Quote

The Native American side was tragic. It's just unbelievable what has happened to them.

We have listened here to the delegates who have recalled the terrible human suffering, and the great material destruction of the late war in the Pacific. It is with feelings of sorrow that we recall the part played in that catastrophic human experience by the old Japan.

In the John Wayne movies, the Indians were savages that were trying to scalp you. That culture has really suffered because of the stereotype you see in those westerns.

As we began to read more and more journals of men who had been in the Civil War and then been in the Indian Wars, we realized there was a whole universe of men whose souls had been shattered, whose lives had been utterly destroyed by what they had to do.

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.

Our culture has become increasingly intolerant of that acute sorrow, that intense mental anguish and deep remorse which may be defined as grief. We want to medicate such sorrow away.

In our culture I think most people think of grief as sadness, and that's certainly part of it, a large part of it, but there's also this thorniness, these edges that come out.

Some Indians will come up and say that a story reminded them of something very specific to their experience. Which may or may not be the case for non-Indians.

When our ancestors crouched about the camp fire at night, they told each other tales of gods and heroes, monsters and marvels, to hold back the terrors of the night. Such tales comforted and entertained, diverted and educated those who listened, and helped shape their sense of the world and their place in it.