102 Quotes by Kent Nerburn

Our elders told us this was the best way to deal with white people. Be silent until they get nervous, then they will start talking. They will keep talking, and if you stay silent, they will say too much. Then you will be able to see into their hearts and know what they really mean. Then you will know what to do.” “I imagine it works,” I said.

There is something we don’t like, though. It’s when people call us Indians and then start calling sports teams and other things Indians. If we’re going to have a false name, at least let us have it and then leave it alone. Don’t start putting it on beer bottles and ice cream cartons and making it into something that embarrasses us and makes us look like fools. And don’t tell us it’s supposed to be some honor to us. We’ll decide what honors us and what doesn’t.

This is why we need to travel. If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t lift to the horizon; our ears don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.

You took the places where the spirits talked to us and you gave us bags of flour.

We Indians know about silence,” he said. “We aren’t afraid of it. In fact, to us it is more powerful than words.

Let us put our minds together and see what kind of life we can make for our children.” – Sitting Bull I.

I am an Indian; and while I have learned much from civilization, for which I am grateful, I have never lost my Indian sense of right and justice. I am for development and progress along social and spiritual lines, rather than those of commerce, nationalism, or efficiency. Nevertheless, so long as I live, I am an American.

Watch, listen, and then act, they told us. This is the way to live.

This is important. Money on its most basic level is a hard fact – you either have it or you don’t. But on it’s emotional level it is purely a fiction. It becomes what you let it become.