Lakota Woman [Hardcover]

Mary Crow Dog (Author), Richard Erdoes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1990

A unique autobiography unparalleled in American Indian literature, and a deeply moving account of a woman's triumphant struggle to survive in a hostile world.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mary Brave Bird gave birth to a son during the 71-day siege of Wounded Knee in 1973, which ended with a bloody assault by U.S. marshalls and police. Seventeen years old at the time, she married fellow activist Leonard Crow Dog, medicine man and spiritual leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Written with Erdoes ( Lame Deer ; Seeker of Visions ), her searing autobiography is courageous, impassioned, poetic and inspirational. Her girlhood, a vicious circle of drinking and fighting, was marked by poverty, racism and a rape at 14. She ran away from a coldly impersonal boarding school run by nuns where, she reports, Indian students were beaten to induce them to give up native customs and speech. The authors write of AIM's infiltration by FBI agents, of Mary Crow Dog helping her husband endure prison, of Indian males' macho attitudes. The book also describes AIM's renewal of spirituality as manifested in sweat lodges, peyote ceremonies, sacred songs and the Ghost Dance ritual. Photos.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Mary Crow Dog narrates the story of her youth in this anguished account of growing up Indian in America. After participating in AIM (the new American Indian Movement), she joined the stand-off at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where she gave birth to a [son]. Her marriage to Leonard Crow Dog, a medicine man who revived the sacred Ghost Dance, was a learning experience for her; she was assimilated into his family. Short, choppy sentences impart a sense that Mary Crow Dog is speaking directly to readers, and her story is startling in its intensity of feeling and its directness about the Indians' reliance on their heritage and religion. A unique account of a way of life unknown to most Americans, this pulls readers in and holds them. By no means a pretty account--the author is graphic in her accounts of drunkenness, lawlessness, killings, and drug use--the book is an important bridge to cultural understanding, and a volume that should be in every library. --Dorothy L. Addison, Woodlawn School, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 263 pages
• Publisher: Grove Pr; 1st edition (May 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802111017
• ISBN-13: 978-0802111012
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #941,709 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars utterly fascinating, January 27, 2003

By 

kaioatey (Awatovi, AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lakota Woman (Paperback)

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 destruction of the old ways of tribal life. After having read the book I can see the challenges facing the indomitable Sioux nation, the challenge of preserving and honoring the old ways while educating a new elite familiar with the white system (without considering them to be sellouts); only when they gain political representation and economic self-sufficiency will Native Americans be able to keep at bay the greedy timber, mining and ranching industries whose interest is to keep the tribes divided and the people dispirited and lost in alcohol. The Lakota of today need to find a way to create loving conditions for their children. And they need to speak their truth, as often as they can, just as Mary Brave Bird has done in this amazing book.

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Growing Up Indian and Rediscovering Her People, January 23, 2000

By 

Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lakota Woman (Paperback)

In this 1990 autobiography Mary Crow Dog relates her life growing up on a Sioux reservation and her involvement with the American Indian Movement during the 1970s. There is another writer's name, Richard Erdoes, next to hers on the cover which makes me assume that she did not write this herself. Perhaps that accounts for the style, which is overly simplistic as the book seems to be targeted towards young adults.

However, I have very scant knowledge of American Indians even though they

have always fascinated me. And that is why I enjoyed this book completely. It's feels true and real and its starkness only underlines the story which, in reality, is not only Mary Crow Dog's personal story, but that of all American Indians in our country.

We are right there with her in the one room shack she was raised in with 8 other people in North Dakota, a house without electricity, plumbing or a single modern convenience. As there were no television or any connection with the outside world, she thought that everyone lived like this and had a happy childhood, warm and secure in the bosom a loving family.

And then she was sent off to boarding school run by the Jesuits. Here, the children were beaten, humiliated, punished by being sent into isolation, and forced into a mold that was foreign to them. It was the 60's then, and she rebelled, leaving school and joining forces with other Native American teenagers who drank and shoplifted and lived on the fringe of society.

Then the American Indian Movement came along and she joined, identifying with her people's struggles and learning the history. She was at the siege of the National Indian Affairs building in Washington, DC and then again at the 71-day takeover of Wounded Knee in the 1970s. It was here that she gave birth to her son while gunfire was going on around her.

Later, she married Leonard Crow Dog, the leader and medicine man. He had been brought up totally as an Indian and had never ever learned to read. She stood by him though his unlawful imprisonment, learned to make speeches at rallies, visited other tribes and totally absorbed her heritage. She bore him four children and is a spokesperson for her people. Hence this book, which I understand had been made into a TNT movie and is used as a textbook in schools.

By telling her own personal story, Mary Crow Dog gives the reader an insider's view of the racism around her, the hardships, the religious

rituals and the pride of her people. For anyone with an interest in this special area of American History, this book is extremely helpful.

Recommended

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A breathtaking autobiography.............., February 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Lakota Woman (Paperback)

A breathtaking autobiography by Mary Crow Dog. This autobiography dipicts the life of an Native American in South Dakota in the seventies you see this through the eyes of a young girl from childhood to adulthood. Mary tells it how it was and spares no detail which makes this book very powerful. You see the racism that the Native Americans had to go through and also their struggles against society to gain freedom. This book is a must read for anybody who's interested in Native American Culture and the struggle they had to go through to be considered equal to whites.