Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Class is material consumed.
The past is more than a memory.
I'm basically a starving artist.
Don't trust anyone who isn't angry.
I'm not a musician making words to go with my music.
One Earth, one mother - one does not sell the Earth.
As human beings we're living in a reality of industrial madness.
Everything that has ever happened to us is there to make us stronger.
There are always very angry or very cruel people that attach to movements.
Protect your spirit, because you are in the place where spirits get eaten.
They’re called poems but in reality they’re lines given to me to hang on to
White people don't seem to have many Elders. They do have a lot of oldsters.
Sometimes when it rains, it's not that simple, when the sky has reasons to cry.
Before Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had dream of soldiers falling from the sky.
I knew I had to stop running. I had to be in a place. Los Angeles became that place.
We use our intelligence, our creative intelligence, because we create with intelligence.
There are a lot of people who want to give orders and be bossy that don't deserve respect.
They took all our land; I don't have any land to toil. My crops have to grow somewhere else.
I don't want to tell people how to remember me. I want people to remember me as they remember me.
I've gone through most of my life not believing anything. Either I know or I don't know, or I think.
I'm a member of the American Indian Movement, and I'm from the indigenous nations of the Western Hemisphere.
I am just a human being trying to make it in a world that is rapidly losing its understanding of being human.
In a personal context, I'm not in the ground, and I'm not in an institution. So I guess I'm doing pretty good.
I'm just a human being trying to make it in a world that is very rapidly losing it's understanding of being human.
It’s like there is this predator energy on this planet, and this predator energy feeds on the essence of the spirit.
We’re not Indians and we’re not Native Americans. We’re older than both concepts. We’re the people, we’re the human beings.
Everybody interprets things differently with their own perception, and I want poetry to pull out of them their own feelings.
All that I am is me. So I'm not really a poet or a writer or an actor or an activist; I'm me, and these are things that I do.
It's always good to go home. It's strengthening to see your past and know you have someplace to go where you're part of a people.
Because we are all of an oral tradition in our beginning histories, the voice of the poet in this particular society will be heard.
Every human being is a raindrop. And when enough of the raindrops become clear and coherent they then become the power of the storm.
I appreciate all of your expressions of concern, and I appreciate all of your expressions of love. It has been like a fire to my heart.
In the society of illusion, reality must manifest itself. The story songs of Joel Rafael are that manifestation... the essence of minstrel.
We're all human beings and we all have feelings. And we all live in this industrial meat grinder where we don't really understand love anymore.
As human beings, we're given intelligence. This is how we make our way through this reality, how we manifest our reality clearly and coherently.
When one lives in a society where people can no longer rely on the institutions to tell them the truth, the truth must come from culture and art.
The strength of the poetry as we enter into whatever it is we are entering into, will be determined by the clarity of the thinking we put into it.
For decades, my identity was political, but I've come to understand that there's no political solution when you're dealing with someone else's rules.
The thing is, it has to do with heart - we have to understand what hearts are for before we can get back to heaven or paradise or the power in our minds.
I wasn't interested in having to live with a camera - I have a hard enough time getting along with myself. I don't need cameras around and all that action.
All politics to me - Indian or white - is an illusion preventing us from being authentic because we're communicating through something that isn't real to us.
I find there is room in music to talk with music. It may expand ways people can participate with music. It doesn't sound hokey or like some kind of voice-over.
The average human being in America is going through some sort of hard times - physical, emotional, psychological. Everybody's carrying a bit of bone days in them.
Whatever their reasons, Hollywood, or the entertainment industry, is saying something about Indians. I don't see the rest of the media knocking down any doors to do that.
A lot of my writing is basically about observation, and things that I've seen, either through personal experiences or the experiences of people around me, or society at large.
There have been some positive things that have happened for the tribes, but it's a constant, vigilant fight about protecting what resources we have in terms of land and rights.
I wanted to take the power of thought and the word, along with the power of speaking and heart, and see if we could wire what was coming out of us as humans with electric instruments.
What I view life like is about energy. Everything is about energy - everything. We physically are little units of electrical energy, and we vibrate and project electromagnetic thought.
I have a real interest in working with younger Native artists. I think it's a very important way for Native people to communicate the realities of our culture and remember our ancestors.
My influences in this world have always been Crazy Horse and Malcolm X, my overall influences. But I was influenced by rock n' roll, blues, and country music. I was influenced by singers.