"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.