Male initiation does not move toward machoism; on the contrary, it moves toward achieving a cultivated heart before we die.

Sociological prose can tell you everything, but it can't point out the grief.

Adolescents are in just as much trouble in Native America as they are in the white community.

If we call the young ones, say 10 to 30 years old, 'siblings,' we can see they tend to be naturally ecological. They regard whales and owls as siblings too. That's a great advance.

Myth and poetry represent a reservoir of vertical thinking, which we could also call longing and gratitude to ancestors. We need that gratitude desperately.

There's a quality we could call vertical attention, which is an attention upward toward ancestors, spiritual states, angels, gods.

Some people can't go into church any longer to feel this longing, but they still have the longing, so what do they do? Well, one thing you can do is what people do in prison; they turn to poetry.