"Lakota Woman" by Mary Crow Dog

"Lakota Woman," the autobiography of Mary Crow Dog, was published in 1990. She now goes by the name of Mary Brave Bird. I would provide a link to help you get more information about her, but there are so many web sites that result in a search on her name, I'll leave it to you to wander on your own.

This book found me on a table of free books being given away in the Psychology Building at UConn at Storrs last week. I am so glad it did. This author has completely won my heart.

Mary's story in this book traces her involvement in Native Americans' civil rights movement in the 1970's. She lived on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota.

I find I have been stupid all my life, or more so than I originally thought. She reveals the racism of the American people in all of its ugly and violent manifestations. In her story, the reader grows along with her as she sheds off an ambivalent, nomadic, and wild youth and finds purpose in asserting a gentle strength in the AIM, American Indian Movement. The gentle strength was something she was not aware of possessing. Her marriage to the medicine man Leonard Crow Dog brought both joys and sorrows, as they endured together his incarceration for, I think, two years, as a political prisoner. She is frank in her discussion of her perceived shortcomings yet she steadily progresses on a journey of physical, emotional, and spiritual maturity.

Mary wrote extensively in this book about Native American Spirituality, a counterpoint to every misconception, misrepresentation, and basic falsehood that has been part of American culture in my own lifetime and for a long time before that.

Thanks to Mary and her autobiography, I think I will listen more closely to this universe, consider greater possibilities, and celebrate my ancestors more as well as, and perhaps especially, hers.

Most important, though, is that injustice is still here today. I don't think we will ever shake it off.

Thank you Mary Brave Bird for telling your story.

MJ

My relationship with the Waterbury Republican American newspaper is dysfunctional and based purely on morbid fascination. Its marketing department is clearly oblivious to the fact that the only reason I subscribe is for the Obituaries. The index (list of newly dead) had, at one time, been conveniently placed on the bottom of Page One of the Local section, which could be easily thumbed. It is now relegated to inside the bottom of Page Two of the Local section, necessitating greater dexterity and determination and risking distraction.

So, yes, morbid fascination: the inside back of the front section, the Editorial Page. Please forgive me.

On those pages award winning writer Tracey O’Shaughnessey smirks out smilingly at us, Thesaurus in hand, to mow us down with a rocket launcher when a squirt gun would do.

Most recently she imperiously chided readers grieving the death of Michael Jackson. Her sentiments have been echoed by letter writers since. To be fair, it was the media frenzy over MJ’s death and particularly coverage of the public memorial that had her head bobbling. Even so, she is securely entrenched in the media faction herself and, as an editorialist, should remember this.

First, I would like to state the obvious, however elusively simplistic it may seem: you may turn The Media off. Second, I would like to weigh in on MJ myself.

In the 1970’s when my age was still in the single digits until mid-decade, we were one of the last families I knew to get a TV. Then, we only received channels 3, 8, and 20, depending on the weather. Furthermore, it mostly got Lawrence Welk, whereupon I preferred to be outdoors on my bike.

Michael Jackson’s star reached its zenith in the 1980’s. Sometime in that decade my father had gone nuts and bought a Curtis Mathis colored television set and we had cable TV. My only devotion to the Curtis Mathis was for the purpose of following Pittsburgh Steelers football. Otherwise, I was impervious to its charms. I had a horse to beguile me outdoors and to transport me body, mind, and spirit, to greater realms.

Thus it is only lately that I view those music videos on You Tube with any great attention. If you missed the ’80’s or somehow forgot, music videos mostly consisted of watching a film of the singer singing and the band playing. Michael Jackson’s videos tell stories.

His kinesthetic brilliance is the thing that bedazzles me. My mother has been dead now since 1989 and my father since 1995. I still think about each of them daily. My mother was a ballet dancer and the ironic thing is that I staunchly refused to take up ballet as a young person and am now drawn to it, or perhaps, to her, through it. I have developed an appreciation for her funky artistic genius as expressed with her body. And I wonder, did she ever view “Thriller” or “Beat It?” Did she behold The Moonwalk?

MJ was so attuned to his ability to communicate through dance and music, every inch of his body was used with precision. I love the attitude of the head and heck, the facial expressions, the fluidity of the shoulders, the disconnect through the hips, and oh! the footwork! Then the lineup of dancers equally precise, attitudinal

, and expressive.

My mother would have related to the development of the choreography, the selection and making of costumes, the set, the story. Watching those videos evokes my mother for me.

How dare anyone opine on how another should grieve, or react to loss or tragedy! The Media was the undoing of MJ, Princess Diana, and so many. I think these people who write editorials and letters are really bemoaning what The Media has UNdone, like me. But they question our fascination with celebrities while we miss the casualty count in the Iraq War. Shame on me for missing the casualty count, for sure, but MJ has helped me unwrap some of the sweet mystery of my mother’s beautiful art and passion.