#mary crow dog

Mary Brave Bird was a Sicangu Lakota writer and activist who was a member of the American Indian Movement during the 1970s and participated in some of their most publicized events, including the Wounded Knee Incident when she was 18 years old.

Brave Bird was the author of two memoirs, Lakota Woman (1990) and Ohitika Woman (1993). Lakota Woman was published under the name Mary Crow Dog and won the 1991 American Book Award. It describes her life until 1977. Ohitika Woman continues her life story.Her books describe the conditions of the Lakota Indian and her experience growing up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, as well as conditions in the neighboring Pine Ridge Indian Reservation under the leadership of tribal chairman Richard Wilson. She also covers aspects of the role of the FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and the treatment of the Native Americans and their children in the mid-1900s. Her work focuses on themes of gender, identity, and race.

“It is really true, the old Cheyenne saying: ‘A nation is not dead until the hearts of it’s women are on the ground.” Well, the hearts of our full-blood women were not on the ground. They were way up high and they could still encourage us with their trilling, spine-tingling brave-heart cry.”