Indigenous Peoples Day is a time to celebrate and learn about the history and culture of indigenous peoples around the world. This holiday provides a significant opportunity to reflect on indigenous communities’ contributions and recognize the ongoing struggle for justice and equality.
Here are some powerful quotes about Indigenous Peoples Day that will inspire you to celebrate this special day!
WHEN IS INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY 2022?
Indigenous Peoples Day is celebrated in the United States on the second Monday in October, The day honors and recognizes the indigenous peoples of the Americas, who have long been marginalized and oppressed. It is a time for everyone to reflect on these peoples’ histories and cultures and commit to working towards a more equitable future.
In 2022, Indigenous Peoples Day will be celebrated on October 10th. By celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day on this date, we honor the indigenous peoples of the Americas and reaffirm our commitment to justice and equality for all.
HAPPY INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY QUOTES:
“We are lagging far behind comparable countries in overcoming the disadvantages Indigenous people face.” » Malcolm Fraser
“The role of globalization is to homogenize all cultures, and to turn them into commodified markets, and therefore, to make them easier for global corporations to control. Global corporations are even now trying to commodify all remaining aspects of national cultures, not to mention indigenous cultures.” » Jerry Mander
“I guess you could say that we indigenous people are on the verge of turning it all upside down.” » Pauline Tangiora
“The truth is nobody can own anything. That was an unheard-of concept among indigenous people. We invented that.” » Tom Shadyac
“We are now facing a difficult situation in Peru, where there are attempts to cut back the territorial rights of the indigenous peoples, including moves to divide, fragment and privatize our communal organizations. Now more than ever, it is a matter of urgency for us to consolidate our own indigenous alternatives for development.” » Evaristo Nugkuag Ikanan
“We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism.” » Rigoberta Menchu Firstpeoples.org
“In every Indigenous community I’ve been in, they absolutely do want community infrastructure and they do want development, but they want it on their own terms. They want to be able to use their national resources and their assets in a way that protects and sustains them. Our territories are our wealth, the major assets we have. And Indigenous people use and steward this property so that they can achieve and maintain a livelihood, and achieve and maintain that same livelihood for future generations.” » Rebecca Adamson
“If people lose their land, they have nothing. You lose your land — you lose your culture, you lose self.” » Richard Gere
SHORT INDIGENOUS QUOTES
I support the indigenous people anywhere in the planet.” » Edward James Olmos
The forest is not a resource for us, it is life itself. It is the only place for us to live.” » Evaristo Nugkuag Ikanan
Yet there are thousands of Indigenous people searching for family members.” » Malcolm Fraser
I think the relationship of indigenous people to their environment… that those were ethical omnivores.” » James Cromwell
We are all indigenous people on this planet, and we have to reorganize to get along.” » Rebecca Adamson Ibtimes.com
What we do to our native Australians, our own indigenous people, is nothing short of horrific.
We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.” – Dakota Wisdom
All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers.” – White Elk
The Earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.” – White Elk
I will never give up my land.” – Maxima Acuna
We are the resistance of our people and territory – For there is no planet B.” – Erik Marky
RESPECT INDIGENOUS QUOTES 2022
“My experience in living and working with indigenous people has given me the hope that I have – they have taught me concretely that humans have the capacity to be marvelous, and not destructive.” » Juan Pablo Orrego
“Solutions will not be found while Indigenous people are treated as victims for whom someone else must find solutions.” » Malcolm Fraser
“There are certain regions in the country where the indigenous people eat dogs.” » Jessica Hagedorn
“We are seeing healing among the stolen generations, and initiatives which are enabling Indigenous people to make their distinctive contribution to our national life.” » Malcolm Fraser
“When European explorers ‘discovered’ lands on the other continents, there were already people living there. All too often the explorers took the land away from the native or indigenous people and either killed them or suppressed them. In many cases, the native languages and cultures were suppressed and the natives were forced to adopt Western ways. Unfortunately, this isn’t just a thing of the past — many indigenous people and their cultures are still threatened today.” » Robert Alan Silverstein
“Most governments in Latin America have failed to recognize the rights of indigenous people and their right to their own traditional territories.” » Bianca Jagger
“I think the most important issue we have as people are what we started, and that is to begin to trust our own thinking again and believe in ourselves enough to think that we can articulate our own vision of the future and then work to make sure that vision becomes a reality.” » Wilma Mankiller
“There are people all over Australia who use their homes as hubs that they travel from, and they encourage their indigenous people to continue to stay there.” » Andrew Forrest
“Let us learn from nuclear radiation victims and prevent history from repeating itself.” » Hilda Lini
“Through consciousness, our minds have the power to change our planet and ourselves. It is the time we heed the wisdom of the ancient indigenous people and channel our consciousness and spirit to tend the garden and not destroy it.” » Bruce Lipton
QUOTES FROM INDIGENOUS LEADERS
Famous Indigenous Quotes
“For Indigenous people, the goal for our land is definitely about protection, but it’s also about use. We see ourselves as so integrated with our territory that our protection is tied to our use and our use is tied to our protection. We use the resources on our territory to live.” » Rebecca Adamson
“This is a coca leaf. This is not cocaine. This represents the culture of indigenous people of the Andean region.” » Evo Morales
“Although we are in different boats you in your boat and we in our canoe we share the same river of life.” » Chief Oren Lyons
“Drawing from the tragic lessons of nuclear atrocities experienced by the Indigenous
Peoples we recognize that the testing, development, and use of nuclear weapons is a crime against all humanitarian law.” » Hilda Lini
“All things are connected like the blood that unites us, We did not weave the web of life. We are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.” » Chief Seattle
“Indigenous people have discovered that Christianity is not inherently Western but universal – ‘translatable’ into any cultural idiom.” » Nancy Pearcey
“One of the things my parents taught me, and I’ll always be grateful for the gift, is to not ever let anybody else define me.” » Wilma Mankiller
“In Indian country, we should probably insist, first off, that our ancestors have never gotten the credit they deserve from this country for surviving. Survival wasn’t as easy then as it seems now, and they would never have made it if they’d spent centuries wandering in a daze until they came across a dead buffalo beside a cold spring, with a lightning strike for fire somewhere in the background. To the contrary, tribes cooperated with and with each other on everything from buffalo hunts to the fish catch and crop harvests, none of which could have happened if our tribes had not known all about self-governance.” » Rebecca Adamson
“All the issues that we face are connected. Worldwide, ecosystems are being destroyed, and indigenous peoples are losing their homelands and their entire way of life.” » Ocean Robbins
“Any journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. The collision of short and long food chains strategies are at the basis of our current crisis. Indigenous peoples living on their ancestral lands can help industrialized countries by living in a sustainable manner (not the contrary). If we destroy their environments and communities, we will lose the answers they have to solving our problems, and to the protection of our common futures. The most complex nuclear power station is less important than a tropical tree, and the most simple and sustainable answer more useful than any National Library.” » Raúl Montenegro
“Since the beginning, Native Peoples lived a life of being in harmony with all that surrounds us. It is a belief that all humankind are related to each other. Each has a purpose, spirit and sacredness. It is an understanding with the Great Spirit or Creator that we will follow these ways. And in this understanding we believe we are related to all other living species.” » Dennis Banks
“The most important thing is the indigenous people are not vindictive by nature. We are not here to oppress anybody – but to join together and build Bolivia, with justice and equality.” » Evo Morales
“All definitions of wilderness that exclude people seem to me to be false. African ‘wilderness’ areas are racist because indigenous people are being cleared out of them so white people can go on holiday there.” » Jay Griffiths
“Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, economic, social and cultural characteristics, as well as their legal systems, while retaining their rights to participate fully, if they so choose, in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the State.” » From Draft Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (1993)
“Throughout the world today there is a growing awareness of the failings of the Western model of development and a corresponding desire to look for more human-scale, ecological ways of living. If Ladakh now succeeds in creating for itself a future which retains the foundations of its traditional past, it will be an inspiring example of how all the various elements of an ecological future fit together.” » Helena Norberg-Hodge
- “I’d like to talk about free markets. Information in the computer age is the last genuine free market left on earth, except those free markets where indigenous people are still surviving. And that’s basically becoming limited.” » Russell Means
- “The native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that his religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury… Furthermore, it was the rule of his life to share the fruits of his skill and success with his less fortunate brothers. Thus he kept his spirit free from the clog of pride, cupidity, or envy, and carried out, as he believed, the divine decree—a matter profoundly important to him.” » Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa)
- “I was shocked when I moved to Sydney how very few indigenous people I came across. And so when I go to places like Maroubra or Redfern or Waterloo or Erskineville, I feel more at home because of the people I’m around – anywhere I can see a face that reflects someone that looks like my family, I feel much more at home.” » Shari Sebbens
- Through consciousness, our minds have the power to change our planet and ourselves. It is time we heed the wisdom of the ancient indigenous people and channel our consciousness and spirit to tend the garden and not destroy it.– Bruce Lipton
- The truth is nobody can own anything. That was an unheard-of concept among indigenous people. We invented that. – Tom Shadyac