Lakota Woman

The characters were captivating, especially Crow Dog. He was a leader, but not a Chief. He was a Medicine Man, an spiritual leader to many tribes in the western hemisphere. Using the sacred medicine and stories, brought by the women to the tribe, many years ago.

This is a very powerful book about Mary Crow Dog's experiences growing up as a Lakota (Sioux) woman on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. It should be required reading for anyone who feigns ignorance of the ways that Native Americans continue to be treated in the US today. Local whites, the state of South Dakota, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the rest of the power establishment have their inhumanity exposed. Crow Dog writes in a very sparse style, and writes of brutal incidents in a matter-of-fact way. While this style makes the book compelling, it is also responsible for a major weakness of the book. Throughout the book, Crow Dog is never introspective. Things happen (she uses drugs, starts shoplifting, chooses men poorly) or happen to her (she is raped, among other things), but she doesn't think about why these things happen. She conveys neither a sense of her own agency in these events, or a sense of her own lack of agency. Oddly for an autobiography, Mary Crow Dog is the object, not the subject, of this story. Even at Wounded Knee, she doesn't really understand why she is there, other than the fact that she has followed the male authority figures of the movement into the siege. She made her choice and put her body on the line but can't really explain why. How life on the reservation produces people like this is certainly worth reflection. This siege at Wounded Knee provides the centerpiece of the book, and its natural climax. Crow Dog has a very different view of these events than the accounts provided by the leadership, who knew their history and knew what they were trying to do. Crow Dog also talks about the aftermath of the siege, and the period when her husband was in jail. At this time, she also followed him into the practice of Native American religion, and - - more implicitly than explicitly - - explains why this religion is attractive to many. Finally, this book also provides a valuable insiders' perspective of the dysfunctional communities on Pine Ridge. It's interesting that the politically correct crowd condemns Ian Frazier's "On the Rez" while praising "Lakota Woman"- - both paint similar pictures of the same reservation. It's true than a Lakota insider brings perspectives not available to outsiders, but a white outsider also bring perspectives not available to insiders. Read them both and make up your own mind.

I read this when it first came out in 1990, but it is timeless: her struggle and success in surviving a time and place difficult for her race and sex, and much on her own, is profoundly touching. Even if you have read "In The Spirit of Crazyhorse", this adds to that since it is a very personal story told by a Native American woman who was a part of AIM and who gave birth to her first child under fire at the siege at Wounded Knee in 1973. But the story of how her personal strength was forged and tested begins prior to that when she leaves her one-room cabin on the reservation as a child for missionary school, which then sends her on a downward spiral from which it took hard years to recover. Some feelings are shared by women across the boundaries of race and time.

This is one of the best books available to people interested in contemporary Native Americans. Mary Brave Bird's life story sheds light on traditions of her Lakota (Sioux) people from the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota. She shows, in a very clear way, their tortured history with the missionaries, state bureaucracy, the courts, the FBI and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). We see to what extent the government has succeeded in destroying the old life and how small groups of the Sioux managed to preserve traditional ways and ceremonies. The book is written in a way which preserves the unique appreciation Indians have for unadulterated truth - a style which is simple, direct and in which personal experiences are recounted in a frank, almost brutally dispassionate manner. It reveals perfectly the heartless school system ran by abusive Catholic priests and nuns trying hard to deprive young people of their traditions (don't these people have better things to do?); we see the corrupt BIA system designed to prevent cultural and economic emancipation of the Native American "traditionals" (and steal federal money) and the pointless fear that the FBI has of organized Indian movements. Above all, we see the violence that the Sioux face daily from the white South Dakotans as well as the inter-Sioux violence caused by the hopelessness of the life on the rez. I was especially amazed to see that South Dakota has preserved, at the least up to early 1980ies, the barbaric attitudes towards the Native Americans (who are, after all, the original inhabitants, and who were cheated out of their own land by the very same whites who persecute them) which have by and large disappeared from the rest of the civilized world. This includes (unpunished) assaults by drunken lumberjacks and ranchers, systematic discrimination in the courtroom, forced sterilizations at the provincial hospitals (Mary's own sister Barbara was sterilized against her own will) and a system designed to eliminate all of the Indians' most courageous and spiritually conscious young people. A system that would make Uncle Mao proud, but which made this reader very sad, ashamed and angry. I suspect many of these things are still going on in our name. I mean, why can't these people leave the Indians in peace, allow them to practice their religion and (is this too much to ask for?) respect their desire to be different?There are also many wonderful things in this book. The descriptions of relationships between Lakota men and women, between the young and the old, between the full and half-bloods and between the host and the guest are simply priceless. Likewise Brave Bird's descriptions of peyote meetings, Sundances and Ghostdance revivals. Mary has very strong opinions about the Sioux male machismo and the reluctance exhibited by many Sioux men to providing a comfortable and loving home for their families yet she understands that this is the inevitable consequence of the systematic dest

This is a book you may have a very hard time putting down. It is a dramatic autobiography of a life full of struggle, oppression, action and empowerment. This book is intense and a must read. The challenges and experiences of Native Americans during the peak of the American Indian Movement in the 1970's is highlighted here. You get it first hand from the personal experience of an amazing woman. She was in the middle of it all standing up for the rights of her people and supporting the others around her who were fighting like hell for justice and their rights. This book sparks a lot of tears and anger, as well as much laughter. You will find history of the American Indian Movement and the siege at Wounded Knee, as well as a great story and much more here written in an easy to read, personal manner. It's as if you were sitting across from her at the kitchen table listening to her tell the tales of her life. It reads like a magnetic, fiction novel while educating like a history book. Highly recommended!!

From the second page I was hooked! Mary Crow Dog writes like a person would speak and the result is an open, honest account of her life, growing up a Lakota Woman. She speaks of the events she experienced and the poverty she grew up in without self-pity. She shares a wisdom that only she could have, gleaned from her life, in each of it's stages as a child, a revolutionary, a mother and a wife to a powerful medicine man. She depicts the life of the Sioux woman in a simple way explaining the importance of their role. This was such an interesting book! I especially enjoyed reading the details of the Sun Dances in the book. That is a religious ritual that really intrigues me and I relished every detail.