Indian Reservations Quotes

“The steam trains crossed the country, the gleaming tracks clumsy sutures across wounded miles of stolen land.”
― Libba Bray, Lair of Dreams

“When the entire nation becomes a reservation, perhaps then we’ll understand the price of ignoring history’s lessons.”
― Kempton Olney, Mother Earth vs Corporate Greed: The Betrayal of America's Traditional Farmers and Ranchers from Corrupt Government Programs and Corporate Greed

“Rapes on the reservations are a big scandal. The victims are mostly full-blood girls, too shy and afraid to complain. A few years back the favorite sport of white state troopers and cops was to arrest young Indian girls on a drunk-and disorderly, even if the girls were sober, take them to the drunk tanks in their jails, and there rape them. Sometimes they took the girls in their squad cars out into the prairie to "show you what a white man can do. I'm really doin' you a favor, kid." After they had done with them, they often kicked the girls out of their cars and drove off. Then the girl who had been raped had to walk five or ten miles home on top of everything else. Indian girls accusing white cops are seldom taken seriously in South Dakota. "You know how they are," the courts are told, "they're always asking for it.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Now some entrepreneurs from Connecticut, and the East generally, want to turn our reservation into a garbage dump. The wasichu have already given us smallpox, measles, and whiskey, and now they want to bury us in their waste.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“I do not want to give a wrong impression. There is good beside the bad on the res. Nature is beautiful, and there is bravery in the face of adversity. There is goodness and people helping each other, poor people sharing what they have with those who have even less. We have stouthearted women and great powwows, songs and ceremonies. We have our sacred medicine and eagles are still flying over the sandhills. But drinking is a great problem. I would like to dedicate this chapter to the Pima Indian Ira Hayes, hero of Iwo jima, holder of the Congressional Medal of Honor, who, being drunk, drowned in a ditch. He was one more victim of a country that has no use for its heroes if they happen to be Native Americans.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman