Tao Te Ching
John Fire Lame Deer
1903 – 1976 CE
Native Americans have a unique perspective on White, American culture. While not sharing the same values and assumptions, they still live surrounded by this foreign way of life. This makes their commentaries and critiques both more accurate and more personal than those based on a more distant point of view. Lame Deer exemplifies this perspective in a vivid and articulate style – his words are well worth taking to heart.
Lineages
American (USA) Shamanistic Trickster
Eras
Western
Post-Romantic Age (1850 – 2018 CE)Great Depression (1929 – 1941 CE)
Roaring Twenties (1920 – 1929 CE)
Sources
Unlisted Sources
Quotes by John Fire Lame Deer (23 quotes)
“A medicine man has to be of the earth, somebody who reads nature like white men read a book.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
27. No Trace
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“A medicine man shouldn’t be a saint… He should be able to sink as low as a bug, or soar as high as an eagle…You can’t be so stuck up, so inhuman that you want to be pure, your sould wraped up in a plastic bag all the time.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
22. Heaven's Door
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“Americans are bred like stuffed geese – to be consumers, not human beings. The moment they stop consuming and buying, the frog-skin world has no more use for them. They have become frogs themselves… this is the real world, not the Green Frog Skin World. That’s only a bad dream, a streamlined, smog-filled nightmare.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
44. Fame and Fortune
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“Artists are the Indians of the white world. They are called dreamers who live in the clouds… I tell you this is the real world, not the Green Frog Skin World. That’s only a bad dream, a streamlined, smog-filled nightmare.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
28. Turning Back
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“Desire killed that man, as desire has killed many before and after him If this earth should ever be destroyed, it will be by desire, by the lust of pleasure and self-gratification, by greed.”
Chapters:
31. Victory Funeral
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“He talks to the plants and they answer him. He listens to the voices of all those who move upon the earth, the animals. He is as one with them. From all living beings, something flows into him all the time, and something flows from him.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
51. Mysterious Goodness
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“his parents kept him out of school… Going to a white school and walking a medicine man’s road, you can’t do both.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
20. Unconventional Mind
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“I didn’t want a steady job in an office or factory. I thought myself too good for that not because I was stuck up but simply because any human being is too good for that kind of no-life, even white people.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
72. Helpful Fear
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“If all was told, supposing there lived a person who could tell all, there would be no mysteries left, and that would be very bad. Man cannot live without mystery.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
70. Inscrutable
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“Indians chase the vision, white men chase the dollar.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
37. Nameless Simplicity
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“land, water, air, the earth and what lies beneath its surface cannot be owned as someone’s private property. That belongs to everybody, and if man wants to survive, he had better come around to this Indian point of view, the sooner the better, because there isn’t much time left to think it over.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
53. Shameless Thieves
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“The Sioux have a name for white men. They call the wasicun – fat takers…Americans are bred like stuffed geese – to be consumers, not human beings… Some cruel child has stuffed a cigar into their mouths and they have to keep puffing and puffing until they explode.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
24. Unnecessary Baggage
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“We must learn to be different…If Wakan Tanka likes the plants, the animals, even little mice and bugs to do this, how much more will he abhor people being alike, doing the same thing, getting up at the same time, putting on the same kind of store-bought clothes, working in the same office at the same job with their eyes on the same clock and, worst of all, thinking alike all the time.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
18. The Sick Society
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“We Sioux spend a lot of time thinking about everyday things… We see in the world around us many symbols that teach us the meaning of life.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
45. Complete Perfection
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“What you see with your eyes closed is what counts.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
47. Effortless Success
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“From all living beings something flows into him all the time, and something flows from him.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
36. The Small, Dark Light
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“What you see with your eyes shut is what counts. The wicasa wakan loves the silence, wrapping it around himself like a blanket… he talks to the plants and they answer him.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
17. True Leaders
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“You can’t be so stuck up, so inhuman, that you want to be pure, your soul wrapped in a plastic bag.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
41. Distilled Life
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“You’ve made a blondie out of Jesus… You’ve tried to make him into an Anglo-Saxon Fuller Brush salesman, a long haired Billy Graham… it is dishonest.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
Chapters:
41. Distilled Life
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“Love is something that you can leave behind when you die. It's that powerful... it will roam and travel.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
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“Laughter—that is something very sacred—especially for us Indians. For people who are as poor as us, who have lost everything, who had to endure so much death and sadness, laughter is a precious gift.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
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“a clown is somebody sacred, funny, powerful, ridiculous holy, shameful, visionary. He is all this and then some more... He has a power, more power than the atom bomb”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
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“The white man's symbol is the square. Square is his house, his office buildings with walls that separate people from one another. Square is the door that keeps strangers out... gadgets, boxes—TV sets, washing machines, computers, cars... You become a prisoner inside all these boxes. More and more young white people want to stop being 'straight' and 'square' and try to become round, join our circle. That is good.”
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions
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