native-american-activists

"At the moment there is a veritable renaissance going on in tribal America as we come to terms with who we are as tribal people in contemporary society. We are bringing tradition along with us into the future rather than "going back to tradition" and maintaining ourselves like rigid museum pieces."

"Indians have been the victims of fine rhetoric, followed by inaction or worse, for two centuries. Swift action is what is needed."

"tribal ideas of progress may be radically different from Euro-American ideas. For example, the Northern Cheyenne count as "progress" their ability to maintain environmental quality, rather than the development of their coal resources."

"The history of humankind in North and South America can be divided into two parts: the history of the aboriginal peoples of the Western Hemisphere prior to the landfall of Western man, and the history of North and South America after the voyages of Columbus. These histories can be likened to an iceberg.... [S]even-eighths lie beneath the surface of the water. We can see Western occupation above the surface and visible. The aboriginal peoples' time is below the surface and invisible. This 500-year occupation by Western man contrasts with the conservative estimate of 12,000 years of aboriginal occupation."

"One cannot be "an Indian." One is a Comanche, an Oneida, a Hopi. One can be self-determining, not as "an Indian," but as a Comanche, an Oneida, etc. We progress as communities, not as individuals. We want to maintain ourselves as communities, according to our group identity, not just as mere individuals or as amorphous "Indians"...We want to maintain ourselves as we are so we can contribute our differences, our particular understanding, to both the national community and to global society."

"We come here...speaking the truth on behalf of people, of the world, of the four-footed, of the winged, of the fish that swim. Someone must speak for them. I do not see a delegation for the four-footed. I see no seat for the eagles...We forget and we consider ourselves superior, but we are after all a mere part of the Creation. And we must continue to understand where we are. And we stand between the mountain and the ant, somewhere and only there, as part and parcel of the Creation...It is our responsibility, since we have been given the minds to take care of these things. The elements and the animals, and the birds, they live in a state of grace. They are absolute, they can do no wrong. It is only we, the two-leggeds, that can do this."

"We are of the soil and the soil is of us."

"Instead of doing to settler society what they did to us — genociding, removing, excluding — there’s a capaciousness to Indigenous resistance movements that welcomes in non-Indigenous peoples into our struggle, because that’s our primary strength, is one of relationality, one of making kin"

"We can see that settler colonialism in Israel — or, in Palestine, is really an extension of settler colonialism in North America."

"The first U.S. invasion, which was Lewis and Clark, who came through—who trespassed through our territory and were stopped by our leadership."

"It’s no coincidence that Indian people are in the same department that manages wildlife and federal lands"

"There is also a growing alliance with nonindigenous communities who are seeing value in indigenous rights, and specifically treaty rights. And, to me, that is the most hopeful sort of sign of this current resistance movement, is that indigenous rights are at the forefront, because they protect everybody’s rights."

"These states have contentious relations with tribal nations to begin with, right? We didn’t sign treaties with the state governments, but yet the state governments participate in the continued criminalization of indigenous people for trying to uphold our treaty rights. And so, why are we criminals, you know, and activists, who are just trying to protect land and water? And when we go back to the treaties, in like the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which the Keystone XL pipeline contravenes and trespasses through treaty-protected territory of the Great Sioux Reservation, we’re not asking the state of South Dakota to do anything radical. We’re not asking nonindigenous people to do anything radical. All we’re asking them to do is to uphold their own Constitution. Your government signed the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty with us. It’s your responsibility to uphold that treaty, as well. And, you know, your own Constitution says that treaties are the supreme law of the land."

"His books include Our History Is the Future, which tells the history of Indigenous resistance over two centuries, offering a road map for collective liberation and a guide to fighting life-threatening climate change."

"This book is a jewel-history and analysis that reads like the best poetry-certain to be a classic work as well as a study guide for continued and accelerated resistance.""

"Estes continues in the legacy of his ancestors, from Black Elk to Vine Deloria: he turns Indigenous history right-side up as a story of self-defense against settler invasion."

"We are challenged not just to imagine, but to demand the emancipation of earth from capital. For the earth to live, capitalism must die."

"Nick Estes is a forceful writer whose work reflects the defiant spirit of the #NoDAPL movement."

"I think when we think about climate change, oftentimes the question of climate change really centers on market-driven solutions, such as, you know, green capitalism, and how do we create markets that sort of incentivize transition to sustainable economies, right? And I think, really, what we’re kind of like beating around the bush is, is that it’s the system of capitalism that led us into this economic crisis to begin with. It’s the sort of designation of certain populations in certain territories as disposable, that has led us into our current epoch of global climate change. And so, when we talk about who’s going to bear the most burden when we transition, you know, out of the carbon economy, it most likely is going to be those populations that have historically been colonized"

"The first Thanksgiving story is — begins with the Pequot massacre by members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which really marks sort of — in my opinion, marks sort of the mythology of the United States as a settler-colonial country founded on sort of genocide to create, ironically, peace."

"Capitalism is fundamentally a social relation. It’s a profit-driven system, whereas Indigenous sort of ways of relating is one about reciprocity and a mutual sort of respect, not just with the human, but also with the nonhuman world. And we’re undergoing, you know, the sixth mass — sixth massive extinction event, which is caused by not just climate change, but is caused by capitalist sort of systems and the profit-driven sort of motive of our current economic and social system."

"Our History Is the Future establishes Nick Estes as one of the leading scholars of our time."

"There is no one like Linda Hogan. I read her poetry to both calm and ignite my heart."

"She is a compassionate witness who reminds us: 'When a person says, "I remember," all things are possible.'"

"Drenched in grief and loss though it is, Mean Spirit is a haunting and beautiful story. Hogan's compassion for her characters is what makes the book captivating, bearable. She brings us a long overdue story, one that celebrates the resilience and survival of our own Indian population."

"one of our best writers."

"A novel that instructs the heart as it binds its curative spell. With her unparalleled gifts for truth and magic, Linda Hogan reinforces my faith in reading, writing, living."

"Linda Hogan is one of the most important environmental writers of our time. In this troubled and dark world, I am grateful for the wisdom, light, and love found in these poems."

"In recent years I read much more Native American women's work than anything else; for example, Leslie Marmon Silko and Linda Hogan. I feel an affinity within to these women's work. Their writings run closer to the Chicano experience, given the fact that we both have native roots here in the United States."

"Linda Hogan's work is rooted in truth and mystery."

"While groups of non-humans have different cultures, even different dialects in the same species, they accept one another. Humans find their differences too often as fracture lines. I have loved working with non-human animals, but find that I also have love for humans once I learn them."

"Writers who work in more than one genre find that their work is different in each way they write, yet the topic may be the same. It is just another form and way of thinking. Some things can’t be said in a poem or a novel but might become an essay. Other pieces of work begin as a poem then make a turn into an essay. The work is shape-shifting even if the inner person, the psyche of the writer, remains the same. The approach may be the same, but the final product is quite different than the writer first thought it would be. Creativity goes its own direction. It has its own life energy. Writing is the teacher and we follow it."

"I truly feel there is a new language coming about-look at the work of Meridel LeSueur, Sharon Doubiago, Linda Hogan, Alice Walker - it's coming from the women. Something has to be turned around. (1990)"

"Linda Hogan's gentle and clear poetry in Rounding the Human Corners reminds me that, too often, I long and ask for more than I need."

"I always think of Lewis and Clark, their story. It is not really their story at all. It is the story of Sacajawea who knew the way, took them along, saved them from mishaps, kept them fed, negotiated their entry into different tribal territories. The story, really, is hers. And she was still just a girl. Yet, women have been omitted from Native histories and so little is found that it is an effort to find information, even for scholars. So I like to center stories that are also history, with women as integral forces within the story."

"We can’t control the earth’s response to our actions, only our own behaviors."

"Whatever it is that people believe about the lives of writers only applies to writers who have great incomes, I believe."

"I feel like I owe the future to my children and grandchildren, that the work I do, I hope, will help sustain them in the future...My family’s important to me. I think you feel that even more when you’re an American Indian. You see your children, and you want them to know the tradition, to know the language to follow in some way, and yet, you still have to live in America. I think that’s my priority in my life. My work is all dedicated to those babies and children."

"I write to put words together in ways that express what can’t be said in the ordinary use of language, particularly the way a poem feels, goes not only through the mind, but through the heart and body, as well. With poetry, I’d like it to first bypass the mind and give off a particular feeling, then if someone wishes, they can return to it with their mind. I want it to be accessible, also, to every person and not just to other poets or people who have studied poetry."

"My characters actually create me instead of the other way around."

"I feel that, as an Indian woman, it’s important to hold to our integrity about our relationships with all the other species, including plants, and that they not be endangered. They are part of our cultural heritage and part of our spiritual life and our well-being, in terms of keeping our tribal lands and ecosystems intact."

"We live in a world of many intelligences. Human language isn't all that is spoken in the world around our lives. Other documented and studied languages exist in the animal world. They surround us, also, in the plant world, where trees have the ability to call helpful underground bacteria toward them from distances, to communicate with one another through hormonal and chemical means. Cedars and junipers even store moisture to release for hardwoods during times of drought. We are surrounded by voices intelligent and in need of respect."

"How absolutely amazing all the life forms and their origins."

"Everything that happens in one country is carried away to others, through air, through ocean. Radioactivity shows up long distances away. Our plastics travel in the ocean to other continents. Now there is plastic sand, the ground-down drinking bottles of America, which have become the dead beaches on islands in the Pacific. These were once places the indigenous people depended on for food sources and which are now completely dead. We forget how small the planet has always been and it becomes smaller with each catastrophe. We also now have ways to communicate across and beneath oceans, to know what is happening not only to our embodied planet, but to people in other locations, attacks on innocent protesters, wars we might not have known existed, and that has allowed us to become more conscious humans on this earth, to know we have kin everywhere and the earth, as a living body, is one."

"All of the animals I have known enter into my writing, become it. They are inspiration, research, and also my love."

"It is more about murder and theft, the true stories of what happened during the Oklahoma oil boom."

"I find that my process usually isn’t that I’m full of intention. It’s usually that I’m just open, and something comes to visit and tells me the story and creates it."

"I love the art of learning. It doesn’t always stay with me but reading about snail teeth and thinking about how many crows roost together, watching them fledge their young with the help of magpies, it is all exciting and leaves me, and hopefully the reader, in a state of wonder about our world and the cooperation of one bird with another. I think this also answers many of the questions about why it is important that we read and write such works. Readers fall in love with the planet, their own environment. They want to find their path toward making change, to learn how it may be done."

"Her verses teach us how to live with dignity in a world bent on destruction."

"Stories have the capacity to make change in ways that other forms of activism don’t...Sometimes I think of them as a form of activism, sometimes as an expression of love, or the meaningful humanity of our daily lives."