Quotes on the nature and scope of indigenous societies

Everywhere is the center of the world.
Everything is sacred.
Black Elk

What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow which runs across
the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
Crowfoot

In an eagle there is all the wisdom of the world.
Lame Deer

Everything on the earth has a purpose, every disease an herb to cure it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of existence.
Mourning Dove

Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison with those of other continents. In those centuries, Africans were politically free and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and their cultures truly indigenous.
Haile Selassie

Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.
Chief Seattle

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Tecumseh

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.
Tony Abbott

Quotes on the relationship between indigenous societies and values

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
Mahatma Gandhi

It was our belief that the love of possessions is a weakness to be overcome. Its
appeal is to the material part, and if allowed its way, it will in time disturb one’s
spiritual balance. Therefore, children must early learn the beauty of generosity.
They are taught to give what they prize most, that they may taste the happiness of giving.
Ohiyesa

Only when the last tree has died
and the last river has been poisoned
and the last fish has been caught
will we realize
we cannot eat money.
Cree Indian Expression

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

The forest is not a resource for us, it is life itself. It is the only place for us to live.
Evaristo Nugkuag

Quotes on the communication of indigenous ideas

Be careful when speaking. You create the world around you with your words.
Diné (Navajo) proverb

One thing to remember is to talk to the animals. If you do, they will talk back to you. But if you don’t talk to the animals, they won’t talk back to you, then you won’t understand, and when you don’t understand you will fear and when you fear you will destroy the animals, and if you destroy the animals, you will destroy yourself.
Chief Dan George

To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak.
Indian Proverb

To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language.
Robin Wall Kimmerer

When a language dies, so much more than words are lost. Language is the dwelling place of ideas that do not exist anywhere else.
Robin Wall Kimmerer

English is so hierarchical. In Cree, we don’t have animate-inanimate comparisons between things. Animals have souls that are equal to ours. Rocks have souls, trees have souls. Trees are ‘who,’ not ‘what.
Tomson Highway

To our indigenous ancestors, and to the many aboriginal peoples who still hold fast to their oral traditions, language is less a human possession than it is a property of the animate earth itself.
David Abram

Teachers were powerful enough to kill the indigenous languages: they are not powerful enough to bring them back to life.
Andrew Dalby

Quotes on indigenous societies, perspectives, and context

I believe very firmly that indigenous populations had a really good, intuitive understanding of why we’re here. And we’re trying to gain that same understanding through psychology and intellect in modern civilization.
Serj Tankian

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

Although we are in different boats you in your boat and we in our canoe we share the same river of life.
Chief Oren Lyons

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

Colonialism. The enforced spread of the rule of reason. But who is going to spread it among the colonizers?
Anthony Burgess

One major difference between our people and those of the dominant society today is humility. Among our people, no matter how far or how high a person goes, they know they are small in the presence of God and the universe.
Lincoln Tritt

We are all indigenous people on this planet, and we have to reorganize to get along.
Rebecca Adamson

Quotes on creating new indigenous knowledge

We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism.
Rigoberta Menchú

We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors,
We borrow it from our Children
Indian Proverb

Debating Imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That we really miss it?
Arundhati Roy

The role of globalization is to homogenize all cultures, and to turn them into commodified markets, and therefore, to make them easier for global corporations to control. Global corporations are even now trying to commodify all remaining aspects of national cultures, not to mention indigenous cultures.
Jerry Mander

Quotes on becoming a discerning knower about indigenous societies

In our every deliberation,
we must consider the impact of our decisions
on the next seven generations.
Iroquois Confederacy Maxim

The Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that a lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to a lack of respect for humans, too.
Chief Luther Standing Bear

One of the things my parents taught me, and I’ll always be grateful for the gift, is to not ever let anybody else define me.
Wilma Mankiller

My experience in living and working with indigenous people has given me the hope that I have – they have taught me concretely that humans have the capacity to be marvellous, and not destructive.
Juan Pablo Orrego