Quotes on Indians

In Brazil, the history of the interaction between blancos and indios - whites and Indians - often reads like an extended epitaph. Tribes were wiped out by disease and massacres; languages and songs were obliterated.

The Indians seemed to be living in a place and in a way that was of immense importance to me. So I associate learning to read - English, oddly enough - with wanting to know about Indians. I'm still growing into it. I've never outgrown that.

You'd never know it from reading the rest of the Native writers, but Indians actually grew up with American pop culture.

What strikes me every single time is that the aspirations of Indians are unique and unparalleled. They're very demanding, regardless of background.

I'm from New Orleans, which is all about direct engagement out in the street with all the parades and Mardi Gras Indians and jazz funerals. I'm trying to take that and put it into my generation, a group that doesn't have enough joy and celebration in their lives.

Certainly I'm angry at the way Indians have been treated and continue to be treated. But I don't think it's a helpless emotion.

I hear from non-Afghan immigrants - Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs in France - all the time. These people have had to redefine their lives, which is what my family went through when we came to the U.S. in 1980.

Indians are marvelous storytellers. In some ways, that oral tradition is stronger than the written tradition.

It's never said out aloud, or in so many words, but for many urban, upper caste Indians, 'the backwards' are precisely that - citizens of the hinterland, ungainly and otherworldly - an inconvenient blemish on their shining, gleaming future.

If we dispense with some of our self-made boundaries, India can really take its place in the world as an economic power. It hasn't happened because we, sadly, don't look at ourselves as Indians but as Punjabis or Parsis, unlike the Americans. Don't make such boundaries.