Favourites on Friday - Native American Quotes II

More quotes to share ... they're all Native American, except the last one, by John Steinbeck, which cuts to the chase, I think.

It is through mysterious power that we have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbours, even to our animal neighbours, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land. ~ Sitting Bull

There is a special magic and holiness about the girl and woman … they are the bringers of life to the people and the teachers of little children. ~ Sweet Medicine, Cheyenne

If we wonder often, the gift of knowledge will come. ~ Arapaho

O Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds,

I come to you as one of your many children.

I need your strength and your wisdom.

Make me strong not to be superior to my brother,

But to be able to fight my greatest enemy – ‘Myself’. ~  Chief Dan George

Wisdom comes only when you stop looking for it, and start living the life the Creator intended for you. ~  Hopi

What is life?  It is the flash of a firefly in the night … it is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.  It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. ~ Crowfoot, Blackfoot

We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth, as ‘wild’.  Only to the white man was nature a ‘wilderness’, and only to him was the land ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and savage people.  To us it was tame.  Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.  Not until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and the families we loved was it ‘wild’ for us.  When the very animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was that for us the ‘Wild West’ began. ~ Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux

The Indians survived our open intention of wiping them out, and since the tide turned they have even weathered our good intentions toward them, which can be much more deadly. ~ John Steinbeck