native-american

There is not one Indian in the whole of this country who does not cringe in anguish and frustration because of these textbooks. There is not one Indian child who has not come home in shame and tears.

The rancid odor mixed with the dust, death, and confusion as they awaited those who could clean up the mess and make death official.

To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion.

Among our Potawatomi people, women are the Keepers of Water. We carry the sacred water to ceremonies and act on its behalf. __omen have a natural bond with water, because we are both life bearers,_ my sister said. __e carry our babies in internal ponds and they come forth into the world on a wave of water. It is our responsibility to safeguard the water for all our relations.

It doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or who you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try.

Her hope was to preserve what she called The Way, to keep it alive, for that future moment when the current obsession with excess and hierarchy imploded. Wilma said many Native people believed that the earth as a living organism would just one day shrug off the human species that was destroying it__nd start over. In a less cataclysmic vision, humans would realize that we are killing our home and each other, and seek out The Way. That__ why Native people were guarding it.

They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and if they irrigated, they took as little water as would serve their needs. The land and all that it bore they treated with consideration; not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it.

George Arthur, a tribal council delegate, spoke on behalf of the tribe. Arthur was a chairman, too, of the Navajo legislature's resources committee. . . ."Uranium mining and milling on and near the reservation has been a disaster for the Navajo people. The Department of the Interior has been in the pocket of the uranium industry, favoring its interest and breaching its trust duties to the Navajo mineral owners. We are still undergoing what appears to be a never-ending federal experiment to see how much devastation can be endured by a people and a society from exposure to radiation in the air, in the water, in mines and on the surface of the land. We are unwilling to be the subjects of that ongoing experiment any longer.

I wish I had been more interested or learned sooner, but I didn__ , and now I must face the consequences.

A significant number of people believe tribal people still live and dress as they did 300 years ago. During my tenure as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, national news agencies requesting interviews sometimes asked if they could film a tribal dance or if I would wear traditional tribal clothing for the interview. I doubt they asked the president of the United States to dress like a pilgrim for an interview.

Though many non-Native Americans have learned very little about us, over time we have had to learn everything about them. We watch their films, read their literature, worship in their churches, and attend their schools. Every third-grade student in the United States is presented with the concept of Europeans discovering America as a "New World" with fertile soil, abundant gifts of nature, and glorious mountains and rivers. Only the most enlightened teachers will explain that this world certainly wasn't new to the millions of indigenous people who already lived here when Columbus arrived.

As chief, I will represent my people in many different ways and might never know which particular action is destined to matter more than another, thus, all my actions should be considered potentially important and worthy of my best effort.

Together they looked skyward. The moonbow was shattering--mere bits of color in the blackness, a sort of bridge between heaven and earth--reminding her that even on the darkest nights there was a glimmer of home, of promise, however hazy.

I think you people are just marvelous,_ she said in a dramatic manner, closing her eyes for a moment. __ou know, sometimes I hear the Great Spirit calling to me. Perhaps I was a squaw in my last life. My family would never talk about it when I was growing up, but I__ pretty sure my great-grandmother was a real Cherokee princess. Are you Cherokee, by any chance?___herokee to the bone, ma__m,_ Luther replied, giving Jimmy a wink.__h, I knew it when I laid eyes on you,_ she responded and turned to Jimmy. __re you also Cherokee?___o, ma__m. I wanted to be but I didn__ have the grades to get in.___h, you poor dear,_ the woman said, reaching over to pat him on the arm.

There is no man who is enterprising and keeps well up with the times but confesses that the women of to-day are in every respect, except political liberty, equal to the men.

In the beginning of all things, wisdom and knowledge were with the animals, for Tirawa, the One Above, did not speak directly to man. He sent certain animals to tell men that he showed himself through the beast, and that from them, and from the stars and the sun and moon should man learn.. all things tell of Tirawa. 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.

He carried her over the Owl Creek mountain range without stopping,_ he said, quietly this time. __e carried her until he reached one of the hot springs around what became Chapin, and then he walked into the water with her and held her there for three days. He had about given up when she opened her eyes and whispered his name.

They called me an Indian pig. Oh, and they called me a prairie n*****. Pretty colorful, enit?""I suppose.""That one pissed me off, though. I ain't no prairie Indian. I'm from a salmon tribe, man. If they were going to insult me, they should've called me salmon n*****.""I'm surprised you can laugh about this.""It's what Indians do.""Weren't you afraid?""Yeah, I was afraid, but I'm afraid most of the time, you know? How would you feel if a white guy like you got dropped into the middle of a black neighborhood, like Compton, California, on a Saturday night?""I'd be very afraid.""And that's exactly how I feel living in Seattle. Hell, I feel that way living in the United States. Indians are outnumbered, Officer. Those three guys scared me bad, but I've been scared for a long time.