Black Hills Quotes

“But we fight not only for our own, much diminished, Rosebud Reservation. We also fight for what rightfully belongs, or did belong, to all Sioux and Cheyennes—the sacred Black Hills. There has been a legal battle going on over this for a lifetime, and the white lawyers who worked for us on our claims have become millionaires, and that is the only result so far. 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. Instead he has forked over some 122 million dollars to pay for the stolen land. But we have not accepted it. What we are saying is: “Give us the Black Hills back. Then, maybe we will accept the money you are holding in escrow for us as payment for all the gold and uranium you have taken, and are still taking, out of the hills.” Fourteen billion dollars in gold alone have been taken out of our sacred land and they offer us 120 million in compensation! That’s like someone stealing my brand-new car and coming back twenty years later saying: “I’m sorry I stole that car from you but I want to make it up to you. Here’s twenty bucks.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“The big companies call the Lakota land a “Nuclear Energy Park,” or “Black Hills Multinational Energy Domain,” or even “National Sacrifice Area.” I ask myself: “Who and what is to be sacrificed here?” It makes me shudder. Some people say: “The collapse of the Soviet Union will kill the uranium mining and that will be our Indian ‘peace dividend.’” I don’t believe it. They’ll still find plenty of use for that evil stuff, and they’ll always find Indian land as the ideal site to test their weapons on. In 1942, the government seized 133,000 acres of the Pine Ridge Reservation as a gunnery range to practice aerial bombing. This was near Sheep Mountain in one of the most scenic parts of South Dakota.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman