#indian

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

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

The Canadians have managed to live peacefully with their Indians. It is disgrace that the United States has not done the same. ↗

— Stephen Ambrose

#disgrace #done #indians #live #managed

The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled. ↗

— Henry Adams

#hustled #indian #infinite #life #like

You don't see Indians in Hollywood films around which a story can revolve. As soon as we have a social presence in your society, I am sure there will be many actors from our part of the world that will be acting in Hollywood films. ↗

— Amitabh Bachchan

#am #around #films #hollywood #hollywood films

I think that white women are more apt to read laterally. So I think there's some strong identification for women, and their political and social positions, and minorities. I think that the political power of, let's say, the average Indian man and a white woman are pretty equal. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#average #equal #i #i think #identification

Indians today are governed by two different ideologies. Their political ideal set in the preamble of the Constitution affirms a life of liberty, equality and fraternity. Their social ideal embodied in their religion denies them. ↗

— B. R. Ambedkar

#constitution #denies #different #embodied #equality

Every Indian outbreak that I have ever known has resulted from broken promises and broken treaties by the government. ↗

— Buffalo Bill

#ever #every #government #i #indian