A Quote by Brad Pitt
When I was a boy, I would ask about my family history, about my bloodlines. We really didn't know that much. We had a little Indian in us from the Oklahoma Trail of Tears.
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The Trail of Tears has a great deal of meaning for every person of American Indian ancestry, whether they are Cherokee or not. For me, it has always stood for what is best and worst about the history of the United States.
I had an Indian face, but I never saw it as Indian, in part because in America the Indian was dead. The Indian had been killed in cowboy movies, or was playing bingo in Oklahoma. Also, in my middle-class Mexican family indio was a bad word, one my parents shy away from to this day. That's one of the reasons, of course, why I always insist, in my bratty way, on saying, Soy indio! - "I am an Indian!"
It's that weird need to make tragedy about us. When you look at 9/11, there's people who really died and family members who really suffered. And then I would be in Montana, and a guy would go, "You know, I was close to Ground Zero." And it's like, "What are you talking about? You're in Montana." Everybody had to make it about them.
We hear a lot in this country about family, and 'American Family' just shows us a portrait we haven't seen as much of yet. 'American Family' lets us know that being American isn't about the color of your hair or eyes or skin: it's really a state of mind.
One thing I would say about the Indian consumer is that as much change and as much technology, innovation that you offer to the Indian consumer, the Indian consumer is very receptive and actually keep expecting more, and we have had that great experience.
It is amazing to me that so little is still known about the Trail of Tears or the lives of the Cherokees themselves.
I honestly think I was an Indian living in the time of the Trail of Tears. Something like that. Every time I read books about back then, I get so devastatingly sad, so, so... I feel such a deep connection to it.
The wilderness is gone, the buckskin man is gone, the painted Indian has hit the trail over the Great Divide, the hardships and privations of pioneer life which did so much to develop sterling manhood are now but a legend in history, and we must depend upon the Boy Scout movement to produce the MEN of the future.
I think people know very little, really, about the court, how it works and its history. And both of those things are important in our country, but they're not things that most citizens know much about.
I just remember lot of men running around in little tiny gold shorts! The format - it was kind of hard. You really have to know about pop culture and I'm not really knowledgeable about a lot of those things. I know what I like. They'd ask about Gwyneth Paltrow, and I don't know anything about her, except her mother. I know who her mother is. So you really have to be current and relevant.
My father is a gypsy. He traveled in caravans and was branded by the Ku Klux Klan. You know I have a history about race in my family that has very much to do with the other things that you name about poverty, about class, about access - or lack of it.
I had heard the old Indian legend about the red fern. How a little Indian boy and girl were lost in a blizzard and had frozen to death. In the spring, when they were found, a beautiful red fern had grown up between their two bodies. The story went on to say that only an angel could plant the seeds of a red fern, and that they never died; where one grew, that spot was sacred.
People come up to us and ask how we knew so much about their own family... I'm talking about people from faraway places, too. I get people from Turkey and Chile coming up to me and saying I wrote about their family.
We've been fortunate enough to have a lot of people to ask us to be on their records - so many artists and musicians that we really respect and look up to. And it's been really special. But from our side, there's so much that we in the Little Dragon are still learning about ourselves writing-wise that I guess we haven't had that need.
I know something about the civilization of China, with my background, obviously, and I think I know something about American history. But that's about all. And I've traveled all over the world, and for a long time I didn't know very much about it, really.
One of the main things I know about O.J. Simpson is that he is a compulsive talker. So if I were to ask him one question, I would get 45 minutes on the history of the case. It would be irrelevant what I would ask him - he would just start talking.
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