## Metadata - Author: [[Kent Nerburn]] - Full Title: Neither Wolf Nor Dog 25th Anniversary Edition - Category: #books ## Highlights - This, I believe, is the key to the enduring relevance of Neither Wolf nor Dog. It is a call to each of us to become brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters don’t have to understand each other; they don’t even have to like each other. But they have to trust each other and stand by each other. ([Location 165](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=165)) - Note: This is a simple way of delivering the message of Outgrowing Modernity - The land was part of us. We didn’t even know about owning the land. It is like talking about owning your grandmother. You can’t own your grandmother. She just is your grandmother. Why would you talk about owning her? ([Location 842](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=842)) - They were talking about property. We were talking about the land. Do you see what I mean? Your people came from Europe because they wanted property for their own. That was what they needed to farm and raise the food to live. They had worked for other people who had claimed all the property and took all the things they raised. They never had anything because they had no property. That was what they wanted more than anything. That is what was behind the whole idea of America as a new country across the ocean. To get property of their own. ([Location 875](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=875)) - Note: Same point as in Uncommon Land - Maybe long, long ago, Europe was just land, too, like this land was for us. But that was so long ago that no one remembered. It had all been turned into property. If people didn’t have property they didn’t have very much control over their lives, because everyone believed that whoever had a piece of paper saying they owned the land could control everything that happened on it. The people that came across the ocean believed this, too. They came here to get their own property. ([Location 879](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=879)) - “And here is something that I think is important — your religion didn’t come from the land. It could be carried around with you. You couldn’t understand what it meant to us to have our religion in the land. ([Location 884](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=884)) - “Your people did not know about the land being sacred. We did not know about the land being property. We could not talk to each other because we did not understand each other. ([Location 888](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=888)) - “You did something we did not think was possible. You killed us without even taking our lives. You killed us by turning our land into pieces of paper and bags of flour and blankets and telling us that was enough. You took the places where the spirits talked to us and you gave us bags of flour. ([Location 903](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=903)) - “For your people, the land was not alive. It was something that was like a stage, where you could build things and make things happen. You understood the dirt and the trees and the water as important things, but not as brothers and sisters. They existed to help you humans live. You were supposed to make the land bear fruit. That is what your God told you. “How could we people ever talk together when we each believed our God had told us something different about the land? ([Location 910](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=910)) - “People should think of their words like seeds. They should plant them, then let them grow in silence. Our old people taught us that the earth is always speaking to us, but that we have to be silent to hear her. ([Location 1127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=1127)) - We believed that everything was a gift, and that a good man or woman shared those gifts. Next to bravery, generosity was the most important. “Now we have been turned around. We think that good people should be rewarded, just like the white man thinks. Can’t you see how much better it was when good people thought they should give, not that they should get? ([Location 1266](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=1266)) - We know that white people have an endless hunger. They want to consume everything and make it part of them. Even if they don’t own it physically, they want to own it spiritually. That is what is happening with the Indian, now. The white people want to own us spiritually. You want to swallow us so you can say you are us. This is something new. Before you wanted to make us you. But now you are unhappy with who you are, so you want to make you into us. You want our ceremonies and our ways so you can say you are spiritual. You are trying to become white Indians. “If this is meant to happen, it will happen in the Creator’s time. We cannot make you us by giving you those things that are ours. All that does is make us lose what we are, because we no longer hold it in value. ([Location 1910](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=1910)) - “Here is something that is important to understand. When something is sacred, it does not have a price. I don’t care if it is white people talking about heaven or Indian people talking about ceremonies. If you can buy it, it isn’t sacred. And once you start to sell it, it doesn’t matter whether your reasons are good or not. You are taking what is sacred and making it ordinary. ([Location 1919](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=1919)) - “When you came among us, you couldn’t understand our way. You wanted to find the person at the top. You wanted to find the fences that bound us in — how far our land went, how far our government went. Your world was made of cages and you thought ours was, too. ([Location 2342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=2342)) - “Our old people noticed this from the beginning. They said that the white man lived in a world of cages, and that if we didn’t look out, they would make us live in a world of cages, too. “So we started noticing. Everything looked like cages. Your clothes fit like cages. Your houses looked like cages. You put fences around your yards so they looked like cages. Everything was a cage. You turned the land into cages. Little squares. “Then after you had all these cages you made a government to protect these cages. And that government was all cages. All laws about what you couldn’t do. The only freedom you had was inside your own cage. Then you wondered why you weren’t happy and didn’t feel free. You made all the cages, then you wondered why you didn’t feel free. ([Location 2346](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=2346)) - “We Indians never thought that way. Everyone was free. We didn’t make cages of laws or land. We believed in honor. To us the white man looked like a blind man walking. He knew he was on the wrong path when he bumped into the edge of one of the cages. Our guide was inside, not outside. ([Location 2352](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=2352)) - We saw how every animal had wisdom and we tried to learn that wisdom. We would look to them to see how they got along and how they raised their young. Then we would copy them. We did not look for what was wrong. Instead we always reached for what was right. “It was this search that kept us on a good path, not rules and fences. ([Location 2357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=2357)) - Note: Like Ophuls argues in Plato's Revenge. We need to cultivate an inner wisdom that is ecological. Earth law, rather than human laws. - “The only time freedom is important is when others are trying to put you in chains. We had no chains so we needed no freedom.” ([Location 2362](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=2362)) - We can look at the same facts as you and it is something completely different. But you build your history on words like ‘frontier’ and ‘civilization,’ and those words are just your ideas put into little shapes that you can use in sentences. The big ideas behind them are weapons that take our past from us. “I think that’s a lot of where our people went wrong with your people. We didn’t see the big ideas behind the words you used. We didn’t see that you had to name everything to make it exist, and that the name you gave something made it what it was. You named us savages so that made us savages. You named where we lived the wilderness, so that made it a wild and dangerous place. Without even knowing it, you made us who we are in your minds by the words you used. You are still doing that, and you don’t even know it is happening. “I hope you’ll learn to be more careful with your words. Our children don’t know the old language so well, so it is your English that is giving them the world. Right now some of the ideas in your words are wrong. They are giving our children and yours the world in a wrong way. ([Location 2472](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=2472)) - “There was an old man who told me when I was a boy that I should look at words like beautiful stones. He said I should lift each one and look at it from all sides before I used it. Then I would respect it. “I think he gave me good advice. You people have so many words that you don’t respect them the way you should. There is always another one, so you just throw them out there without thinking. “I think you need to be careful. Those words are like stones. Even if they are very beautiful, if you throw them out without thinking, they can hurt someone. ([Location 2480](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=2480)) - Watching Dan had been almost like watching a man go into a trance. He hadn’t seemed to form his thoughts, but to catch them and ride them like a hawk rides wind currents. He had kept his eyes closed for the entire time he spoke. ([Location 2486](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=2486)) - You cannot be afraid. There is good anger, too, and you have that. It is the anger from seeing clearly. It’s the same anger I have. It’s the anger the Old Ones warned me about. You must learn to control that anger, then it can be of use. But there is bad anger, too. It is the anger of people who only want their own way. That anger is selfish. It is a child’s anger, and you must not back down from that anger. If you back down from it you are being a coward. ([Location 2538](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=2538)) - “He’s saying you write what you see and you write what you hear. You are a keeper of the fire.” Dan nodded his approval. “Keepers of the fire cannot be cowards. They are carrying light.” ([Location 2544](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=2544)) - “It really makes me angry when I see how white people have turned us into victims. I see hundreds of my people getting in line every day to be victims, blaming society or the white man for all their troubles.” “Well, there’s some truth in that, isn’t there?” I asked. “Sure there is. But it’s a bad truth. Being a victim is weak. I don’t want to be weak. I want to be strong, like my grandfathers. My own father used to walk to the river every morning in the winter and cut a hole in the ice to get water. It didn’t matter that it was forty below zero. He just did what he had to. It made him strong. “Now our people are being taught that we were victims of society because at the same time white people had running water. So what? Before you came here we didn’t have running water. We still went to the river at forty below and got water. We never thought of ourselves as victims. “But then the social workers came and told us if we didn’t have everything you did, we were all victims. A lot of Indians believe that now.” ([Location 2697](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=2697)) - Note: I like the phrase "It's a bad truth." - “The white man’s way is not the Indian way. We don’t need to want the same things you do. We have our way. It was given to us by our ancestors. All we have to do is follow that way. To follow your way is to say you are stronger. I don’t think you are stronger. I think you are weaker. “If there are things we can learn from you that will help us follow the way of our ancestors better, then we should learn them. If there are things we can get from you that will help us give our people a better life, we should get them. But we don’t need to look at you and say that if we don’t have everything that you have, then we are victims. That is giving your way too much power over our way. We should both live the way we think is right and try to help each other as best we can.” ([Location 2710](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=2710)) - “Do you know why we listened to the early missionaries? Because they were strong. They slept on the ground with us. They didn’t make beds off the floor and try to shut out the world. You may not believe it, but they understood our life and they liked it. They knew we were living close to the earth. From our standpoint the best of them just made their religion fit with ours, like a hand fits into a glove. “It was when the other ones came that the real trouble began. The ones who were drunk with their own vision of truth and couldn’t see ours. The ones who needed houses with floors and then lifted their beds off the floors and then put a mattress on the bed so they could be as far away from the earth as possible. These people never knew who we were. “Now a hundred years later you’ve got us to lift our floors off the ground and our beds off the floors and to shut out nature and to get our food in cellophane wrappings. You tell us that we are victims if we don’t have all of those things. Then you go out and go camping and sleep on the ground and say you are living like the Indians did. It is just another way of taking our culture from us. You try to make us feel sad about what we don’t have while you try to claim what we do have for yourselves.” ([Location 2730](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=2730)) - “Think of that Thoreau fellow. I’ve read some of his books. He went out and lived in a shack and looked at a pond. Now he’s one of your heroes. If I go out and live in a shack and look at a pond, pretty soon I’ll have so many damn social workers beating on my door that I won’t be able to sleep. “They’ll start scribbling in some damn notebook: ‘No initiative. No self-esteem.’ They’ll write reports, get grants, start some government program with a bunch of forms. Say it’s to help us. ([Location 2742](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=2742)) - Note: Hilarious! - For a moment, and dimly, I lost my own eyes and saw with the eyes Dan had given me; saw the huddled people in their blankets, desperately trying to outrun an army that had committed itself to killing every man and woman and child and infant that had dark skin or spoke in a tongue born of this land. I heard the voices of mothers trying to keep track of each other in the swirling snow, slowing to help the old people who could neither walk nor understand why they had to flee, pulling their own clothes from their bodies to wrap their freezing children tighter against the winter night; saw them huddling together in the freezing darkness, afraid to build a fire against the ice and wind of December because the men who were hunting them like animals would see it and come riding in and rip their children from their arms before pumping bullets into their hearts, their legs, their skulls, and then riding off. But most of all I felt the pain of their confusion that their god had failed. In a land that as a child had filled me with dreams of pony rides and ice cream cones and four presidents’ heads on a mountain, people who had sensed the power of God in every rock and bird and square inch of land had been reduced to dancing crazily in a circle, in hopes that their desperate ecstasy would call forth a savior who would keep them from having to watch one more of their children die hollow-eyed and uncomprehending in their arms. ([Location 4398](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VT9R1W4&location=4398))