Top 1200 Indigenous People Quotes & Sayings

We are all indigenous people on this planet, and we have to reorganize to get along.

We must respect each other's right to choose a collective destiny, and the opportunity to develop the legal and political rights for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples so that we may enjoy the right to maintain our culture, our heritage and our land, as a united Australia.

So many indigenous people have said to me that the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that even the most open-minded westerners generally view listening to the natural world as a metaphor, as opposed to the way the world really is. Trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us.

The Apology opened the opportunity for a new relationship based on mutual respect and mutual responsibility between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. Because without mutual respect and mutual responsibility, the truth is we can achieve very little.

In the case of my country, Guatemala, 65% of the inhabitants are indigenous. The constitution speaks of protection for the indigenous. Who authorized a minority to protect an immense majority? It is not only political, cultural and economic marginalization, it is an attempt against the dignity of the majority of the population.

I have never declared myself an Indigenous politician; I am not an Indigenous Chief Minister.

I support the indigenous people anywhere in the planet

In a society where all are related, simple decisions require the approval of nearly everyone in that society. It is society as a whole, not merely a part of it, that must survive. This is the indigenous understanding. It is the understanding in a global sense. We are all indigenous people on this planet, and we have to reorganize to get along.

The truth is nobody can own anything. That was an unheard-of concept among indigenous people. We invented that.

We are lagging far behind comparable countries in overcoming the disadvantages Indigenous people face.

If people can't acknowledge the wisdom of indigenous cultures, then that's their loss.

The federal government needs to make it clear that recognition of Indigenous rights means that when Indigenous bands and their leadership approve projects, we listen.

Bolivia is in the lead internationally in talking about the threat of environmental catastrophe. It's generally true where there are indigenous populations, there are important things happening; where the indigenous populations have been marginalized or exterminated, things go to a disaster. This is true worldwide, and Bolivia is striking because it's a majority population and in the lead.

I can't imagine what it must be like to be one of the indigenous people of the United States of America. I can't imagine watching the news every day - as people debate whose country this is and who should be in charge of it and how to make it great again - and hardly ever see your people brought into the discussion.

In everything I've done, I've always tried to make room for indigenous people, to include them.

The importance of the term "genocide" for many Indigenous Peoples is that it is more than a term or an accusation; it is a word created in the wake of the Shoah in Europe to describe what happens when a people are targeted by a government for extermination, as were the Jews of Europe, and which is the term used in the most important international law related to concerned Indigenous Peoples, as the only international human rights law that pertains specifically to collectivities of people rather than individuals.

This is a coca leaf. This is not cocaine. This represents the culture of indigenous people of the Andean region.

Indigenous people all over the world take quite a lot of trouble with their hair and their clothes.

The most important thing is the indigenous people are not vindictive by nature. We are not here to oppress anybody - but to join together and build Bolivia, with justice and equality.

I didn't have any Indigenous friends until I was in my 30s, and I'll always remember and be inspired by the remarkable friendship I had with Connie Bush, an outstanding Indigenous leader from Groot Eylandt on who was on the National Women's Advisory Council with me.

Indigenous people in films, it's all, like, nose flutes and panpipes and, you know, people talking to ghosts... which I hate.

There are many, many different kinds of intersectional exclusions - not just black women but other women of color. Not just people of color, but people with disabilities. Immigrants. LGBTQ people. Indigenous people.

For Indigenous Australians, equal rights and citizenship have not always translated into full participation in Australian society. All Indigenous Australians have only been counted in the census since the 1967 Referendum. Even so, State protection and welfare laws continued to control the lives of Indigenous Australians and denied them equal rights, well into the 1970's.

As an indigenous leader from Bolivia, I know what exclusion looks like. Before 1952, my people were not allowed to even enter the main squares of Bolivia's cities, and there were almost no indigenous politicians in government until the late 1990s.

As people who are women, who are Indigenous and live on Indigenous lands, we know, and this is something I understand the older I get, that they don't visit the same way the postman may visit but they do visit. They visit in ways that our modern society often disregards and considers immaterial or unreal.

I've always been an ambassador for Australians, non-Indigenous Australians and Indigenous Australians... I let people know about who I am and that I'm not just a basketballer, I'm a person who comes from a very rich heritage.

In every Indigenous community I've been in, they absolutely do want community infrastructure and they do want development, but they want it on their own terms. They want to be able to use their national resources and their assets in a way that protects and sustains them. Our territories are our wealth, the major assets we have. And Indigenous people use and steward this property so that they can achieve and maintain a livelihood, and achieve and maintain that same livelihood for future generations.

My assumption was that all indigenous architecture would be more fractal. My reasoning was that all indigenous architecture tends to be organized from the bottom up. As it turns out, though, my reasoning was wrong.

The differences between Indigenous and not Indigenous Australians can be easily attributed not to differences in their genes but to differences in the conditions in which they're born, grow, live, work and age - in other words, to the social determinants of health.

The way I think we were living is an invention. The truth is nobody can own anything. That was an unheard-of concept among indigenous people. We invented that.

The thing we often forget to talk about, or perhaps we take for granted, is our country's dazzling beauty. Our natural environment is so much a part of Australia's art, writing, music and culture, both indigenous and non indigenous.

The indigenous peoples of the great tourist spots seem to lose their souls. All cultural, religious, and political efforts and ideals are crippled since the culture is engaged only in luring ever more tourists. It is not the contact with an essentially foreign population that corrupts the inhabitants of the great foreign resorts. It is the contact with great masses of people who are seeking fir the moment only well-being and not salvation that weakens and devalues the indigenous population.

I think the relationship of indigenous people to their environment... that those were ethical omnivores.

We are now facing a difficult situation in Peru, where there are attempts to cut back the territorial rights of the indigenous peoples, including moves to divide, fragment and privatise our communal organisations. Now more than ever, it is a matter of urgency for us to consolidate our own indigenous alternatives for development.

Health economists have estimated that an injection of $250 million per year in Indigenous clinical care, and $50 million in preventative care, is required to provide services at the same level as for any other group with the health conditions of Indigenous Australians.

Being the only Indian in class, I had to be able to stand up and defend myself and debate the others when they tried to say: "You Indians get everything free." People have stereotypes of Indigenous people. I learned to challenge in a respectful way.

Yet there are thousands of Indigenous people searching for family members.

There are certain regions in the country where the indigenous people eat dogs.

Indigenous people have discovered that Christianity is not inherently Western but universal - 'translatable' into any cultural idiom.

Statistically after six months, if an Indigenous or non-Indigenous person has come off welfare, even long-term welfare, and has stuck in that's job for six months, then they've really broken in their own psychology the welfare reliance mentality. They're up on their own two feet.

The sad truth is that mass migration, whatever the colour of the skins of those involved, upsets and worries indigenous people, especially the poorest.

Hawaii - the Aloha state - is built on the strength of its multicultural society, from our indigenous Native Hawaiian people to the many immigrants that followed.

The death penalty is an inhumane punishment that disproportionately violates the human rights of Black, brown, indigenous, and other marginalized people.

We have reached a pivotal time in Indigenous affairs when for the first time, national attention is being paid to the horror of Indigenous family violence in this country. For the first time, an Australian Prime Minister has held a summit in the national capital to listen to concerns and ideas on this issue from a group of Indigenous leaders.

All the Indigenous paintings throughout history, they were always a bird's eye view, it's the Indigenous way of storytelling.

You have troubles with violent indigenous movement around the continent. Here, we are putting more power in their hands and creating a nonviolent indigenous society.

There are people all over Australia who use their homes as hubs that they travel from, and they encourage their indigenous people to continue to stay there.

A good government is one with a duty to help everyone, to maximise his or her potential: Indigenous people, people with disabilities, and our forgotten families.We will not leave anyone behind.

My family are doctors and pilots and people involved in indigenous First Nation land rights; not overtly artistic.

There's been moments where I've felt, as an indigenous woman growing up in Australia, there's been that kind of rivalry of being indigenous... I've had that experience of someone saying, 'I don't know if she's going to go that far.'

I am against the fact that a settler minority should impose an entire system of values on an indigenous people.

All definitions of wilderness that exclude people seem to me to be false. African 'wilderness' areas are racist because indigenous people are being cleared out of them so white people can go on holiday there.

I support the indigenous people anywhere in the planet.

Indigenous programs and policy will come within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet because Indigenous policy and programs should not be an add - on, they should not be an afterthought, but they should be at the heart of a good Australian Government.

I am deeply gladdened that 1993 has been delcared the International Year of Indigenous Peoples by the United Nations. It is the first year we have had in five hundred years. This is thanks to the struggle of many untitled, unnamed indigenous brothers who, without understanding international law, patiently walked the corridors asking for some time. Thanks to them this international year has been declared.

Indigenous people made huge contributions to this country. The biggest is in sharing the land and resources. People need to see that, understand that. Indigenous people should be viewed as the founding peoples of this land.

If we had, we would have realised sooner that Indigenous organisations are sometimes not the appropriate channel for programmes to help the stolen generations, because many of them play little part in Indigenous associations.

Most governments in Latin America have failed to recognize the rights of indigenous people and their right to their own traditional territories.

The thing we often forget to talk about, or perhaps we take for granted, is our country’s dazzling beauty. Our natural environment is so much a part of Australia’s art, writing, music and culture, both indigenous and non indigenous.

Racism in our countries is a fact in that the indian is not allowed to be a politician or aspire to being head of state. It has reached the point that 99% of the indigenous women have not gone to school. The indigenous are condemned to live in a situation designed to exterminate them. They receive a pittance of a salary, they neither speak nor write the language, politics dictates their situation. Is this slavery? I don't know what it's called. It is not the same as before because we are in modern times.