Name: Lakota Woman
ISBN: 9780060973896

Dog Mary Crow

Relates the experiences of a native American woman who grew up on a reservation and joined in the revolution for native American rights during the 1960s and 1970s. Reprint. 50,000 first printing. Winner of the American Book Award.

Lakota Woman

Natalie Sypeck 

Edward Steel

Chandler Primak

Oh man. This book is so important and so hard to get through. I had to coax myself to just keep reading and get it over with, it was so, so jarring and so emotional. I think it should be required reading so people really learn to understand what Native Americans have gone through.

As someone who shamefully doesn't know a lot about American Indian history, I learned a lot from this book! This is written almost as a transcribed oral history piece, as each chapter seemed to have its own theme (minus the first chapter, which was all over the place) and the timeline wasn't totally linear. The book read as if she were sitting there telling stories of the things that happened in her life, as opposed to the book being crafted and organized on paper. As a result, there were many things that were mentioned in passing that were either expanded upon later, or never mentioned again. I admit I had to look up the Wounded Knee conflict when she started mentioning it (as one of those things she mentioned in passing repeatedly before telling the story about it), as I only knew of the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Because of this, the book proved to be very educational, even if things weren't explained as they are in a traditional history book.

I did find some chapters more interesting than others, and I didn't find myself compulsively reading this book, but I still think it's a very important part of history and I'd recommend it to anyone.

Richard Erdoes

Mary Crow Dog

The bestselling memoir of a Native American woman’s struggles and the life she found in activism: “courageous, impassioned, poetic and inspirational” (Publishers Weekly). Mary Brave Bird grew up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota in a one-room cabin without running water or electricity. With her white father gone, she was left to endure “half-breed” status amid the violence, machismo, and aimless drinking of life on the reservation. Rebelling against all this—as well as a punishing Catholic missionary school—she became a teenage runaway. Mary was eighteen and pregnant when the rebellion at Wounded Knee happened in 1973. Inspired to take action, she joined the American Indian Movement to fight for the rights of her people. Later, she married Leonard Crow Dog, the AIM’s chief medicine man, who revived the sacred but outlawed Ghost Dance. Originally published in 1990, Lakota Woman was a national bestseller and winner of the American Book Award. It is a story of determination against all odds, of the cruelties perpetuated against American Indians, and of the Native American struggle for rights. Working with Richard Erdoes, one of the twentieth century’s leading writers on Native American affairs, Brave Bird recounts her difficult upbringing and the path of her fascinating life.

Lakota Woman

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