Lakota Woman Sparknotes

“If you plan to be born, make sure you are born white and male” (Crow Dog, 1990, p. 4). Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog is a passion-filled book that addresses many of the challenges faced by American Indian women between 1954 and 1990. Crow Dog, half American Indian, half white was a member of The Brule tribe, a small tribe belonging to the larger Western Sioux, who grew to be a well-known activist in the American Indian Movement (AIM). Lakota Woman covers not only significant protests and rallies such as the Trail of Broken Treaties and the Indian Occupation at Wounded Knee but also speaks to the day-to-day life of a woman of the Sioux tribe. Meritocracy, or lack thereof, extreme sexism, racism, white denial and compliance are all important themes discussed in Lakota Woman.

In September of 1954, Mary Brave Bird, later Crow Dog by marriage, was born on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. American Indians had been legally recognized as U.S citizens for thirty years and yet the United States government treated them with tremendous injustice and denied them many supposedly inalienable rights, all while still claiming that the U.S was a meritocracy. Lakota

Woman brought to light many of the irrefutably heinous acts of exploitation and discrimination towards American Indians by the hands of the U.S government. As a child, Mary was shipped off to a U.S sanctioned, Catholic boarding school that beat students who didn’t “act white enough” and gave preferential treatment to students who were from good families and looked white. As a young teenager, Mary quit school and spent her time drinking and shoplifting as a way to cope with all the injustice in her life and to gain moral satisfaction from stealing from the very people who were oppressing her. In her later teen years, she joined the American Indian Movement, a group created to help stop the extreme oppression of the American Indians. Throughout her whole life, Mary Crow Dog resisted the tumultuous pressure to act, think and look white and instead spent her time fighting the sexism and racism she saw and experienced on a daily basis. The United States government and unfortunately many white Americans spent a large period of time refusing to acknowledge the inequality that existed for American Indians. Lakota Woman does just the opposite; speaking out about all of the unfairness and persecution that many white Americans might not otherwise know about.
Born to a mother uninterested in American Indian culture and instead much more concerned with how white she appeared to others, Mary Crow Dog had a very troublesome life. By the age of ten, Mary could already drink a pint of whiskey, at fifteen she was raped and as a young adult she gave birth to her first child under gunfire. All of the discrimination and abuse she faced as a child and teen encouraged her to join the American Indian Movement and become an activist for American Indian equality. Mary Crow Dog brings an incredibly valuable, necessary perspective to the treatment of American Indians; offering a view impossible to gain from anyone other than an American Indian. Richard Erdoes, a collaborator on Lakota Woman, was a good friend of Mary Crow Dogs, and an author of over fifteen books. He grew up in Europe and eventually fled to the United States when German Nazi’s put a price on his head for circulating anti-Hitler propaganda. In 1967, Erdoes took a trip to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and was outraged at the squalor presented as equality. Erdoes wrote many books detailing Native American culture, stories and myths and became heavily involved in the movement for Native American civil rights; eventually his New York apartment became a meeting place for AIM. In the middle to late 1970s, Erdoes helped with the legal defense of many AIM members and remained an active AIM member until he died in 2008. With contributions from both Mary Crow Dog and Richard Erdoes, Lakota Woman offers a unique, much needed account of what life was truly like for American Indians living on U.S government reservations.
“It is not the big, dramatic things so much that get us down, but just being Indian, trying to hang on to our way of life, language, and values while being surrounded by an alien, more powerful culture” (Crow Dog, 1990, p. 5). Lakota Woman begins with stories of Mary Crow Dog’s friends being mysteriously killed, her family unwillingly sterilized and general abuse dispersed by the United States government. As a child, Mary lived with her grandparents and once she reached appropriate school age, she was sent off to St. Francis, a Catholic boarding school created by the U.S government to make American Indians act whiter and less Indian. At St. Francis, white nuns beat students for any behavior that was deemed not white enough. Mary got in trouble for holding hands with boys, writing a newspaper about how terrible the school was and ultimately she grew weary and quit school. After quitting school, Mary ran away from home and spent her time shoplifting and drinking and eventually joined the American Indian Movement. The key goal of AIM was to gain back the independence of American Indians, to go back to their ways of life and not be forced to assimilate to white culture. As a very young adult, Mary got pregnant during a very temporary marriage to another AIM member who left her when he found out about the pregnancy. In fall of 1972, Mary Crow Dog participated in the Trail of Broken Treaties; a cross country protest for American Indian rights that ended in Washington D.C. After arriving in D.C and finding the promised accommodations unlivable, the protestors occupied the building that housed the Bureau of Indian Affairs. What was originally supposed to be a peaceful protest turned into a violence-filled standoff when no one from the government would listen to what the activists had to say. Ultimately the conflict ended and the protestors presented the United States government with a list of twenty points to be considered and resolved. Shortly after the occupation of the BIA, Mary Crow Dog participated in the siege at Wounded Knee while she was almost nine months pregnant. The site of the 1890 massacre of over two hundred American Indians held special meaning to the members of AIM, and in late February of 1973, AIM took over the three main buildings at Wounded Knee and sent out a message to the U.S government; “Come and discuss our demands or kill us” (Crow Dog, 1990, p. 127). For seventy-one days, there was a bullet-filled standoff between AIM and the U.S Marshals. The Women of AIM played a crucial role in keeping the AIM members alive during the occupation; cooking, nursing the wounded back to health and standing on the front lines in a fire fight with U.S marshals. As Mary was almost nine months pregnant, she was encouraged to leave Wounded Knee and go home but she figured she was going to die someday anyway and wanted to at least die for something important. She spent a lot of her time at Wounded Knee helping with cooking and chores to keep everything running smoothly. On April 11th 1973, Mary Crow Dog gave birth to her first child at Wounded Knee; four days after her son Pedro was born, Mary and Pedro faced such heavy gunfire they had to drop to the ground multiple times to avoid being killed. Roughly a week before the siege ended, Mary and Pedro left Wounded Knee and Mary was promptly put in jail by the U.S government. After twenty-four hours they released her because it looked bad to hold on to a nursing mother. In 1973, shortly after Wounded Knee, Mary got married to Leonard Crow Dog, a medicine man and together they had three children on the Rosebud Reservation.
Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog is an extremely powerful book. While the book has many strengths, the overall greatest strength was the use of Crow Dog’s powerful language to paint of picture of exactly what life was like for American Indians. Throughout the entire book, Mary Crow Dog did not shy away from rightfully accusing white Americans and the U.S government for the horrendous mistreatment of her people. For a long time many white Americans and members of the United States government denied that American Indians were treated as anything less than equal and Lakota Woman boldly proved that America was everything but a meritocracy. The chapters about Wounded Knee were especially striking as Crow Dog painted a scene of constant gunfire while she birthed her first child. Through the use of powerful language, Lakota Woman is a book that’s incredibly difficult to put down even as it speaks of atrocities at the hands of our own government.
Mary Crow Dog wrote Lakota Woman beautifully, talking about the barbarity of the U.S government in a way that inspired the reader to speak out against injustice.

While Lakota Woman was an extremely compelling book, it had one flaw that sometimes made reading it difficult. The flow of Lakota Woman was rather disjointed, making it hard to follow at times. Mary Crow Dog also seemed to expect all readers to have a thorough background of American Indian rituals, language and monumental events. In an ideal world, every student would know the history of Wounded Knee and the Trail of Broken Treaties however; Western media just skims over the plight of the American Indian. Without a relatively comprehensive knowledge of American Indian history it is hard to understand some of the basic issues presented in the

book.
Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog tells provocative stories of persecution and brutality laid out by the United States government. Mary Crow Dog’s whole life was spent suffering at the hands of white America and Lakota Woman is an inspiring story of how she overcame the despair and hate to find peace. In its entirety, Lakota Woman offers an unbelievably valuable, unique perspective of the plight of American Indians. While it is an important book that everyone should read at some point in their lives, it is especially an important book for white Americans to read. For decades white America has refused to acknowledge any inequality and even now it is hard for white Americans to admit previous faults. Lakota Woman presents America with all of the injustice that occurs and practically dares white America to deny the cruelty faced by American Indians.