Mary Brave Bird

The blacks want what the whites have, which is understandable. They want in. We Indians want out! That is the main difference.

— Mary Brave Bird

We did freak out the honkies. We were feared throughout the Dakotas. I could never figure out why this should have been so. We were always the victims. We never maimed or killed. It was we who died or got crippled.

— Mary Brave Bird

I could not help noticing the great role women played in Pueblo society. Women owned the houses and actually built them. Children often got their mother's last name, not their father's. Sons joined their mother's clans. It made me a little jealous.

— Mary Brave Bird

To me, women's lib was mainly a white, upper-middle class affair of little use to a reservation Indian woman.

— Mary Brave Bird