Quote

The Indians used to be the only inhabitants of the Americas, but times change. Having perceived us as belonging to history, they are free to emote over us, to re-create us in their history-based understanding, and dismiss our present lives as archaic and irrelevant to the times.

Paula Gunn Allen

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paula Gunn Allen
Age: 69 †
Born: 1939
Born: January 1
Died: 2008
Died: May 29
Author
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Albuquerque
New Mexico
Paula Marie Francis
Perceived
Times
Belonging
Lives
Irrelevant
History
Emote
Change
Based
Archaic
Used
Present
Dismiss
Create
Inhabitants
Understanding
Indians
Free

More quotes by Paula Gunn Allen

Image
I am not especially defined by my sex life, nor complete without it.
Paula Gunn Allen
Image
My mother told me stories all the time... And in all of those stories she told me who I was, who I was supposed to be, whom I came from, and who would follow me... That's what she said and what she showed me in the things she did and the way she lives.
Paula Gunn Allen
Image
... America has amnesia. ... Certainly, there is a passion for memory loss in American thought. ... Americans may be the world champion forgetters.
Paula Gunn Allen
Image
For the American Indian, the ability of all creatures to share in the process of ongoing creation makes all things sacred.
Paula Gunn Allen
Image
True shamans live in a world that is alive with what is to rationalist sight unseen, a world pulsing with intelligence.
Paula Gunn Allen
Image
We are the land. To the best of my understanding, that is the fundamental idea that permeates American Indian life.
Paula Gunn Allen
Image
Idealization of a group is a natural consequence of separation from the group in other words, it is a by-product of alienation.
Paula Gunn Allen
Image
Human beings need to belong to a tradition and equally need to know about the world in which they find themselves.
Paula Gunn Allen
Image
We are the women of daylight of clocks and steel foundries, of drugstores and streetlights, of superhighways that slice our days in two. Our dreams are pale memories of themselves, and nagging doubt is the false measure of our days.
Paula Gunn Allen
Image
An odd thing occurs in the minds of Americans when Indian civilization in mentioned: little or nothing.
Paula Gunn Allen
Image
The root of oppression is the loss of memory.
Paula Gunn Allen
Image
Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist.
Paula Gunn Allen
Image
In the native world, major gods come in trios, duos, and groups. It is the habit of non-natives to discover the supreme being, the one and only head god, a habit lent to them by monotheism.
Paula Gunn Allen
Image
It's a little-known linguistic curiosity that the name Jehovah or Jaweh is the same name as Eve Havva, the counterpart name in Farsi, the language spoken by the Persians, means either Jaweh or Eve.
Paula Gunn Allen