"It is an understanding with the Great Spirit or Creator that we will follow these ways"
About this Quote
A promise framed as a contract, not a vibe: Dennis Banks casts tradition as an agreement with the Great Spirit, and that legalistic firmness matters. “Understanding” sounds gentle, almost conversational, but it lands like accountability. It suggests mutual recognition: a people know who they are, and the Creator knows what’s been pledged. In one line, he shifts “culture” away from lifestyle branding and toward obligation.
Banks, as an educator and a leading voice in modern Indigenous activism, is speaking into a long history of outsiders treating Native ways as optional folklore, or as something to be “civilized” out of existence through boarding schools, policing of ceremony, and forced assimilation. The subtext is defiance without theatrics. He’s not arguing for legitimacy on the state’s terms; he’s invoking a higher jurisdiction. When governments break treaties, when institutions demand assimilation, this framing says: our deepest commitments are older than your laws and sturdier than your approvals.
The phrase “these ways” is deliberately unspecific. It protects what doesn’t need translating and refuses the audience’s entitlement to details. That vagueness is also strategic pedagogy: it invites listeners to understand that Indigenous identity isn’t reducible to a checklist of practices; it’s a lived ethic, carried through daily choices, community responsibilities, and continuity across generations.
The intent, then, is both spiritual and political. By grounding survival in sacred obligation, Banks gives cultural perseverance a moral spine: not nostalgia, not performance, but covenant.
Banks, as an educator and a leading voice in modern Indigenous activism, is speaking into a long history of outsiders treating Native ways as optional folklore, or as something to be “civilized” out of existence through boarding schools, policing of ceremony, and forced assimilation. The subtext is defiance without theatrics. He’s not arguing for legitimacy on the state’s terms; he’s invoking a higher jurisdiction. When governments break treaties, when institutions demand assimilation, this framing says: our deepest commitments are older than your laws and sturdier than your approvals.
The phrase “these ways” is deliberately unspecific. It protects what doesn’t need translating and refuses the audience’s entitlement to details. That vagueness is also strategic pedagogy: it invites listeners to understand that Indigenous identity isn’t reducible to a checklist of practices; it’s a lived ethic, carried through daily choices, community responsibilities, and continuity across generations.
The intent, then, is both spiritual and political. By grounding survival in sacred obligation, Banks gives cultural perseverance a moral spine: not nostalgia, not performance, but covenant.
Quote Details
| Topic | Native American Sayings |
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