Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog

With anthropology and especially Native Americans as a love of mine I picked my next book. I have not seen the movie and I don’t intend to.

Lakota Woman is a courageous, potent memoir based on Mary Crow Dog's life, as a predecessor in the American Indian Movement, the wife of a medicine man, and as a woman trying to keep hold of her native traditions, while still moving forward in life. This is the story of her journey, starting with her childhood, spent pent up in missionary school, to her troubled teen years, when she met the people who would change her life. Mary went on to fight at the second battle of Wounded Knee, in 1973, and actually gave birth during the stand off. Truly a remarkable woman, Mary tells her story with a raw honesty that most are hard pressed to find. The is an excellent book to serve as a foundation for understanding the continued need for American Indian and Native rights and I am surprised that it was not on my college reading list.

5 Stars