native-americans

"for us as Native people, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is not what we are working towards. It has to be anti-colonial. Any diversity and equity or anti-racist work that doesn’t include an anti-colonial commitment just perpetuates further erasure. We need to have the language for that."

"How do you restore Indigenous authority to their ancestral places? By considering all kinds of possibilities and alternative land arrangements, including shared governance."

"Native American writers have always been a major influence on me, like Wendy Rose, Simon Ortiz, Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Paula Gunn Allen, just to name a few."

"Wendy is an intensely serious person-though not slow to laughter-and her well-informed anger showed in both the poem she chose to read and in the directness of her responses."

"Over the years, she has gained a solid reputation as a poet. She is also an accomplished painter. One of her favorite subjects, the centaur, reflects what she calls "my hybrid status...like the centaur, I have always felt misunderstood and isolated-whether with Indians or with non-Indians.""

"(Could you describe your writing process?) Well, I explained it one time, on radio, as the sensation of being sick in your stomach, in that you suddenly have to throw up, suddenly, you have to vomit. There is no way you can stop it. It has to happen. It's a bodily process in which the material is expelling itself from your body. That's what it feels like to me in a mental or emotional way. Suddenly it's there and it has to be expelled. It's going to come out whether I want it to or not. If I don't have something to write on, it comes out of my mouth. It's got to come out one way or another."

"if Indians are left out of every other class on the university campus, even where they are pertinent-for example, leaving Scott Momaday out of a class on twentieth-century American literature, something like that somewhere else there has to be a balance. There has to be someone somewhere else who is going to emphasize Scott Momaday to the exclusion of the ones who are emphasized in the other class. I hope that at some point that will become balanced. I hope that pretty soon an American literature class will just automatically include someone like Scott Momaday-and some of the other people: Charles Eastman, you know, the other writers in our history."

"anywhere in America, if you take a university-level course on American history or American literature, particularly in literature and the arts, it only has the literature and the arts that are produced by Americans of European heritage, even then largely Northern European. We are left out of the books. Black people are left out; brown people are left out; Indian people are left out. So you get the impression, going through the American education system, that the only people here are white people. It's not just a cultural matter, but it's a political matter. There is a reason for a society to be that way, that has the literary capacity and the technological capacity that America has; there's no excuse for the people being so blind, for the people to be wearing a blindfold that way. The only possible reason it could happen is because it's not an accident; that it's planned. Somebody is benefiting by having Americans ignorant about what non-European Americans are doing and what they have done; what European Americans have done to them. Somebody is benefiting by keeping people ignorant."

"We are parts of the earth that walk around and have individual consciousness for awhile and then go back."

"the way I think of it-now I don't really know where the poems or where the art comes from, I don't know where the images come from-but however they come or wherever they come from is like communicating with a person. It's a whole person. That person shows you things and has a certain appearance but also tells you things. So as you receive images, they are either received through the ear or through the eye or through the tongue and that's just the way it feels."

"This is a plural society and all of us have to work at it a little bit to get the full flavor of the society."

"I think it's impossible to be governed with any sense of integrity when you don't recognize each other and have no obligation to each other."

"One way that they [Kachinas] can be thought of is if you think of the entire earth as being one being and we as small beings living on that large being like fleas on a cat."

"What a lot of people don't realize is there were a number of revolts against the Spanish mission by the Indians. But they don't tell you this in the museums. In fact, the museum right here in Oakland paints a ridiculous picture of the missions with the happy little natives making baskets in the shade of the adobe with the benevolent padres walking around rattling their rosaries. That just is not the way that the missions were."

"I would much rather be respected by the Indian community through my writing than to have my books reviewed in the New York Times."

"it seems like any opportunity the Republicans have to oppress voters, they do that."

"we weren’t citizens until 1924 here in New Mexico. They couldn’t—Indians couldn’t vote until 1948, when a member of the Isleta Pueblo sued the state of New Mexico after he came back from World War II and couldn’t vote."

"I think it’s important to point out that Deb Haaland is — I think she’s been in this position for just over a year now. And one year, you know, in the face of a century and a half of genocidal Indian policy, isn’t that much, when we think about how history unfolds."

"Our country has a trust responsibility to Indian tribes, and it seems like their voice has been lacking in so many conversations that we’ve had in this country. And so, I’d like to make sure that tribal leaders have that seat at the table."

"At last, we do have Native women representation in Congress."

"New Mexico has over 310 days of sun per year. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be a global leader in renewable energy right now."

"I have confidence that she is the right person for the job. She is from New Mexico. She has shown deep commitments to protecting Chaco Canyon from further exploitation, and as we know the Southwest has been considered a sacrifice zone. There is a lot of uranium contamination still there, and they want to open it back up for uranium mining and oil and gas extraction. She has been very, very staunchly against it. I think she is the right person for that position to protect lands, but it remains to be seen how much the structure and the political system will hamper her ability to work collaboratively across the aisle as someone in a Cabinet-level position."

"There is too much inequity in our country, in our world. And I think it’s time for the big corporations to make right with workers."

"Seventy years ago, Native Americans right here in New Mexico couldn’t vote. Can you believe that? Growing up in my mother’s Pueblo household and as a 35th-generation New Mexican, I never imagined a world where I would be represented by someone who looks like me. Tonight, New Mexico, you are sending one of the very first Native American women to Congress!"

"I came here to fight for working families, and that’s what I’m doing"

"It is so unfair that the big executives can make that much money when there are people that can’t afford to buy groceries. It is fundamentally unfair. It isn’t right. They don’t have a conscience. And they need to pay up."

"For more than a century, tens of thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their communities and forced into boarding schools run by the U.S. government, specifically the Department of the Interior, and religious institutions. … When my maternal grandparents were only 8 years old, they were stolen from their parents’ culture and communities and forced to live in boarding schools until the age of 13. Many children like them never made it back to their homes. … The federal policies that attempted to wipe out Native identity, language and culture continue to manifest in the pain tribal communities face today, including cycles of violence and abuse, disappearance of Indigenous people, premature deaths, poverty and loss of wealth, mental health disorders and substance abuse. Recognizing the impacts of the federal Indian boarding school system cannot just be a historical reckoning. We must also chart a path forward to deal with these legacy issues. …The fact that I am standing here today as the first Indigenous cabinet secretary is testament to the strength and determination of Native people. I am here because my ancestors persevered. I stand on the shoulders of my grandmother and my mother. And the work we will do with the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative will have a transformational impact on the generations who follow."

"Deb Haaland campaigned on progressive issues, including climate change, renewable energy, universal healthcare and a $15 minimum wage."

"Poetry is an overlooked and underrated kind of art."

"There are a lot of stories like that, about how words have power that can create and heal. Also destroy. After something is said, the people who heard it will always remember it. You have to think about the words you say."

"In Navajo, the idea of words or language is really our origin. We were created by words, and we survived by words. Everything that comprises a Navajo person is based on words — your clan, where you come from, how the world was created."

"people use words, words that aren’t really mine, that are from our language, from our history. It is not even really me, you know — it is everything that people over the generations and over the centuries have deemed beautiful. And beautiful has a different connotation than aesthetics."

"As a child at a mission boarding school in the 1960s, I was forced to learn English. Nowhere in our lessons was there any mention of Native history. But at night, after lights out, we girls gathered in the dark to tell stories and sing Navajo songs, quietly, so as to not wake the housemother. We were taught that if we broke the rules, we would go to hell, a place we could not conceive of—there is no Navajo analogy. As I learned to read, I discovered in books a way to assuage my longing for my parents, my siblings, my home. So in this way my schooling was a mixed experience, a fact that was true for many Native children."

"In Navajo, they say the sacred begins at the tip of my tongue. So there’s very much sacredness or a holiness that’s associated with creativity. Whatever a person creates and brings into this world is sacred. And it adds to the beauty of the world. We all benefit when people create something new."

"It’s important to do as much as I can to publicize the ideas of language, the importance of family, the importance of history, and also the importance of changes that have happened, that are happening now. Always political issues come up, issues of the environment, issues of education, of poverty, drug use, alcoholism. All of those things are a part of it, too."

"The idea of poetry in our Navajo world, speaking — Ya’ jił’tí’i’gí’ — Diníbizaad — is related to the whole — one’s whole life, the whole community. It’s not separated the way poetry is in Western society."

"I try to accept as many invitations as I can with the idea that probably people have not met another Navajo before. They don’t really have any idea except maybe the stereotypical kinds of ideas of American Indians. For whoever comes behind me in the next two years, I want to establish what the position entails, and that is a challenge."

"Contrary to commonly-held belief, Ishi was not the last of his kind. In carrying out the repatriation process, we learned that as a Yahi–Yana Indian his closest living descendants are the Yana people of northern California."

"You stay. I go."

"The Sheriff handed me a pair of handcuffs and told me to put them on him, and to hang on to him. Ishi made no attempt to run or resist the handcuffs but seemed very pleased. At no time did he seem to be real scared but he did a lot of smiling. He did not try to run away or get excited. The Sheriff put him in the buggy, accompanied by Constable John Toland and took him to the county jail."

"Bringing these items back home to Siksika is a historic event. Many items left Siksika and other Nations and were scattered across the globe. Now the tides are turning and these items are finding their way back home. Crowfoot’s entire essence is in and around Blackfoot territory and this is where his belongings should be housed. We are building strong relationships with curators at several museums as well as private collectors in an effort to bring items such as the ones coming home back to their rightful place. There are many more Blackfoot items still in need of being claimed and repatriated back to their rightful homeland. To me, it is not as important how these items left Siksika, but what is important is how we bring them back home."

"“You can’t run from your reflection… you can try to lighten your skin, change your hair, but the one thing you can’t run from is yourself. I want to influence people of color to be proud of where they come from and to reconnect with their roots.”"

"“It’s great to finally have representation of our Indigenous people. We don’t look one way; we’re diverse. Having that representation is going to echo out our voices to be heard in spaces that they're usually not heard. I hope that inspires creativity within our community, and also confidence—a sense of confidence to be strong and to hold our head high.”"

"“Our ways as Indigenous people go hand in hand with this land, because we are the land. All of us are the land.”"

"“Long hair to me is a symbol of pride. A pride that has been marketed as shameful by Western belief systems. Back in the day, Indigenous children across the Americas were forced into boarding schools, and the idea was to kill the Indian, save the man. They would cut off our hair and would physically and mentally abuse us to forget our cultural ways and language and to forcefully take on someone else’s. I wear my hair long to honor my ancestors and the sacrifice they made, because they didn’t have a choice. I have the option to grow it long. So I hold my hair with pride.”"

"I do spank. I have no problem with that."

"I don’t care what color your state is. I don’t care if you’re red or you’re blue. At the end of the day, my job is to be Secretary of Homeland Security and to protect everybody. (March 24, 2026)"

"I just wonder if someone who applauds violence against their political opponents is the right person to lead an agency that has struggled to accept limits to the proper use of force?"

"The responsibility we have to Indian Country is a true federal obligation. it is no different than us having to pay our national debt or the interest on it, because it is a treaty we have signed with these tribes."

"As I said in my opening statement, I want to protect the homeland, I want to bring peace of mind, I want to bring confidence back to the agency. I’m not going to be the smartest guy in any room I walk into, but I know how to get talent and I know how to bring those people together."