Lakota Woman

“[T]he Supreme Court had ordered him to be freed because […] it was no crime for one Indian to kill another.”

When the original Crow Dog kills Spotted Tail, he is sent home, not executed. Though the story is an example of his grit and courage—according to legend, he complained to his lawyer that he’d traveled over a hundred miles for nothing—the underlying message is that Native Americans are seen as less than human. They are not protected by law; the courts do not care whether they harm each other. In fact, the American Indian Movement begins gaining traction in response to unpunished murders of Native American men by white men. Later, Leonard is arrested when his nephew breaks a white man’s wrist on his land; Crow Dog writes that in contrast, “[o]ver a hundred [Native American] people had been murdered and not a tenth of these cases was ever looked into” (218). Even the forced sterilizations of Crow Dog’s mother, sister, and many others suggest that Native Americans are seen not as humans but as “lice” (9)—indistinguishable pests to be exterminated.

“The close-knit clan, set in its old ways, was a stumbling block in the path of the missionary and government agent, its traditions and customs a barrier to what the white man called ‘progress’ and ‘civilization.’”

The tiyospaye, “the extended family group,” is “like a warm womb cradling all within it.” It is “destroyed” by white people “as a matter of policy” (13) and replaced with the nuclear family. Whereas in the tiyospaye, kids are loved and cared for by many mothers and fathers, the nuclear family lives on “their individually owned allotment of land” and promotes “wholesome selfishness” (13). While this change is made for progress and civilization, the implicit question is how “progress” is defined. In “civilizing” the Sioux, white people don’t improve their lives but rather deprive them of the traditions that sustain them. 

“The men had nothing to live for, so they got drunk and drove off at ninety miles an hour in a car without lights, without brakes, and without destination, to die a warrior’s death.”

Forced onto reservations, told by “white missionaries, teachers, and employers” that their “traditional wisdom” is “merely savage superstition,” Sioux men feel directionless. These men “were famous warriors and hunters once, but the buffalo is gone” (5) and the only place left to fight is in bars. In this quotation, Crow Dog muses that without an outlet or a purpose, “[t]he men were psychologically crippled” (15). They seek relief from their pain any way they can—in alcohol, in adrenaline, and in death. 

“A flush toilet to a white social worker is more important than a good grandmother.”

Sioux children are often removed from their parents’ or grandparents’ care and placed with white foster families because social workers deem the relatives’ homes “substandard” or “too poor” (16). In this statement, Crow Dog laments the prioritizing of the material. Her criticism is made more poignant at the end of the chapter when she comments that “[w]e kids did not suffer from being poor, because we were not aware of it” (26). Furthermore, she writes that she liked her food and her shack; she “had food, love, a place to sleep, and a warm, potbellied, wood-fed stove to sit near in the winter.” She loved her grandparents and “needed nothing more” (27). Social workers rip Sioux children from their happy lives, perhaps alleviating their poverty but replacing it with a poverty of heart.

“She gave me love and a good home, but if I wanted to be an Indian I had to go elsewhere to learn how to become one.”

Crow Dog’s grandmother doesn’t allow Crow Dog to learn the Sioux language; she believes that a white, Christian lifestyle is “the key which would magically unlock the door leading to a good life” (23). Crow Dog, however, is skeptical that she could ever truly lead a white woman’s life when her Sioux appearance makes her a target for discrimination. Moreover, denying her heritage leads to her feeling lost and without identity. This sense of not belonging will follow Crow Dog for many years, seeming to culminate in Leonard’s family’s disapproval of their marriage. Crow Dog writes that her “aimlessness ended when I encountered AIM” (72). Her reconnection with her heritage inspires her to go to her “full-blood” traditional relatives, such as her grand-uncle Dick Fool Bull, to learn of Sioux history and traditions.

“Even now, in a good school, there is impersonality instead of close human contact; a sterile, cold atmosphere, an unfamiliar routine, language problems, and above all the maza-skan-skan, that damn clock—white man’s time as opposed to Indian time, which is natural time. Like eating when you are hungry and sleeping when you are tired, not when that damn clock says you must.” 

The clock is one way in which “civilization” is unnatural and impractical. Like separating children from their families so they can have clean toilets, adhering to “white man’s time” is “progress” only in name. Crow Dog writes, “Our sound is the sound of nature and animals, not the notes of a white man’s scale” (202); she yearns for a time when “nature was our people’s only school” (30). The sterile boarding school, like so many other constructs delivered to them by white people, moves children further from nature and from what matters.

“People talk about the 'Indian drinking problem,' but we say that it is a white problem. White men invented whiskey and brought it to America. They manufacture, advertise, and sell it to us. They make the profit on it and cause the conditions that make Indians drink in the first place.” 

The Sioux have had their land, their traditions, and their dignity stolen from them. They are without both job skills and jobs. Jobs outside the reservation often are not given to Native Americans. The result is that many live in extreme poverty and drink to escape or to forget—“[t]here was nothing for the men to do in those days but hit the bottle” (15). Crow Dog writes that she wouldn’t have minded “dignified, uninterfered-with poverty” as opposed to the “drunken, degrading, and humiliating poverty we had to endure” (111-12). The problem is exacerbated by the prevalence of “the whiskey peddlers,” who disrupt the “harmonious” (30) life in the tipi circle. Systemic oppression has created poverty and enabled alcoholism, creating the “Indian drinking problem” for which the Sioux are criticized. 

“She was waiting, waiting for something, for a sign, but she did not now what she was waiting for. And like her, all the other roaming Indian kids were waiting, just as the Ghost Dancers had waited for the drumbeat, the message the eagle was to bring. I was waiting, too. In the meantime, I kept traveling.”

Crow Dog and her sister, Barb, like the Sioux men, turn to drinking and drugs to fill the void left when their heritage is suppressed. This quotation reiterates that drug and alcohol abuse on the reservations tends to be the result of the people’s lack of direction; they hope their visions will impart to them a message of purpose. Crow Dog writes, “It took me a while to see the emptiness underneath all this frenzied wandering” (58). Like the Ghost Dancers, she waits for a message that will connect her with her purpose. However, unlike the Ghost Dancers, she does not receive it.

“[R]ipping off gave us a great deal of satisfaction, moral satisfaction. We were meting out justice in reverse. We had always been stolen from by white shopkeepers and government agents.”

With their people forced onto reservations and robbed of everything important to them, Crow Dog and her friends reclaim power by stealing. In a world in which they are racially profiled, in which murders of Native American men go unpunished, stealing is a small act that makes the world feel a little less unjust. Their taking control when they know they won’t receive justice otherwise foreshadows the takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, during which they are forced to take drastic action when their concerns are ignored.

“[T]he mere fact of being Indian and dressing in a certain way provoked the attention of the police. It resulted in having one’s car stopped for no particular reason, in being pulled off the street on the flimsiest excuse, in being constantly shadowed and harassed. It works subtly on your mind until you start to think that if they keep on arresting you anyway you should at least give them a good reason for it.” 

Much of Lakota Woman explores how the Sioux have had no choice but to be aggressive in reclaiming their rights, even to the point of committing crimes. In this quotation, Crow Dog explains that the eventual result of racial profiling is that “even the most honest, law-abiding person will experience a mighty urge to pocket some article or other right under their noses” (62). Like alcoholism, it’s an example of how white peoples’ unjust treatment of the Sioux in fact creates the very problems they criticize in the Sioux to begin with.

“[O]ur men were magnificent and mean at the same time. You had to admire them. They had to fight their own men’s lib battles. They were incredibly brave in protecting us, they would literally die for us, and they always stood up for our rights—against outsiders!”

In this quotation, Crow Dog sardonically calls out Sioux men for defending Sioux women against sexual harassment by white men while simultaneously treating them as nothing more than sexual objects “to crawl into the sack with them” (5). Throughout Lakota Woman, Crow Dog describes the men’s sexual aggression. She frequently writes of the hypocrisy and sexism in her own tribe, noting that Sioux men “honor” their women merely for “being good readers, quilters, tanners, moccasin makers, and child-bearers” (66). Later, she writes that after spending a year associating with feminists in New York City, she is more aware, and intolerant, of Sioux sexism. However, like many of the challenges the Sioux face, the mistreatment of women is arguably a problem that’s been exacerbated by white oppression. In Chapter 1, Crow Dog observes that many men vent their frustration by beating their wives. She writes that she “know[s] where they are coming from” and that she feels sorry for them—but “even sorrier for the women” (5).

“It was flint striking flint, lighting a spark which grew into a flame at which we could warm ourselves after a long, long winter.” 

The American Indian Movement is the outlet Crow Dog and other Native Americans have been searching for. The joining of the “traditional reservation Indians and the ghetto Indians” (76)—two different groups who learn from each other and are stronger together—is the perfect combination to start a movement that feels freeing and purposeful to those who have been searching.

“Jesus would have been all right except that I felt he had been coopted by white American society to serve its purpose. The men who had brought whiskey and the smallpox had come with the cross in one hand and the gun in the other.” 

This quotation reiterates that white people oppress the Native Americans under the guise of “progress” and “civilization”; they “whitemanize” them not for Native Americans’ own good but rather to “turn them into useful farmhands, laborers, and chambermaids who will break their backs for you at low wages” (30). Crow Dog also distinguishes between Jesus himself and the exploitation of Jesus to serve white peoples’ greed and corruption. In this way, she demonstrates the religious tolerance she later recognizes in Leonard, emphasizing how, in fact, the Native Americans are more progressive in their thinking.

“I understood the reality contained in this medicine, understood that this herb was our heritage, our tradition, that it spoke our language. I became part of the earth because peyote comes from the earth, even tastes like earth sometimes. And so the earth was in me and I in it, Indian earth making me more Indian.”

Like many Native Americans “under the pact of AIM and other movements” (93), Crow Dog is inspired to seek out older, traditional relatives who can teach her about the ancient ways. Each tradition or ceremony is important in its own way. Peyote brings Crow Dog closer to nature and to herself; during peyote ceremonies, she “heard [her] long-dead relatives talking to [her]” and “felt the drumbeat in [her] heart” (96). Later, after his release from prison, Leonard also seeks to be closer to the earth by embarking on a vision quest, in which he literally envelops himself in the earth.

“Peyote has been hit by inflation. It has been subjected to the rule of supply and demand, and selling it has become a business—can you imagine, an herb which grows wild in abundance, which nature has put on this earth for the use of native peoples since the beginning of time.”

The inflation of peyote is yet one more example of white peoples’ exploitation of the natural and the sacred for their own material wealth. While the Sioux celebrate and respect nature, following nature’s time and performing ceremonies that remind them of the universe’s grandeur, white people divvy it up and claim it as a possession. By asking her readers if we can imagine it, Crow Dog reinforces the absurdity, even the haughtiness, of white peoples’ domination of nature.

“I do not consider myself a radical or a revolutionary. It is white people who put such labels on us. All we ever wanted was to be left alone, to live our lives as we see fit. To govern ourselves in reality and not just on paper. To have our rights respected. If that is revolutionary, then I sure fit that description.” 

Crow Dog draws attention to the absurdity of calling the seeking of basic human rights “revolutionary.” To white people, the taking back of rights may feel radical, but to Native Americans, it is merely life.

“Sometimes I think that the do-gooders do us more harm than the General Custer types.” 

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 imposed constitutions on the tribes, replacing their systems of self-government. Crow Dog writes that it is likely that the people who handed to the Native Americans “the blessings of democracy” (113) meant well. However, their intentions do not negate the disastrous effects. Similarly, “the do-gooders, the white Indian-lovers,” created the “unspeakable boarding schools” in order to solve “the Indian problem” (30). Crow Dog reiterates that those who seek to “civilize” the Native Americans tend not to understand that they are not in need of help—and as introducing the ways of “white benefactors” (113) invariably leaves the Native Americans worse off than they were before, the question, again, is, who is more civilized?

“Anybody of goodwill, Indian or white, could become a citizen.”

When Wounded Knee declares itself a sovereign territory, Leonard states, “We don’t want to fight the white man, but only the white man’s system” (140). Leonard makes a similar statement during a trial revolving around the use of peyote by a group of Navajos and a white sheriff, arguing that “even a white man has the right to participate” (107). This religious tolerance contrasts with the discrimination Native Americans suffer at the hands of white people.

“In that ravine, at Cankpe Opi, we gathered up the broken pieces of the sacred hoop and put them together again. All who were at Wounded Knee, Buddy Lamont, Clearwater, and our medicine men, we mend the nation’s hoop. The sacred tree is not dead!” 

At Wounded Knee, Leonard leads the people in the Ghost Dance, last performed decades earlier, before the Wounded Knee massacre. The Ghost Dance religion itself seeks to reconnect with ancestors who died for who they were; during the Ghost Dance, one dies and is reborn. It’s for these reasons that the Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee has so much meaning. The hoop has been mended because the people have revived their dead, their religion, and their hope.

“What Kangi-Shunka did so long ago still colors the life-style and the actions of the Crow Dogs of today and of their relations, of the whole clan—the tiyospaye, which means ‘those who live together.’ Sioux and elephants never forget.” 

Crow Dog is not immediately accepted into Leonard’s family because she’s a “half-blood” who doesn’t speak the Sioux language. As time goes on, she realizes that “the Crow Dogs are a tribe apart” (177), partly because of their reverence of their ancestor Kangi-Shunka, the first Crow Dog, who is famous for having killed Spotted Tail, the chief who “cooperated with the whites in most things” (181). Kangi-Shunka also was one of the first Ghost Dancers. Staunch, courageous devotion to their heritage is therefore very much a part of the Crow Dogs’ history and identity. 

“In a strange way I feel that she died so that I, and many others, could survive. That she died because she had made a secret vow, like a Sun Dancer who, obedient to his vow, pierces his flesh and undergoes the pain for all the people so that the people may live.”

These lines reference Annie Mae Aquash and how she died fighting for Native American rights. Crow Dog often describes physical sacrifice and its relationship to their people as a whole. In Chapter 16, she offers several examples of “self-torture” (258) the Sun Dancers willingly suffer. She herself makes a flesh offering “for those suffering in jail, for friends who are sick” (258), just as others “had somehow died for me” (258). Even in the Ghost Dance, participants “die” and are reborn. By casting her friend Annie Mae as a Sun Dancer, Crow Dog includes her in a long and cherished line of heroes who have paved the way for others’ freedom.

“To them my husband was more dangerous than Peltier because moral power is always more dangerous to an oppressor than political force.” 

Leonard Crow Dog is considered a threat because he does more than fight; he is a spiritual leader who binds the people to their heritage, reminding them of their strength and their humanity. The first time Mary Crow Dog sees him, he gives a speech about dying for his people; afterward, an old man says, “These are the words I always wanted to speak, but had kept shut up within me” 

Crow Dog helps awaken in the people not only the will to press for freedom but also the moral confidence that they have the right to do it. Later, Crow Dog writes that lawyer Bill Kunstler once said that “you hate the people most who make the most justifiable demands,” that “[w]e know they are right, and therefore we have to destroy them if we can” (241). Leonard, with his revival of the Ghost Dance and his patient endurance of prison torments, reminds not only Native Americans but also the government of the great injustice the Native Americans are suffering.

“You feel nothing but the damp earth at your back and the bed of sage under your sitting bones, and after a day or two, you feel not even that. You feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing, taste nothing, because during a hanbleceya you do not eat or drink. It is scary to cry for a dream, to be entirely thrown upon yourself, not knowing whether you are awake or asleep, or even alive.”

Like the Sun Dance, the vision quest brings one closer to nature and to the earth, but a sacrifice is necessary. One must trust the earth and be enclosed by it, fully surrendering one’s body and mind. Leonard goes on a vision quest after he is released from prison, two years of being without the knowledge and comfort of the earth.