Wilma Mankiller Quotes

The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

One act of violence takes four generations to heal.

Those traumas when it comes to the historical past generation to generation; our children, our grandchildren, our future grandchildren learn these behaviors. We have to know that they exist and we have to take care of those traumas and learn to heal from them. This movie shows that perspective from Scott's character, and I love it. It shows the American Indians as the ones who respect and help out when people are needed. It's a nice little twist.

Long-term trauma for women who have survived armed conflict is a haunting reminder that health issues and depression can follow decades after the end of war, but women who hope for healing can and do move forward.

It's extraordinary what children put up with. I happened to see two of my uncles put my father up against the wall of my grandmother's house and knock his teeth out, because he'd been unpleasant to my mother. The next day I went upstairs and found my father making a rather half-hearted attempt to gas himself.

I did not realize how broken I was until I saw how broken Mama was.

America's a very traumatized society.

When you come from so many damaged places you don't ever want to spiral back there, so you gotta continue to check yourself.

Family violence is a criminal act; perpetrators, while often former victims themselves, need to accept culpability.

My father's violence is the central fact of my art and my life.

Trauma creates one of four types of people: victims, rescuers, or perps - and if you're really lucky and really strong and very willing and brave, survivors.

Somewhere deep inside me was the will and determination not only to live, but to be a more present mother for my kids, instead of one who was emotionally unavailable because she was in so much pain, as my own mother was.

If I didn't forgive the people who took me into the barracks and beat me unconscious over a period of days during the period when the British state was indicted for inhuman and degrading treatment in 1971-72, or even the guys who shot me, if you don't forgive them, you end up with unnecessary baggage.

I was motivated to write about violence because I believe it's not unusual. I see it as just a part of life, and I think we get in trouble when we separate people who've experienced it from those who haven't.

What's good about talking about being victimized is that it is the beginning of being able to stop it.

I want to warn potential victims. Many of them are women, and many of them are battered women. It's a cause for me. When I look back, though, so many of the books I've written are about wives who just couldn't get away.

The natural reaction people have when violence has been used against them is to react violently.

Beat your wife on the wedding day, and your married life will be happy.

For far too many women the number one health risk is the violence we face in our own home.

Since 9-11, more women have been killed by their husbands or boyfriends that Americans have been killed in 9-11, Iraq, and Afghanistan put together.

Those who are beaten become beaters.

The truth is this: Brutalized, victimized children invariably will brutalize and victimize when they grow up. Is our only response to this the certain promise that we will penalize them when they do? Or will we commit to keeping our children safe from brutality and victimization?

With 'Pretty Girls,' I saw the opportunity to talk not just about crime but what crime leaves behind.

Different victims, different survivors of different crimes will choose to pursue different paths. And hopefully, over time, we can collectively transform our culture into one that prioritizes healing and prevention instead of simply focusing on punishment.

It will take 150 years or seven generations to heal the wound of the residential school.