Medicine people are truly citizens of two worlds, and those who continue to walk the path of medicine power learn to keep their balance in both the ordinary and the non-ordinary worlds.

Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist.

For the American Indian, the ability of all creatures to share in the process of ongoing creation makes all things sacred.

The root of oppression is the loss of memory.

Human beings need to belong to a tradition and equally need to know about the world in which they find themselves.

Indians think it is important to remember, while Americans believe it is important to forget.

We are the land. To the best of my understanding, that is the fundamental idea that permeates American Indian life.

America does not seem to remember that it derived its wealth, its values, its food, much of its medicine, and a large part of its "dream" from Native Americans.

... America has amnesia. ... Certainly, there is a passion for memory loss in American thought. ... Americans may be the world champion forgetters.

Hoop Dancer is a rendering of my understanding of the process by which one enters into timelessness -- that place where one is whole.

The shadows cannot speak.

We have no right to express an opinion until we know all of the answers.

I must be cruel only to be kind.

There is a magic in the memory of a schoolboy friendship. It softens the heart and even affects the nervous system of those who have no heart.

He has, like me, a sense of smell. I let him inhale me, then I slip away.

The more you notice the love, the miracles and the beauty around you, the more love comes into your life.

I really do want to have a child.

I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty.

Growing up in public is a test, and not many people know how to do it.

Secondhand experience breaks down a block from the car lot.

Men had been living a proud life, having felt no need for the spirit-until Christianity invented it.