Lakota Woman

Crow Dog notes that Colonel John M. Chivington, a Civil War colonel notorious for his massacre of the Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples, once instructed his soldiers to “[k]ill ‘em all, big and small, nits make lice!” (9). This casting of Native Americans as insignificant, indistinguishable vermin sets the stage for the many examples of dehumanization of Native Americans Crow Dog relates in her memoir. In the 1880s, a government agent stole government rations intended for the Sioux; when the starving Sioux complained, “he told them to eat grass” (60), like cattle. Kangi-Shunka famously was released after killing Spotted Tail; the government did not see a reason to punish Native Americans who killed other Native Americans. In more modern times, white men continue to kill Native American men with no retribution. Native American women are often sterilized without their consent: “the fewer Indians there are,” writes Crow Dog, “the better” (9). White people who live near the reservations “were all living on land stolen from us” and “made their living in some way by exploiting us”—even using them “as colorful props to attract Eastern tourists” (81). As they do with nature, white people see Native Americans as mere obstacles in the way of their material wealth and “progress.” Also, their dehumanizing language arguably helps justify, to themselves, the killing and displacing of Native Americans.

In the first chapter, Crow Dog repeats that it’s hard to be an Indian woman, and the title of her book suggests that she will focus especially on the struggles of women. In Lakota Woman, Crow Dog discusses how Sioux women and girls are raped and sexually harassed by white men and are expected to unquestioningly satisfy Sioux men’s sexual needs. For example, some men’s “whole courtship consists in pointing at you and […] saying, ‘Woman, come!’” (68). She describes how girls used to be honored at their first periods; today, men still exclude menstruating women and girls from rituals—menstruating women are said to “possess a strange force which could render a healing ceremony ineffective,” though Crow Dog notes that she “never felt particularly powerful while being ‘on my moon’” (67). Nonetheless, they no longer celebrate their first periods. Men “pay great lip service to the status women hold in the tribe” (65). As a result, when she and Leonard marry, Crow Dog “at first felt very unsure about the role of a medicine man’s wife, about the part women played, or were allowed to play, in Indian religion” (201). She is reassured when he explains that he himself learned from a medicine woman.

Crow Dog acknowledges the unique challenges Sioux men face as they navigate what they see as their purposeless lives on the reservation. However, as her story testifies, Sioux women face their own unique challenges, being discriminated against as Native Americans and additionally as women.

Lakota Woman is filled with examples of heroes dying for their people. Kangi-Shunka, the first Crow Dog, is ready to be executed for his killing of Spotted Tail. Annie Mae Aquash has a premonition that she will die fighting for Native Americans’ rights; in reflecting on her death, Crow Dog writes that she believes Annie Mae died, in a sense, for her. The first time Crow Dog meets Leonard, Leonard gives a speech in which he states his willingness to die for his cause.

This sacrifice can be literal or symbolic. The Ghost Dancers are said to have died and “wandered among the stars” (150), speaking with dead ancestors and returning with messages to impart to the people. The Sun Dance requires “self-torture” (258), a sacrifice that participants make for those who have died for them. The wounds leave “a battleground of scars” (253), becoming part of a person forever. 

The Anglo-American government destroyed the tiyospaye system, in which extended family cares for children; it is replaced with the nuclear family, which divides families and land. White social workers remove Native American children from their loving but poor families and place them with white foster families, but not before sending them to boarding schools in which nuns beat them and force them into Christian prayer. Children are also forced to follow the clock instead of “natural time” (29); they return from boarding school in stiff, uncomfortable clothing as opposed to their blankets and moccasins. The Indian Reorganization Act imposed constitutions on the tribes, eliminating their systems of self-government and ensuring that only corrupt officials are elected into positions of power. White people not only mock Native Americans for their “savage” (5) lifestyles, they attempt to save them, as well. They replace many Native American systems with their own, inevitably making life worse for them; they also displace and kill them without consequence. The relativity of the words “savage” and “civilized” is a theme throughout Lakota Woman, as is the question of who is actually savage and who is civilized.