"The Sun, Moon and Stars are there to guide us"
About this Quote
Banks’s line carries the calm authority of someone who’s seen guidance abused by institutions and reclaimed by community. “The Sun, Moon and Stars” aren’t poetic wallpaper here; they’re a navigation system older than any textbook, a reminder that orientation can be literal and moral at once. The phrasing is deceptively simple: not “inspire” or “comfort,” but “guide.” That verb puts the cosmos in the role the modern state and its schools often claim for themselves, then quietly reassigns the job.
The subtext reads as an Indigenous critique of dislocation. For many Native communities, forced assimilation, land theft, and boarding-school regimes weren’t just political violence; they were attempts to break the relationship between people and place, to replace local knowledge with sanctioned instruction. Banks, an Indigenous activist and educator, frames learning as re-attachment: guidance that comes from paying attention to the world rather than submitting to an external authority that has historically been hostile.
There’s also a strategic universality in the image. Everyone shares the sky; no one can privatize the stars. That makes the sentence portable across audiences without flattening its roots. It suggests a curriculum that begins with observation and responsibility: seasons, cycles, direction, reciprocity. The effect is quietly insurgent. When the heavens “are there” to guide us, guidance is not scarce, not granted, and not contingent on permission. It’s available to anyone willing to look up - and, by implication, to remember where they stand.
The subtext reads as an Indigenous critique of dislocation. For many Native communities, forced assimilation, land theft, and boarding-school regimes weren’t just political violence; they were attempts to break the relationship between people and place, to replace local knowledge with sanctioned instruction. Banks, an Indigenous activist and educator, frames learning as re-attachment: guidance that comes from paying attention to the world rather than submitting to an external authority that has historically been hostile.
There’s also a strategic universality in the image. Everyone shares the sky; no one can privatize the stars. That makes the sentence portable across audiences without flattening its roots. It suggests a curriculum that begins with observation and responsibility: seasons, cycles, direction, reciprocity. The effect is quietly insurgent. When the heavens “are there” to guide us, guidance is not scarce, not granted, and not contingent on permission. It’s available to anyone willing to look up - and, by implication, to remember where they stand.
Quote Details
| Topic | Native American Sayings |
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