John (Fire) Lame Deer

"When the treaty was signed Lame Deer said, 'If I ever die, or the school closes, this land shall go to my first son and, if he dies, to his son, and so on down the line.'  I tried to sue the government for this land, and they said, 'No personal Indian claims allowed.'  Maybe it was a good thing that they would not let us Indians keep that land.  Think of what would have been missed:

the motels with their neon signs, the pawn shops, the Rock Hunter's Paradise, the Horned Trophies Taxidermist Studio, the giftie shoppies, the Genuine Indian Crafts Center with its beadwork from Taiwain and Hong Kong, the Sitting Bull Cave -- electrically lighted for your convenience -- the Shrine of Democracy Souvenir Shop, the Fun House -- the talk of your trip for years to come--

the Bucket of Blood Saloon, the life-size dionsaur made of green concrete, the go-go gals and cat houses, the Reptile Gardens, where they don't feed the snakes because that would be too much trouble.  When they die you get yourself some new rattlers for free. 

Just think: If that land belonged to us there would be nothing here, only trees, grass, and some animals running free.  All that real estate woudl be going to waste!"

"A partridge, a grouse, a quail, a pheasant, you have made them into chickens, creatures that can't fly, that wear a kind of sunglasses so that they won't peck each other's eyes out, 'birds' with a 'pecking order.'

There are some farms where they breed chickens for breast meat.  Those birds are kept in low cages, forced to be hunched over all the time, which makes the breast muscles very big.  Soothing sounds, Muzak, are piped into these chicken hutches.  One loud noise and the chikcens go haywire, killing themselves by flying against the mesh of their cages. 

Having to spend all their lives stooped over makes an unnatural, crazy, no-good bird.  It also makes unnatural, no-good human beings.

That's where you fooled yourselves.  You have not only altered, declawed, and malformed your winged and four-legged cousins, you have done it to yourselves.  You have changed men into chairmen of boards, into office workers, into time-clock punchers.  You have changed women into housewives, truly fearful creatures.  I was once invited into the home of such a one.  'Watch the ashes, don't smoke you stain the curtains, Watch the goldfish bowl, don't breath on the parakeet, don't lean your head against the wallpaper; your hair may be greasy.  Don't spill iqour on that table; it has a delicate finish...don't, don't, don't.

That is crazy.  We weren't made to endure this.  You live in prisons that you have built for yourselves, calling them 'homes,' offices, factories.  We have a new joke on the reservation: 'What is cultural deprivation?' Answer: 'Being an upper-middle-class white kid living in a split-level suburban home with a color TV.'"

"To us life, all life, is sacred...

More and more animals are dying out.  The animals that the Great Spirit put here, they must go.  The man-made animals are allowed to stay--at least until they are shipped out to be butchered.

That terrible arrogance of the white man, making himself something more than God, more than nature, saying, 'I will let this animal live, because it makes money'; saying, 'This animal must go, it brings no income, the space it occupies can be used in a better way.  The only good coyote is a dead coyote.'  They are treating coyotes almost as badly as they used to treat Indians..."

"We are forever looking at things from different angles.  For us there is pain in joy and joy inpain, just as to us a clown is a funny man and a tragic figure at one and the same time.  It is all part of the same thing--nature, which is neither sad nor glad; it just is."