AWWW SHIT!, MOMADAY!

" Thus in the oral tradition, language bears the burden of the sacred, the burden of belief. In a written tradition, the place of language is not so certain."
- N. Scott Momaday

" I found that the education I had recieved was of no benefit to me. There was no chance to get employment, nothing for me to do whereby I could earn my board and clothes, no opportunity to learn more and remain with the whites. It disheartened me and I went back to live as I had before going to school."
-N.Scott Momaday

" I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from the high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered woman and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A peoples dream died there. It was a beautiful dream."
- Black Elk

" This is a crucial point, then: the West was occupied. It was the home of peoples who had come upon the North American continent many thousands of years before, who had in the course of their habitation become the spirit and intelligence of the earth, who had died into the ground again and again and so made it sacred. Those Europeans who ventured into the West must have seen themselves in some way as latecomers and intruders. In spite of their narcissism, some aspect of their intrusion must have occured to them as sacrilege, for they were in the unfortunate position of robbing the native peoples of their homeland and the land of its spiritual resources. By virtue of their culture and history- a culture of acquisition and a history of conquest- they were peculiarly prepared to commit sacrilege, the theft of the sacred."
-N.Scott Momaday

" One who has only an oral tradition thinks of language in this way: my words exist at the level of my voice. If I do not speak with care, my words are wasted. If I do not listen with care, words are lost. If I do not remember carefully, the very purpose of words is frustrated. This respect for words suggests an inherent morality in man's understanding and use of language. Moreover, that moral comprehension is everywhere evident in American Indian speech. On the other hand, the written tradition tends to encourage an indifference to language. That is to say, writing produces a false security where our attitudes toward language are concerned. We take liberties with words; we become blind to their sacred aspect."
-N.Scott Momaday