To learn more about her heritage, Mary spoke with community elders. Because Mary’s mother and grandparents believed that Mary would be more successful if she assimilated to white society, they didn’t teach her the Lakota language, religion, or traditions. This is part of the government’s efforts to force Native Americans to assimilate. Mary counts herself lucky to have been raised by her loving grandparents-many Native American children are separated from their families by white social workers, which cuts them off from their culture. Mary was mostly raised by her grandparents, as her father, Bill Moore, left Mary’s mother when she was pregnant with Mary. Mary commends the courage and resilience of Native Americans who have fought to maintain their traditions and their rights. government and white society strip away Native Americans’ cultures and force their communities into poverty. She says that being a Native American woman is not easy, and she describes how the government sterilized her sister, Barbara, and how her friend Annie Mae Aquash was murdered. "About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.Mary Crow Dog introduces herself as Mary Brave Bird, a Lakota woman. Addison, Woodlawn School, Fairfax County, VAĬopyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. By no means a pretty account-the author is graphic in her accounts of drunkenness, lawlessness, killings, and drug use-the book is an important bridge to cultural understanding, and a volume that should be in every library. A unique account of a way of life unknown to most Americans, this pulls readers in and holds them. Short, choppy sentences impart a sense that Mary Crow Dog is speaking directly to readers, and her story is startling in its intensity of feeling and its directness about the Indians' reliance on their heritage and religion.
Her marriage to Leonard Crow Dog, a medicine man who revived the sacred Ghost Dance, was a learning experience for her she was assimilated into his family. After participating in AIM (the new American Indian Movement), she joined the stand-off at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where she gave birth to a. Mary Crow Dog narrates the story of her youth in this anguished account of growing up Indian in America.
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