Big Mountain Quotes

“Some of the Big Mountain area lies in Navajo land and another part is within the Hopi reservation. The boundaries were not made by either the Hopis or the Navajos, but, in 1891, by some white government types who, as they always do, took a map of Arizona, drew a big square on it with the ruler, and said: “Okay, what’s inside the square is Hopi, and what’s outside is Navajo.” Then they probably slapped each other on the back and went to the nearest bar to have a drink. As long as no white rancher or farmer had any use for country that was looked upon as a wasteland, this “boundary” stuff didn’t matter.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“Things changed when certain outfits, like the Peabody Coal Company, became aware of all the coal and uranium buried in the land and decided to reap the profits from it. That started the so-called “Navajo-Hopi land conflict,” which really never existed as far as the traditional people were concerned.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“For generations more than ten thousand traditional Navajo people have lived on Big Mountain, supporting themselves by sheep raising and rug weaving. They lived in old-style hogans, moving with their herds from pasture to pasture. They had little contact with the outside world. Their forced evacuation has been going on for several years and “relocation” is supposed to be finished in 1995. Already over eight hundred families have been driven off their ancestral land and “resettled” in Winslow, Holbrook, or Flagstaff, many without ever getting their relocation money. They are penniless and desperate. Some got a little money and some miserable house to live in, but they are desperate too. They were used to living in self-built hogans. Now they have to pay rent. They used to heat their hogans with old-fashioned wood stoves and the wood they gathered cost them nothing. Now they have to pay for gas and electricity. They used to run their sheep and weave their own clothing. Now they are unemployed ghetto dwellers in a strange, hostile, and frightening environment. All this happened to the Navajos before, in 1863, when Kit Carson and the army laid waste to their land. He and his men destroyed crops, cut down fruit trees to make their country uninhabitable, and forcibly herded thousands of Navajos to a place in the desert hundreds of miles away called Bosque Redondo, where most of them died of disease and malnutrition. It is still remembered with horror as “The Longest Walk.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“The elders talked about how there was no dispute between the Hopis and the Navajos over the land because of the many intermarriages that had happened. A lot of the traditional people had relatives among the Hopis. During all these generations they had always shared, and the elders said that they had given the Hopis the land where they were now meeting. Some of the elderly Navajo women would talk, and they’d start out by saying things like: “Hello, my grandchildren.” And then they’d talk about the land, and the generations, about the centuries they have lived up there and raised their sheep.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“My body bears the marks of sacrifice. I have four scars on my back from Big Mountain, two from hanging at the tree and two from when I was pulled by the horse. And I have two deep ones on my arms, right below my shoulders, from my first sun dance, and the scars from flesh offerings when old Bill Eagle Feather cut forty little squares of skin from my arms. And two more scars on my wrists where feathers had been stuck through at a sun dance. Then I have four piercings on each ear that were ceremoniously pierced by Fools Crow’s daughter. I also have scars from different accidents and confrontations, and I’m missing a few teeth as the result of too many fights. I call them honorable scars.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“The fight for Big Mountain was led by the women, the strong-hearted Diné mothers and grandmothers. They were at the core of the resistance.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“The fight for Big Mountain is being lost. The forced relocations are continuing. I fear that the beautiful country there will become a great black hole made by the strip miners. But I do not think that our fight has been in vain. One day it will bear fruit, and our years of support for the Big Mountain people have cemented the bond between the Diné and the Lakota people, particularly between the peyote church members of both tribes. It was like one long, long alowanpi—a seven-year-long relation-making ceremony.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman