#indian

Song for the Puberty Rite of a Girl Named Cowaka: A poor man takes the songs in his hand And drops them near the place where the sun sets. See, Cowaka, run to them and take them in your hand, And place them under the sunset. ↗

— Frances Densmore

#old-songs #path #music

The greatest skeptic must now admit that the land and sea-borne trade of India had given her a world-wide fame not only for her gold, spices and silk, but for her religions and philosophies also. ↗

— Virchand Raghavji Gandhi

#india #indian-philsophers #philosophy #religions #virchand-gandhi

The acknowledgement of White cowardice has driven literally tens of millions of White Americans to try to escape it by undergoing a voluntary human metamorphosis and becoming "part-Indian." 95% would become proven liars by a simple DNA test, but their children grow up believing the lie. Abandoning the White race means not having to fight for it or defend it in any way. ↗

— Frazier Glenn Miller

#native-american #part-indian #white-people #cowardice

They're all gone, my tribe is gone. Those blankets they gave us, infected with smallpox, have killed us. I'm the last, the very last, and I'm sick, too. So very sick. Hot. My fever burning so hot. I have to take off my clothes, feel the cold air, splash water across my bare skin. And dance. I'll dance a Ghost Dance. I'll bring them back. Can you hear the drums? I can hear them, and it's my grandfather and grandmother singing. Can you hear them? I dance one step and my sister rises from the ash. I dance another and a buffalo crashes down from the sky onto a log cabin in Nebraska. With every step, an Indian rises. With every other step, a buffalo falls. I'm growing, too. My blisters heal, my muscles stretch, expand. My tribe dances behind me. At first they are no bigger than children. Then they begin to grow, larger than me, larger than the trees around us. The buffalo come to join us and their hooves shake the earth, knock all the white people from their beds, send their plates crashing to the floor. We dance in circles growing larger and larger until we are standing on the shore, watching all the ships returning to Europe. All the white hands are waving good-bye and we continue to dance, dance until the ships fall off the horizon, dance until we are so tall and strong that the sun is nearly jealous. We dance that way. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#indian #indigenous #native-american #the-sun-watches-the-sun

I'm a West Indian mum and West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children. ↗

— Diane Abbott

#go #i #indian #mum #their

You'd never know it from reading the rest of the Native writers, but Indians actually grew up with American pop culture. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#american #culture #grew #indians #know

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

#actually #american #american writers #areas #call

In high school I dated a white woman. She would come to visit me on the rez. And her dad, who was very racist, didn't like that at all. And he told her one time, 'You shouldn't go on the rez if you're white because Indians have a lot of anger in their heart.' ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#because #come #dad #dated #go

We are Indians, firstly and lastly. ↗

— B. R. Ambedkar

#indians #lastly

Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite. ↗

— Sri Aurobindo

#allowed #always #approach #felt #his