Ohitika Woman Quotes

“these white people have lost their own gods and mislaid their souls. They have trouble dealing with reality, with death.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“They are not racist. They’ll drill and mine the land of white ranchers and farmers too if they think their area is “resource rich.” So we told those white folks: “You’ll be next, you’ll be the next Indians.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“Fourteen billion dollars in gold alone have been taken out of our sacred land and they offer us 120 million in compensation!”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“The government and the highest courts in the land have admitted that this huge area was stolen from us. But stolen or “bought,” Uncle Sam never gives any Indian land back.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“truth is beautiful, even when it is ugly. I”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“when you seem to get yourself down, teach yourself to think like the eagle always, and let your spirit soar high. Feel the strength of his wings, and feel the beat of his heart so that your spirit soars high and you can look down and see just how small things really are.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“Whites break the law too, but it is always the poor and the nonwhites who actually do the time in penitentiaries.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“In South Dakota about 6 percent of the population are Indians, but we account for 43 percent of arrests and 50 percent of all convictions.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“They are hungering for “a deep sexual experience.” They’ll sleep with anybody who wears braids or a choker. I”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“a white person who wants to know about our religion but won’t listen. There”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“Raymond Yellow Thunder, a gentle, sober Pine Ridge elder; he was attacked by some white racists who stripped him naked from the waist down, forced him to dance at gunpoint, and then beat him to death—just for the fun of it.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“Mount Rushmore, which old John Fire always called the “Giant Tourist Curio Ashtray.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“On Pine Ridge and Rosebud they had communal cattle herds and some Indians were becoming ranchers in a small way. But the government was quick to destroy our budding economy. World War I broke out and in 1917 the white superintendent sold off our cattle “because it was needed for the war effort.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“Let’s make our stand at Wounded Knee, because that place has meaning for us, because so many of our people were massacred there. If you guys don’t want to do it, we women will, and you men can stay behind and mind the kids.” After”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“When playing either quarter pitch or spinners, you can go through a case of beer in twenty minutes. It’s fun and it’s deadly.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“Allowing liquor on the res, close to where you lived, was supposed to prevent injuries and deaths caused by drunken driving.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“The reasoning behind the new law was that if liquor was made legal, we’d have fewer accidents.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“one dollar for every ton of waste.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“these polluters shall have the sole right to decide what: kind of shit, poison, toxic or hazardous waste they will dump on us. If, at some later date, the tribe should adopt stricter standards for waste disposal, then we must compensate those bastards for the costs arising from the new rules.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“In no event shall any environmental regulations or standards of South Dakota be applicable to this project.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“The waste disposal firm will send us the crap and filth from Minneapolis, Denver, and other big cities and will bless us with an Everest of garbage on five thousand acres of our most beautiful land situated near some of our most sacred places and not far from Wounded Knee.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“As recently as 1991, the Supreme Court upheld a Washington State ruling outlawing peyote. Freedom of religion, as I said before, seems to apply only to whites. For”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“The white man oppresses the half-blood, the half-blood oppresses the full-blood, and everybody takes out their anger, despair, and feeling of helplessness on the women.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman