Crow Dog grapples with the tension between her love for her cultural heritage and the desire to assimilate into mainstream American society. One of the major themes of Lakota Woman is the conflict between traditional Native American values and the modern world. Through her involvement in AIM, Crow Dog became an activist and leader within the Native American community, working to improve conditions on the reservation and raise awareness about the struggles faced by Native Americans. Despite this, Crow Dog was determined to fight for her rights and the rights of her people.Īs a teenager, Crow Dog became involved in the American Indian Movement (AIM), a grassroots organization that sought to defend the rights of Native Americans and promote indigenous culture. From a young age, she was exposed to the systemic oppression and discrimination faced by Native Americans in the United States. The book chronicles Crow Dog's experiences as a Native American woman in the late 20th century, and the struggles she faced as she fought for the rights and freedoms of her people.Ĭrow Dog was born in 1953 and grew up in a traditional Lakota family, living in a small house on the reservation with her parents and siblings. (Apr.Lakota Woman is a memoir written by Mary Crow Dog, a Lakota Sioux woman who grew up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The book also describes AIM's renewal of spirituality as manifested in sweat lodges, peyote ceremonies, sacred songs and the Ghost Dance ritual.

The authors write of AIM's infiltration by FBI agents, of Mary Crow Dog helping her husband endure prison, of Indian males' macho attitudes. 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. Her girlhood, a vicious circle of drinking and fighting, was marked by poverty, racism and a rape at 14. Written with Erdoes ( Lame Deer Seeker of Visions ), her searing autobiography is courageous, impassioned, poetic and inspirational.

Seventeen years old at the time, she married fellow activist Leonard Crow Dog, medicine man and spiritual leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM). 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.

Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog