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Title: Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog, Richard Erdoes, Mary Brave Bird ISBN: 0-8021-1101-7 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: May, 1990 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (25 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: utterly fascinating
Comment: This is one of the best books available to people interested in contemporary Native Americans. Mary Brave Bird's life story sheds light on traditions of her Lakota (Sioux) people from the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota. She shows, in a very clear way, their tortured history with the missionaries, state bureaucracy, the courts, the FBI and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). We see to what extent the government has succeeded in destroying the old life and how small groups of the Sioux managed to preserve traditional ways and ceremonies.
The book is written in a way which preserves the unique appreciation Indians have for unadulterated truth - a style which is simple, direct and in which personal experiences are recounted in a frank, almost brutally dispassionate manner. It reveals perfectly the heartless school system ran by abusive Catholic priests and nuns trying hard to deprive young people of their traditions (don't these people have better things to do?); we see the corrupt BIA system designed to prevent cultural and economic emancipation of the Native American "traditionals" (and steal federal money) and the pointless fear that the FBI has of organized Indian movements. Above all, we see the violence that the Sioux face daily from the white South Dakotans as well as the inter-Sioux violence caused by the hopelessness of the life on the rez. I was especially amazed to see that South Dakota has preserved, at the least up to early 1980ies, the barbaric attitudes towards the Native Americans (who are, after all, the original inhabitants, and who were cheated out of their own land by the very same whites who persecute them) which have by and large disappeared from the rest of the civilized world. This includes (unpunished) assaults by drunken lumberjacks and ranchers, systematic discrimination in the courtroom, forced sterilizations at the provincial hospitals (Mary's own sister Barbara was sterilized against her own will) and a system designed to eliminate all of the Indians' most courageous and spiritually conscious young people. A system that would make Uncle Mao proud, but which made this reader very sad, ashamed and angry. I suspect many of these things are still going on in our name. I mean, why can't these people leave the Indians in peace, allow them to practice their religion and (is this too much to ask for?) respect their desire to be different?
There are also many wonderful things in this book. The descriptions of relationships between Lakota men and women, between the young and the old, between the full and half-bloods and between the host and the guest are simply priceless. Likewise Brave Bird's descriptions of peyote meetings, Sundances and Ghostdance revivals. Mary has very strong opinions about the Sioux male machismo and the reluctance exhibited by many Sioux men to providing a comfortable and loving home for their families yet she understands that this is the inevitable consequence of the systematic destruction of the old ways of tribal life. After having read the book I can see the challenges facing the indomitable Sioux nation, the challenge of preserving and honoring the old ways while educating a new elite familiar with the white system (without considering them to be sellouts); only when they gain political representation and economic self-sufficiency will Native Americans be able to keep at bay the greedy timber, mining and ranching industries whose interest is to keep the tribes divided and the people dispirited and lost in alcohol. The Lakota of today need to find a way to create loving conditions for their children. And they need to speak their truth, as often as they can, just as Mary Brave Bird has done in this amazing book.
Rating: 4
Summary: A breathtaking autobiography..............
Comment: A breathtaking autobiography by Mary Crow Dog. This autobiography dipicts the life of an Native American in South Dakota in the seventies you see this through the eyes of a young girl from childhood to adulthood. Mary tells it how it was and spares no detail which makes this book very powerful. You see the racism that the Native Americans had to go through and also their struggles against society to gain freedom. This book is a must read for anybody who's interested in Native American Culture and the struggle they had to go through to be considered equal to whites.
Rating: 5
Summary: deep, honest, and REAL...
Comment: I was so deeply touched I cried so many times. Native American issues/people are often overlooked. I could not believe the painful lack she had to endure. I am Saved in Christ and I had to stop and pray for the native american peoples so many times... I know how deep it hurts to be extremely poor and struggle in the city but the kind of poverty that exists on many reservations is brutal and heartbreaking and jus keeps the cycle of alcoholism going. The native community in america has been so ::sheisted:: it's not even funny. It's sick. The whole world is sick. Jus really... so sick...
I loved this book.
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Title: Ohitika Woman by B. Brave ISBN: 0060975830 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 14 September, 1994 List Price(USD): $13.50 |
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Title: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Alexander Brown ISBN: 0805066691 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Prison Writings : My Life Is My Sundance by Leonard Peltier, Harvey Arden, Ramsey Clark, Chief Arvol Looking Horse ISBN: 0312263805 Publisher: Griffin Trade Paperback Pub. Date: 16 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Crow Dog : Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men by Leonard C. Dog ISBN: 0060926821 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 28 February, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means by Russell Means, Marvin J. Wolf ISBN: 0312147619 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: January, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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