Wounded Knee Siege Quotes

“I am not afraid to die.
If I die at Wounded Knee,
I will go where Crazy Horse
and Sitting Bull
and our grandfathers are. -Crow Dog”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“In that ravine, at Cankpe Opi, we gathered up the broken pieces of the sacred hoop and put them together again. All who were at Wounded Knee, Buddy Lamont, Clearwater, and our medicine men, we mended the nation's hoop. The sacred tree is not dead!”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“Ever since Wounded Knee she had had premonitions of approaching death. "I've fought too hard," she said. "They won't let Indians like me live. That's all right. I don't want to grow up to be an old woman." She talked that way often, almost cheerfully, without a trace of sentimentality. All she was left with then were her jeans, ribbon shirt, and Levi's jacket. That was all.”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“I was looking into the clouds, into the sun. Brightness filled my mind. The sun seemed to speak: "I am the Eye of Life. I am the Soul of the Eye. I am the Life Giver!" In the almost unbearable brightness, in the clouds, I
saw people. I could see those who had died. I could see Pedro Bissonette standing by the arbor and, above me, the face of Buddy Lamont, killed at Wounded Knee, looking at me with ghostly eyes. I saw the face of my friend Annie Mae Aquash, smiling at me. I could hear the spirits speaking to me through the eagle-bone whistles. I heard no sound but the shrill cry of the eagle bones. I felt nothing and, at the same time, everything. It was at that moment that I, a white educated half-blood, became wholly Indian. I experienced a great rush of happiness. I heard a cry coming from my lips:
Ho Uway Tinkte.
A Voice I will send.
Throughout the Universe,
Maka Sitomniye,
My Voice you shall hear:
I will live!”
― Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

“And there was the cry: “All you Wounded Knee veterans, stand up!” And so we stood there— Clyde and Crow Dog, Carla and Ron and Carter and myself—and they sang the honoring song for us. They say the movement is dead, but it isn’t. We’re still working for the people; we are still here. You can’t stop us now.”
― Mary Brave Bird

“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