Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder QUOTES

21 " bed and watch distant flashes of lightning illuminate the inside of giant, looming thunderheads six or seven miles high. The earth itself had ceased to be the prime element in my consciousness. This was a land of the sky, and every turn, every action, lifted the eye upward. "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

22 " I checked the position the car was facing. Grover had pulled off the road directly into the brunt of the storm, facing west. I felt the dampness on my right shoulder where the rain had forced its way through the cracked weather stripping around the car windows. “Yes.” “Hnnh,” Dan said. “Waziya. There is a message.” “What do you mean?” I said, slightly disconcerted. “Waziya is not good. He is cold and cruel.” “Waziya?” “The wind from the north.” Dan was pulling a small pouch from inside his shirt. It "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

23 " White eyes, Nerburn. You've got white eyes. The boy probably left it there. This is what I mean. Watch our little children. They might get a bike and ride it, then just leave it somewhere, like that. You say they are irresponsible. They are just being like their ancestors who believed that you owned something only so long as you needed it. Then you passed it to someone else. "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

24 " If I lived in a big house and had rooms full of different things, if I had big cars and a library full of books, if I had pulled out all the flowers and medicine plants and made a lawn that looked like a rug, people would come to me and ask me about everything because they would say I am a ‘good’ Indian. All it would mean is that I am an Indian with lots of possessions, just like a white man. That would make me good and important in your eyes. Admit it. "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

25 " Every once in a while I would have to go to a powwow and put on some feathers so you could believe I was a real Indian. But other than that you would think I was smarter and more important if I lived in a big house and owned lots of things. That's just the way white people are. It's the way you are trained. "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

26 " Dan was not to be deterred. “Yeah. We see it all the time. It's one of the things that surprises white people when they first come to a reservation. A lot of the kids don't look like Indians. Some of them are blond, like Eugene, or redhead. Some have blue eyes. That bothers white people. We can see it. You talk different to those kids. They aren't real Indians to you. “Every Indian notices this. Those kids are Indians to us, but not to you. Since your people first came over here we have been taking white people and letting them live with us. They have become Indians and we think that's fine. But it drives you crazy. “In the old days, during all the fighting, people would be captured, or we'd find someone without a home — you know, there were a lot of kids without parents — their parents were killed in accidents or maybe in the Civil War.” “Maybe by Indians,” I said. I was getting irritable. “Yeah. Maybe by Indians,” Dan answered. He would not take the bait. “We took those kids and those other people and let them live with us. We made them Indians. "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

27 " A tragedy has taken place on our land, and even though it did not take place on our watch, we are its inheritors, and the earth remembers. "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

28 " Here,” he said abruptly. “Turn here.” A rutted path ran up a little rise toward a beige trailer. “This is Grover's place.” The trailer sat exposed on a treeless hill. A perfectly ordered woodpile stood in the yard to the left. Each log seemed to have been cut to an identical length, and they were piled in a crisscross fashion, with each layer running perpendicular to the one below and above. A small patch of earth to the right of his stoop had been cleared of brush and raked smooth. Two lawn chairs sat evenly spaced against the skirting of the trailer. There were no junk cars, no engine parts, no kids' bicycles — just Grover's old Buick parked in a spot marked off by a frame of fist-sized rocks arranged in a perfect rectangle. Dan glanced over at me. The twinkle was back in his eye. “Goddamn reservation Indian,” he muttered. “Lost his culture.” Then he sat back and let out a long rolling laugh that seemed, like prairie thunder, to come from the beginning of time. "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

29 " 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. "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

30 " When you knew I was coming?” I said. “I wrote it when I knew I wanted to speak. I went to my hill and spoke to my grandfathers. They gave me that song. They gave it to me in the wind. They said I had too much anger to speak. They told me that anger is only for the one who speaks. It never opens the heart of one who listens. "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

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

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

32 " white people surprised us when they came. Those of us out west had heard about them. Some of our elders had told prophecies about them. But still they surprised us. “We had seen other strangers before. But they were just other people like us — other Indians — from different tribes. They would come and ask us to pass through our land. If we wanted them to, we would let them. Otherwise they couldn’t. “But, you see, it wasn’t our land like we owned it. It was the land where we hunted or where our ancestors were buried. It was land that the Creator had given us. “It was the land where our sacred stories took place. It had sacred places on it. Our ceremonies were here. We knew the animals. They knew us. We had watched the seasons pass on this land. It was alive, like our grandparents. It gave us life for our bodies and the life for our spirits. We were part of it. “So we would let people pass through it if they needed to, because it was our land and they knew it. We did not wish them to hunt or to disturb our sacred places. But they could come to our land if they needed to. “You need to understand this. We did not think we owned the land. The land was part of us. We didn’t even "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

33 " It’s because Abraham Lincoln is dead. But, now, Jesus is dead, too. But he can come alive if you bring him into your heart. That’s what they always say. Here’s the question: Why can’t Abraham Lincoln come alive if you bring him into your heart? "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

34 " the paper on my lap. Slowly, "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

35 " Pretty soon after we start talking with a white person, that white person will bring up Indians, sure as anything.” “It's true, Nerburn,” Grover chimed in. Dan kept on. “They might talk about some other Indian they knew or they might talk about some movie or something to do with Indians. Probably it's to show us how much they claim to like Indians. But you sure know that they're going to bring up Indians. It's like that's the biggest thing when they meet me. I could be the president or have a cure for cancer, but before anyone could talk about it, they'd have to say something about Indians. “Black people have told me it's the same for them, too. You white people just seem to see race first, no matter what. “Then the really funny thing is that you pretend you don't see race. Like the other night, I was sitting with Grover. We were watching a boxing match on TV.” He turned toward Grover for confirmation. “You remember that?” “Sure do. Lousy fight.” “Anyway, the announcer kept talking about the one guy in black trunks with a white stripe and the other guy in black trunks with a gold stripe. Hell, I couldn't even see the difference. But that was how he kept talking about them. And you know what? One guy was white and the other guy was black! But the announcer couldn't say, ‘the white guy’ and ‘the black guy’ because you're not supposed to see that. It was the damndest thing I ever saw. "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

36 " In the last analysis, we must all, Indian and no-Indian, come together. This earth is our mother, this land is our shared heritage.
Our histories and fates are intertwined, no matter where our ancestors were born and how they interacted with each other. "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

37 " In the last analysis, we must all, Indian and non-Indian, come together. This earth is our mother, this land is our shared heritage.
Our histories and fates are intertwined, no matter where our ancestors were born and how they interacted with each other. "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

38 " You destroyed it with crosses and diseases and whiskey and guns. "

― Kent Nerburn , Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder