53 pages • 1 hour read
Mary Crow DogLakota Woman
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Crying for a Dream”
At “the heart” of AIM is the rebellion against Christianization and the return to “ancient beliefs” (93). It inspires Crow Dog to reconnect with her more traditional relatives like her grand-uncle Dick Fool Bull, who takes her to her first peyote meeting. She feels the drumbeat deep in her heart and hears “long-dead relatives talking to [her]” (96). Her mother, who raised her Catholic, isn’t happy that she’s taking this path.
Leonard Crow Dog, the author’s husband, is a peyote priest who “looks upon all ancient Indian religions as different aspects of one great overall power” (98). Visions are central to all Native American religions, though the manner by which they receive visions differs.
White people visit Leonard to ask for peyote; they use this sacred herb as a recreational drug. Already it “has been hit by inflation” (100), sold to the people by dealers at high prices.
Peyote unifies tribes, making them forget the competition between them. It helps Crow Dog “see the royalness of [her] people” (100). When a person has a song with no words, peyote helps “put words into your song” (101). Though members of different tribes don’t speak the same language, “through peyote we speak one tongue, spiritually” (102). Peyote was illegal in some states until recently; years ago, Leonard’s own family was driven from the reservation for it.
Crow Dog goes with Leonard to visit southern tribes and notices “that they had an inner strength that we Plains people lacked” (105). Crow Dog states that the Pueblos were able to maintain their traditions without confrontation. Though they still must defend their land against developers, Crow Dog is “a little jealous” of “the great role women played in Pueblo society” (106).
Because Leonard is a priest, they have papers allowing them to harvest peyote in Texas and Mexico. Though it’s a difficult task, Crow Dog appreciates that “[they] had to work for it,” rather than buying it from a dealer “like aspirin or cough drops” (108). On her first harvest, the property owner inquires what they’re doing, then kindly welcomes them after they explain. Crow Dog speculates that being surrounded by so much medicine had “sensitized” him (109).
Chapter 8 Summary: “Cankpe Opi Wakpala”
Crow Dog admits that, living in New York with white friends while her husband is imprisoned in Pennsylvania, she “developed a certain taste” for “a life which white Americans consider ‘normal’” (112). She enjoys window-shopping, eating Szechuan food, and buying beads that are overpriced in the reservation trading posts.
She writes that “radical” and “revolutionary” are terms created by white people to describe those who simply want to live on their own terms, “to be left alone” (111). She becomes “militant” (113) out of necessity.
In 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act imposed constitutions and governments on the tribes, deposing “the old, traditional form of Indian self-government” (113). The “full-blood traditionals” refused to take part in elections, which meant those elected were “a small minority of half-breed Uncle Tomahawks” (114) who, with their nepotism and corruption, did not represent the people. One of the worst examples is Richard “Dicky” Wilson, tribal president at Pine Ridge, the neighboring reservation. He extorts tribal money, tampers with votes, and enacts violent revenge on those who criticize him. OSCRO, the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization, is created in response.
In February of 1973, AIM demonstrates in Rapid City, the “most racist town in the United States” (116). Eight months pregnant, Crow Dog participates in a violent protest; shortly after, they go to Custer to attend the trial of a white man who’d murdered a Sioux man, Wesley Bad Heart Bull. At the news the killer would be charged with manslaughter, they protest; it soon turns to a riot. Police use tear gas and fire hoses to keep AIM protestors away, and the Sioux set fire to the Chamber of Commerce building. A Pine Ridge Sioux named Russell Means is forbidden to go to the reservation to speak; when he defies orders, he’s beaten by Wilson’s men. Ultimately, Wesley Bad Heart Bull’s murderer is acquitted.
AIM is called by OSCRO to help stop the killings sanctioned by Wilson. They’re met by the FBI and armored cars. After some discussion, AIM members decide to go to Wounded Knee, the scene of a massacre many years before. Filled with a sense of purpose, they wait with only twenty-six firearms, knowing they can’t win against government forces. Rather, they intend to relay the message, “Come and discuss our demands or kill us!” (127).
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Siege”
The siege at Wounded Knee lasts seventy-one days and takes place mainly at the Gildersleeve Trading Post, a “tourist attraction” that “exploit[ed] the site of our greatest tragedy” (129). The Native Americans, also occupying a church, the museum (which becomes the security office), and a white man’s home (which becomes the hospital), organize their tasks and chores.
Gunfire exchange is common. Supplies begin to dwindle, and the men offer Crow Dog, nearly ready to give birth, food from their rations and protection from the gunfire. The landscape offers many hiding places, and the police “were never able to seal us off completely” (134). Many people from different tribes come to join them, often bringing food.
Finally, security around them is tightened, their phone lines are cut, more serious weaponry is brought in, and the press is forced out. They are at a vast disadvantage, with far less ammunition than the government. However, they “always had the moral edge”—“the feds” seemed “nervous and trigger-happy” (137), and they were frightened of the powwows.
During the siege, women and girls fight alongside the men. Crow Dog becomes friendly with Annie Mae Aquash, who chastises “media conscious” (138) city women.
The government had overturned the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which established the Sioux as an independent nation. In March of 1973, “Wounded Knee declared itself a sovereign territory of the independent Oglala Nation,” and “[a]nybody of goodwill, Indian or white, could become a citizen” (140). Leonard, their spiritual leader, says that they don’t “want to fight the white man, but only the white man’s system” (140).
Two air-drops deliver food to the Native Americans. During the second air-drop, a sniper opens fire while people are transporting the food inside. A Cherokee named Frank Clearwater is injured. A cease-fire is granted, but some men and nurses, waving a white flag, are shot at as they attempt to reach him. After negotiations, Clearwater is helicoptered to Rapid City, where he passes away. A Sioux man named Buddy Lamont is also shot and killed; again, nurses are shot at as they attempt to save him. In both cases, the killed man’s family members are arrested.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
Crow Dog contrasts Native Americans’ religious tolerance with white people’s racism. For example, Leonard Crow Dog argues in court that a white man who had participated in a peyote ceremony had not broken the law, for “[f]reedom of religion doesn’t stop at the door of a peyote tipi” (107). Similarly, when Wounded Knee declares its independence, “[a]nybody of goodwill, Indian or white, could become a citizen” (140). The Native Americans, according to Leonard, “don’t want to fight the white man, but only the white man’s systems” (140). On the other hand, “all Indian rituals were outlawed as standing in the way of ‘whitemanizing’ the native peoples” (104).Whereas the Native Americans simply want “to be left alone, to live our lives as we see fit” (111), white men seek to overpower, dilute, and exploit Native American communities; for example, they exploit peyote, the “‘hot line’ to the Great Spirit” (103), by collecting it and selling it back to Native Americans at exorbitant prices. They also cheapen the sacred herb by using it as any other drug.
In fact, white people’s interference is harmful even when intentions are good: the much-hated boarding schools were the brainchild of the “do-gooders” (30), and the elected tribal councils only introduce corruption to the reservations. Crow Dog writes that “[c]ontrary to what some white people believe” (87), Native Americans can effectively self-govern. The assumption that Native Americans are in need of “all-wise white benefactors” (113) is therefore not only erroneous but also insulting.
After years of suppressing her heritage, Crow Dog finds comfort and purpose in peyote ceremonies, into which she is initiated by Grandpa Fool Bull. In these ceremonies, she is connected not only to “long-dead relatives” (96) but also to nature: when a song exists, one too deep for human words, peyote “put[s] words into your song” (101). In this way, it offers the answers she’d been seeking, in literal and figurative ways. There is humility in this belief, a sense of being a small part of a greater, mysterious universe. It’s something she doesn’t find in the customs of white people, who seem to use nature as the means to a mercenary end.
Crow Dog recognizes moments of humor in these struggles. She tells the story of their drive home from Mexico, during which she eats the peyote at the border crossing, rather than risk arrest; she learns they would have been allowed through anyway, but in the meantime, the resulting high “felt so nice!” (110). During Wounded Knee, some of the men bury empty containers, tricking the government agents into thinking they’re planting mines. These incidents are human and relatable, enabling readers not only to feel closer to Crow Dog but also to put themselves in her shoes and reinforce one of the central messages of her story, which is that we are all one human family despite our superficial differences.
