Lakota Woman Quotes

“The thing to keep in mind is that laws are framed by those who happen to be in power and for the purpose of keeping them in power.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Moral power is always more dangerous to an oppressor than political force.”
― Mary Crow Dog , Lakota Woman

“Nixon sent some no-account underling to tell us that he had done more for the American Indian than any predecessor and that he saw no reason for our coming to Washington, that he had more important things to do than to talk with us—presumably surreptitiously taping his visitors and planning Watergate. We wondered what all these good things were that he had done for us.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Don’t sell your land, don’t sell Grandmother Earth to the strip-mining outfits and the uranium companies. Don’t sell your water.” That kind of advice is a threat to the system and gets you into the penitentiary.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“You got to look at things with the eye in your heart, not with the eye in your head. —Lame Deer”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Racism breeds racism in reverse.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“The men who had brought us whiskey and the smallpox had come with the cross in one hand and the gun in the other.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“The thing to keep in mind is that laws are framed by those who happen to be in power and for the purpose of keeping them in power. That goes for the U.S.A as well as for Russia or any other country in the world.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“The fight for our land is at the core of our existence, as it has been for the last two hundred years. Once the land is gone, then we are gone too.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“White men invented whiskey and brought it to America. They manufacture, advertise, and sell it to us. They make the profit on it and cause the conditions that make Indians drink in the first place.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“I still have a poster I found among my grandfather’s stuff, given to him by the missionaries to tack up on his wall. It reads:

Let Jesus save you.
Come out of your blanket, cut your hair, and dress like a white man.
Have a Christian family with one wife for life only.
Live in a house like your white brother. Work hard and wash often.
Learn the value of a hard-earned dollar. Do not waste your money on giveaways. Be punctual.
Believe that property and wealth are signs of divine approval.
Keep away from saloons and strong spirits.
Speak the language of your white brother. Send your children to school to do likewise.
Go to church often and regularly.
Do not go to Indian dances or to the medicine men.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“In the old days, nature was our people’s only school and they needed no other.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Even now, in a good school, there is impersonality instead of close human contact; a sterile, cold atmosphere, an unfamiliar routine, language problems, and above all the maza-skan-skan, that damn clock—white man’s time as opposed to Indian time, which is natural time.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“You must kill the Indian in order to save the man! " That was part of trying to escape the hard life. The missions, going to church, dressing and behaving like a wasičun—that for her was the key which would magically unlock the door leading to the good life, the white life with a white-painted cottage, and a carpet on the floor, a shiny car in the garage, and an industrious, necktie-wearing husband who was not a wino.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Between 1870 and 1880 all Sioux were driven into reservations, fenced in and forced to give up everything that had given meaning to their life—their horses, their hunting, their arms, everything.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“You got to look at things with the eye in your heart, not with the eye in your head.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“a drop of her moon blood fell to the earth. Rabbit saw it. He started to play with this tiny blood clot, kicking it around with his foot, and through the power of Tkuskanskan, the quickening, moving spirit, the blood clot firmed up and turned into We-Ota-Wichasha—Blood Clot Boy—the First Man.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Our language comes from the water, the flowers, the wild creatures, the”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Sound is important. Our sound is the sound of nature and animals, not the notes of a white man’s scale. Our”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Look at the real reality beneath the sham realities of things and gadgets,” Leonard always tells me. “Look through the eye in your heart. That’s the meaning of Indian religion.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“The general rule is that whoever thinks, sings, acts, and speaks Indian is a skin, a full-blood, and whoever acts and thinks like a white man is a half-blood or breed, no matter how Indian he looks.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Supposedly you drink to forget. The trouble is you don’t forget, you remember—all the old insults and hatreds, real and imagined.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Even the most white-manized Sioux is still half horse.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“To be angry, poverty has to rub shoulders with wealth.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“. Many times I asked my grandmother, “Why don’t you teach me the language?” Her answer always was: “ ‘Cause we want you to get an education, to live a good life. Not have a hard time. Not depend on nobody. Times coming up are going to be real hard. You need a white man’s education to live in this world. Speaking Indian would only hold you back, turn you the wrong way.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“The men had nothing to live for, so they got drunk and drove off at ninety miles an hour in a car without lights, without brakes, and without destination, to die a warrior’s death.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“And so the government tore the tiyospaye apart and forced the Sioux into the kind of relationship now called the “nuclear family"—forced upon each couple their individually owned allotment of land, trying to teach them “the benefits of wholesome selfishness without which higher civilization is impossible.” At least that is how one secretary of the interior put it. So the great brainwashing began, those who did not like to have their brains washed being pushed farther and farther into the back country into isolation and starvation.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“I don’t know whether I am a louse under the white man’s skin. I hope I am.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Coming back years later, he said that he had seen the cities of the whites and that a single one of them contained more people than could be found in all the Plains tribes put together, and that every one of the wasičuns’ factories could turn out more rifles and bullets in one day than were owned by all the Indians in the country.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“In the old days a man made a name for himself by being generous and wise, but now he has nothing to be generous with, no jobs, no money; and as far as our traditional wisdom is concerned, our men are being told by the white missionaries, teachers, and employers that it is merely savage superstition.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman