Native American Militant Quotes

“It is the government which made me into a militant. If you approach them hat in hand as a "responsible, respectable" apple, red outside, white inside, you get nowhere. If you approach them as a militant you get nowhere either, except giving them an excuse to waste you, but at least you don't feel so shitty.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Annie Mae grew into a Native American militant. She got into the same kind of fights that Barb and I had fought. She gave herself to the cause and that meant giving her children to her sister Mary to care for. That was hard and heart-wrenching. It was the sacrifice Annie Mae made to the movement-her motherhood.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Promise me, if the goons blow me away, to tell my girls that I died true to my beliefs, fighting for my people.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“They offered me my freedom and money if I'd testify the way they wanted. I have those two choices now. I chose my kind of freedom, not their kind, even if I have to die. They let me go because they are sure I'll lead them to Peltier. They're watching me. I don't hear them or see them, but I know they're out there somewhere. I can feel it.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“She came to my room. She did not say anything much, she was just sitting on the bed looking at me. She said, "I just wanted to see you. You won't see me again. " We talked about a few unimportant things, said our goodbyes, shook hands, hugged each other, and she cried and cried. That was the last time I saw her. It was as if she had heard Hinhan, the owl, hoot for her, death calling her. She knew and she accepted it.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Annie Mae Aquash is dead. Leonard Peltier is doing two lifetimes. Maybe the prison hacks let him wear the moccasins she made for him. Nogeeshik was in a bad car accident and is now a wheelchair case. Leonard and I still have a lot of things she once treasured, which she gave to us. Some day I am going to find out who killed this good, gently tough, gifted friend of mine who did not deserve to die. Someday I will tell her daughters that she died for them, died like a warrior. Someday I will see Annie Mae. In a strange way I feel that she died so that I, and many others, could survive. That she died because she had made a secret vow, like a Sun Dancer who, obedient to his vow, pierces his flesh and undergoes the pain for all the people so that the people may live.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Is it right for me to be kept from my people, from my earth? The house of my mother and father has been burned down. This is where seven generations of Crow Dogs have lived. I am in the penitentiary and could not help my family save the house. I can only watch the iron bars. But even here, today, I can feel my grandfather's heartbeat and hear the echo of the drum.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“I owe much to GRANDMA JOSETTE WAWASIK, an Ojibway lady who acted as the chief midwife for me when I gave birth to Pedro on April 11, 1973. She helped deliver my baby with bullets flying through the air and the pigs’ armored personnel carriers churning around real close to the perimeter. She went on calmly, pressing on my belly, lifting the newborn out, cutting the umbilical cord as if this was a routine birth in a peaceful city hospital. She was holding my baby up at the window for everybody to see, and there was drumming outside, and the singing of the AIM song, and tears and laughter, and hugging all around. “I am here at the Knee because I believe in life,” Grandma Wawasik told me. I will remember her forever.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“After five hundred years of being held in subjection, we are finally standing up on our hind legs. Together with my sisters from many tribes, I am a birth-giver, a rebirth-giver, fighting to ensure a life for unborn generations. I am a Sioux woman!”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman

“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

“I will endure. I will fight to the end of my days—for everything that lives. MITAKUYE OYASIN—ALL MY RELATIONS.”
― Mary Brave Bird, Ohitika Woman