Top 40 Aboriginal Quotes

Growing up, I knew I was different. But I didn’t know what it meant to be Aboriginal. I just knew that I had a really big, extended family. I was taught nothing about who we were or where we came from.

I hope that I am helping to create an understanding and an awareness of what happened to the Aboriginal people.

It had never occurred to me that my colour – or lack of it – was an issue for some people, but then I moved to Sydney, and apparently it was. People look at me and don’t see what they think is a typical Aboriginal. Thankfully, my mother raised me well in knowing where I come from and who I am, and I’m proud of that.

The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear.

We are so fortunate, as Australians, to have among us the oldest continuing cultures in human history. Cultures that link our nation with deepest antiquity. We have Aboriginal rock art in the Kimberley that is as ancient as the great Palaeolithic cave paintings at Altamira and Lascaux in Europe.

What I would like to see is sufficiently good education and health services being delivered to Aboriginal people so that they are prepared and ready to leave and join the economic mainstream if that’s their choice.

I have written with some amazing singers and songwriters – the moment with Snoop Dogg was amazing – but being able to tell an Aboriginal story is bigger than anything that I have ever known.

You can create something strong in art with a few notes. It is like how Aboriginal drawings have a simplicity that is incredibly rich.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians. We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

All industry, not just the mining industry, can get out and give Aboriginal companies a chance.

I have worked with a lot of really great women directors: Ana Kokkinos; Cate Shortland, who just recently directed a film called ‘Lore;’ another director, Rachel Perkins – she’s an Aboriginal director, and I’ve worked with her three times now, and she gave me my first film role, actually, back in 1997.

When I started I was pretty well the only Aboriginal player who was playing tournaments.

We’ve had real strong aboriginal male artists who’ve crossed over to the mainstream who have toured the U.K., who have been a massive influence on myself and many, many communities around Australia.

Canadians would not tolerate it if they really knew there was a whole generation of aboriginal Canadians who have a chance at a better education and are being denied it.

It’s a really important thing for Aboriginal people to remember how stories are told and the power of stories, and make it an important feature in our world again.

At the close of my visit, my Hawaiian friends urged me strongly to publish my impressions and experiences, on the ground that the best books already existing, besides being old, treat chiefly of aboriginal customs and habits now extinct, and of the introduction of Christianity and subsequent historical events.

I’d much rather people knew me as a good tennis player than as an aboriginal who happens to play good tennis. Of course I’m proud of my race, but I don’t want to be thinking about it all the time.

Yidaki didgeridoo has been used in every part of Australian regional culture, all around the country. It’s become a message stick for the survival of those people, for aboriginal people and aboriginal culture.

It is devastating that jail is seen as a rite of passage for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, part of the natural order of things. It is an outrage that there is an attitude that this is normal. This is not normal. We can’t shrug our shoulders and say this is just a ‘fact of life’ in remote Australia.

A community, once it realises that its language is in danger, can get its act together and introduce measures which can genuinely revitalise. You’ve seen it happen in Australia with several Aboriginal languages. And it’s happening in other countries, too.

My father is Indonesian Timorese, my mother Aboriginal Australian.

I’ve got tonnes of aboriginal and Native American art, but I’d like even more.

In 1995, the Paul Keating Labor government commissioned an inquiry into the forcible removal of Aboriginal children.

The greatest stain upon this great Australian nation’s character, without any question, is the great gaps that exist between our Aboriginal brothers and sisters in terms of their health, their education, their living conditions, their incarceration rates and life expectancy. It’s a great stain.

A lot of my identity as an Aboriginal person is about family.

I am ecstatic and filled with immense pride to have the world’s most renowned professional basketball league join forces with IBA – the work we are going to do together will make a real impact to the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youths.

One of my earliest memories is being backstage at ‘Bran Nue Dae’ in Darwin when I was about eight. It’s such a fun, happy show and a real celebration of being Aboriginal… it felt really great and achievable as a career. It all felt normal.

In many traditions, the world was sung into being: Aboriginal Australians believe their ancestors did so. In Hindu and Buddhist thought, Om was the seed syllable that created the world.

The direction is going the right way for respect for aboriginal people in North America, and all we can do is stand up and say, ‘Please do it faster.’

Over 120 Aboriginal communities run their own health services – some have been doing so for 30 years. They struggle with difficult medical problems. They also try to deal with counselling, stolen generations issues, family relationships, violence, suicide prevention.

We owe the Aboriginal peoples a debt that is four centuries old. It is their turn to become full partners in developing an even greater Canada. And the reconciliation required may be less a matter of legal texts than of attitudes of the heart.

I grew up partially in Switzerland but mostly in Australia. I lived in Kakadu for a short time – it’s an Aboriginal community. My best friend growing up was Aboriginal. She taught me so much.

I would say my flow is Aboriginal. Look at my face, nose, lips, and eyes.

People look at me and they don’t see what they think is a typical Aboriginal.

Through the 1990s, the fracturing of Tasmanian Aboriginal politics was given impetus by the ongoing corruption of a number of black organisations started under federal government programmes, with large amounts of public money being lost.

My mum’s from Broome, so I’m a saltwater person – Aboriginal people are either freshwater, saltwater or desert mob. So I always feel much more comfortable in close proximity to the beach, even if I’m not necessarily in the water.

I know that a prime minister of Canada needs to be deeply respectful of the other levels of government – whether it be municipal, provincial, or even nation-to-nation relationships with aboriginal governments.

The children, each of those kids is in touch with nature and traditional aboriginal culture so a very important part of getting performances from them was just letting them be and trying to capture the unique spirituality that was in each of them.

Its been instilled in me since I was young that I have to use my platform to change the world. Thats something thats part of my DNA. I think also that just being born as an Aboriginal woman, my life is politicised, so thats something Ive dealt with every day of my life.

Most Australians live in the cities on the east coast, where contact between black and white occurred as much as 200 years earlier than on the west coast – and where 95 percent of Australians are able to live 95 percent of their lives without ever seeing an Aboriginal face.