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_Lakot Woman _
By: Anonymous
In the book Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog writes of the many struggles that she
faced in everyday life as an American Indian woman. The Lack of running water
or electricity, the poverty and oppression found on and around the Indian
reservation, are just a few examples of the problems that she had to deal with
on a continuing basis. She describes in detail the violence and hopelessness
that her people encountered at the hands of the white man as well as the hang
around the fort Indians . Mary Crow Dog tells of horrors she had to endure
while attending the missionary school and of facing the discrimination found
outside the reservation. Growing up, one of the hardest trials faced by Mary
Crow Dog was not only that of being a Native American but of being a female in
a world predominately dominated by Caucasian men. Since the white man came to
America he has done nothing but take and take and take. He has lied to the
point where one cannot tell where one lie ends and another begins. The United
States government signed more than four hundred treaties with Native Americans
and managed to violate every single one. The white man systematically forced
the American Indians unto reservations, where he/she was forced to live. Life
on the reservation was not easy. Families lived in small cabins sometimes
consisting of only one room, which served as a kitchen, living room, dining
room and bedroom. Children run around with no shoes most of the time. Much of
the money that came into the home went into the stomachs of most in the form
of Alcohol. Alcohol was hemmed into the Native American culture by the white
man sometime during the middle to late 1800s. By the 1960s, alcoholism had a
firm grasp on the Native American. As a matter of fact, a family history of
alcoholism in first and second-degree relatives is twice as common among
American Indians and Alaska natives than any other ethnic background. In
Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog devotes a portion of a few chapters to this
subject. In one such chapter she states, I started drinking because it was
the natural way of life&I think I grew up with the idea that everybody was
doing it&I started drinking when I was ten. All of this is rather ironic when
you consider the fact that liquor is forbidden on the reservation, and
drinking it is illegalAs if life on the reservation was not hard enough,
there came a time in a childs life when he/she was taken away from their
families and sent to a boarding school. The Annual report of the Department of
Interior, 1901 wrote: &Gathered from the cabin, the wickiup, and the tepee,
partly by cajolery and partly by threats; partly by bribery and partly by
force, they are induced to leave their kindred to enter these schools and take
upon themselves the outward appearance of civilized life. These schools were
filled with impersonality instead of the close human contact these children
were used to. Mary Crow Dog attended the mission school at St. Francis, just
as her Grandmother, mother and sisters did. In these boarding schools, the
girls and boys are separated from one another. Beatings were commonplace, and
sexual molestation from the priests was not unheard of, in fact these boarding
schools were ran much like a penitentiary Racism both inside and outside of
the reservation runs rampant. The Native Americans were thought of as savages.
They were killed at the hands of soldiers. Turned into farmhands, laborers and
such by the missionaries. The police turned away when an American Indian was
in trouble, only to arrest him when the odds turned in his favor. Being a
Native American was not easy by any means, and being a Native American woman
wasnt any easier. The women have the added pressure of just being a female,
which at times is hard enough even if you are white. Among the Native
Americans, some men think that all a woman is good for is having sex with and
watching the children. Some men would come home drunk and beat their wives.
Mary Crow Dogs best friend Annie Mae Aquash a young, strong-hearted woman was
found dead in the snow with a .38 caliber slug in her head. A drunken man beat
another woman, Mary Crow Dogs sister-in-law; she was left with a broken arm
and leg to die in a blizzard. Women were sterilized against their will.
Outside the reservation the white mans attitudes towards the American Indian
woman only worsen. Remarks such as, Look at the tits on that squaw. Watch her
shaking her ass at us. I bet we could show that Injun squaw a good time, was
commonplace outside of the reservation. Whether inside the reservation or
outside of it, being an American Indian was and still isnt easy. The life of
a Native American is filled with poverty, oppression and violence (Usually at
the hands of a white man.). The women have to deal with this and much more
including harassment both physically and sexually. Even today, the white man
cannot stay out of the affairs of the Native American Indian. The white man
has elections as to see what exactly is right and wrong for the American
Indian to do on his own land. It seams as though that the white man will never
leave the Native people of this land to their own business. To this day he has
tried to find ways of keeping control over what he should have no control of
to begin with
Word Count: 940
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