Carolina Quotes
I'm not worried about my identity because I know who I am and what I am. And they can't take that away from me by federal recognition or without it.
Ruth Dial Woods Carolinian
Source
Interview with Anne Mitchell Coe and Laura Moore, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, June 12, 1992; Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Interview L-0078, Documenting the American South, UNC-Chapel Hill
- form
- interview
- work
- Oral History Interview with Ruth Dial Woods, Interview L-0078
- year
- 1992
Cite this record
“I'm not worried about my identity because I know who I am an…” Ruth Dial Woods. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-C81B912586. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/c81b912586
More from Ruth Dial Woods
I think we've been kind enough for a hundred years and I think it's time now to just sue the federal government and take all this money that we spent on federal recognition and put it in law suits if nothing more than to document the ineffectiveness and the inefficiency and the unwillingness of the federal government to face up to its responsibilities.
She was buying a gift for someone and I said "Could we have a box?" and the clerk says "We don't have any boxes." And I said to my mother, "Well why don't you just leave it and we'll go somewhere else where we can get a box?" My momma says "No, that's alright. We'll get it." I says "No. Leave it." because it happened to be a season that you knew darn well they had boxes in the store but because my mother was Indian or because we were Indian they weren't going to give her a box.
I guess I came back having seen that you can walk around freely and that there are other opportunities and advantages and when I came back and saw that people were still subjected to this kind of humiliation and indignity, I became more radical about trying to encourage and challenge the system and to become more vocal.