Lakota Woman Sparknotes

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Recommended: Discrimination and oppression of Native Americans

“If you plan to be born, make sure you are born white and male” (Crow Dog, 1990, p. 4). Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog is a passion-filled book that addresses many of the challenges faced by American Indian women between 1954 and 1990. Crow Dog, half American Indian, half white was a member of The Brule tribe, a small tribe belonging to the larger Western Sioux, who grew to be a well-known activist in the American Indian Movement (AIM). Lakota Woman covers not only significant protests and rallies such as the Trail of Broken Treaties and the Indian Occupation at Wounded Knee but also speaks to the day-to-day life of a woman of the Sioux tribe. Meritocracy, or lack thereof, extreme sexism, racism, white denial and compliance are all important themes discussed in Lakota Woman. In September of 1954, Mary Brave Bird, later Crow Dog by marriage, was born on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. American Indians had been legally recognized as U.S citizens for thirty years and yet the United States government treated them with tremendous injustice and denied them many supposedly inalienable rights, all while still claiming that the U.S was a meritocracy. Lakota …show more content…

While Lakota Woman was an extremely compelling book, it had one flaw that sometimes made reading it difficult. The flow of Lakota Woman was rather disjointed, making it hard to follow at times. Mary Crow Dog also seemed to expect all readers to have a thorough background of American Indian rituals, language and monumental events. In an ideal world, every student would know the history of Wounded Knee and the Trail of Broken Treaties however; Western media just skims over the plight of the American Indian. Without a relatively comprehensive knowledge of American Indian history it is hard to understand some of the basic issues presented in the

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