Quotes

Ghost Council

Non Capter-Quotes:

- "Uktena's children are of the streams, of the rivers. They cover the earth and wash the faces of humans with ebony tears. Find what was lost, and return it to me, along with the secret that you cannot see."

---

Chapter Quotes:

- "History" and "Myth" and "Identity" are not three separate matters, here, but three aspects of one human being.

- He was merely the sound of something ponderous,
swimming in a dark river.
He was a shattered tree,
A dislodged boulder thundering down Gahuti,
The scream of a dying animal on a distant mountain.
But no one saw him
for... to see him was to die.

- To speak [about mythic history] promiscuously or publicly may also be perilous, since its stories often remain imbued with the powerful forces that originally created the world and can still destroy it. Sometimes such reticence actually issues from consideration for the welfare of those not in the know.

- Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

- My uncle has been telling that story about where we came from ever since I was a kid. Most of that story I can't tell you. My uncle said, "Keep it to yourself."

- In the language of my people... there is a word for land: Eloheh. This same word also means history, culture and religion. We cannot separate our place on Earth from our lives on the earth nor from our vision nor from our meaning as a people.

- We are all the flowers of one garden
And the waves of one sea
And the leaves of one tree

- The whites called our cradles "papoose carriers." Very primitive, they said. But now you see white mothers all over using a kind of "primitive papoose carrier." The whites are learning.

- This was the way of it
Let the story fires be lighted
Let our circle be strong and full of medicine
Hear me
This is my dream song that I'm singing for you
This is my power song that is taking me to the edge

Winters Teeth

Non-Chapter Quotes:

We make a road for spirits,
For the spirits to pass over.
Among us are three hunters
Who chase a bear;
There was never a time
When they were not hunting.
We look down on the mountains.
This is the Song of the Stars.

---

Chapter Quotes:

- There at the beginning times, the sun shone over the white snow and the sea and everything was clean because no men had come to walk upon it or drag their boats down to the shore. The ice glowed with sunlight even at night so that every hill looked like the Aurora Borealis and the ancestors were never lost in darkness.

- These lands are ours. No one has a right to remove us, because we were the first owners. The Great Spirit above has appointed this place for us, on which to light our fires, and here we will remain.

- I see winter coming to the land that has not known true winter or the emptiness of the dark times. Ice covers every heart. I see a people eating and consuming as if trying to fill and endless hole inside them. These strangers are far more savage than the coldest winds. Winter has come. The prey is fled and we are without shelter.

- What treaty that the white man ever made with us has he kept? Not one. When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world; the sun rose and set on their land; they sent then thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?

- You who sit in the east, you who sit in the north, you who sit in the west, and you who sit at the end of the road, I greet you all. It is good.

- You who are our grandmother, Earth, you blessed grandfather Jobenangiwingkha with life and war powers. As far as you extend, that far, O grandmother, do we spread out for you tobacco and food and moccasins. Here is the tobacco. Here in the fire shall I place the tobacco; and food offerings and buckskin will we send to you at all times. You will always accept them, grandfather said, so that our clansmen may travel in a straight path of war and life.
This we ask, Grandmother Moon, of you also. You added your power to the other blessings of grandfather Jobenangiwingkha and you said that as long as the world lasts you would willingly accept the offerings of tobacco that his posterity extended to you. Thus you yourself said, we are told. Here is the tobacco.

- It was the wind that gave them life. It is the wind that comes out of our mouths now that gives us life. When this ceases to blow we die. In the skin of our fingers we can see the trail of the wind; it shows us where the wind blew when our ancestors were created.

- One does not sell the earth upon which people walk.

- The Indian hero displays awesome talents; he can change into any shape he wants or make himself invisible at will. His supernatural powers often come to him from earth and sky spirits in dreams, or are given to him by magicians. He may have to seize power by conquering another supernatural, perhaps the first in a series of tests he faces; sometimes he simply steals it, showing his cunning as well as his strength.