judy Blume

The Justice Department ruled that Native American tribes are allowed to grow and sell marijuana on reservations. This decision was hailed as a victory by Native American leader Giggling Eagle. — Conan O'Brien

The only good Indian is a dead Indian — William Tecumseh Sherman

What I have left is from my native spring; I've still a heart that swells, in scorn of fate, And lifts me to my banks. — John Dryden

Subordination of the state to Christian values is precisely what the early Puritans, even those in the tradition of the Mayflower Pilgrims, aimed to do. The First Amendment notwithstanding, large numbers of the American public (especially churchgoing Protestant Christians) have embodied this Puritan way of thinking, viewing America as a "Christan nation." Relatively recent poll data bear out the enduring character of these Puritan convictions. According to a Pew Forum poll held just prior to the 2004 election, over one-half of the public would have reservations voting for a candidate with no religious affiliation (31 percent refusing to vote for a Muslim and 15 percent for a Catholic). — Mark Ellingsen