Lakota Woman

Mary Crow Dog describes how her first child is born during the siege of Wounded Knee, how she dodges bullets and is jailed and separated from her day-old baby. She also describes the persecution by the government of her female friends and family, stating, “It’s hard being an Indian woman” (3, 4). As an iyeska, or “half-blood,” she’s looked down on “by whites and full-bloods alike” (4). Men in Plains tribes subvert women to regain power taken from them by white society, “an alien, more powerful culture” (5). She explains that she is “a Sioux from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota”; her tribe, “Burned Thigh,” is one of the Seven Sacred Campfire tribes. These tribes of Western Sioux are “known collectively as Lakota” (5).

The Sioux were forced onto reservations in the late 1800s. Crow Dog is from a reservation in He-Dog. Her Grandpa Fool Bull remembered the terrors of the massacre of Wounded Knee. However, people from Rosebud likely didn’t take part in the battles against General Custer; Spotted Tail, the chief in those days, knew from his time in prison that Native Americans were outnumbered, and he prevented his people from leaving the reservation. Fearing retribution, people became Christian, or “whitemanized” (8).