Human beings need to belong to a tradition and equally need to know about the world in which they find themselves.

My mother told me stories all the time... And in all of those stories she told me who I was, who I was supposed to be, whom I came from, and who would follow me... That's what she said and what she showed me in the things she did and the way she lives.

In America, law substitutes for custom.

We are the land. To the best of my understanding, that is the fundamental idea that permeates American Indian life.

Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist.

Idealization of a group is a natural consequence of separation from the group; in other words, it is a by-product of alienation.

An odd thing occurs in the minds of Americans when Indian civilization in mentioned: little or nothing.