Rating: 
Summary: It Grabs You
Review: The first chapter is tough to read. After almost every page I had to take a break. The author never releases the hold she has on the reader for the rest of the book. I read it three times in the first month. I couldn't put it down. So many books on Native Americans end in 1890 as if Indians dropped off the face of the earth after the first Wounded Knee. This book is an eyewitness account of recent Lakota history. A look at how many Native Americans are still struggling for civil rights and still struggling to find themselves.
Rating:
Summary: It Grabs You
Review: The first chapter is tough to read. After almost every page I had to take a break. The author never releases the hold she has on the reader for the rest of the book. I read it three times in the first month. I couldn't put it down. So many books on Native Americans end in 1890 as if Indians dropped off the face of the earth after the first Wounded Knee. This book is an eyewitness account of recent Lakota history. A look at how many Native Americans are still struggling for civil rights and still struggling to find themselves.
Rating:
Summary: How it really is
Review: There are many reasons why I rate Lakota Woman at 5 stars. The main reason however is its honesty. I have never read a book more open and honest about how life was in the 60's and 70's for my people, the Sioux. Mary does not try to cloud things over, she is blunt and totally honest about everything that was going on no matter how tragic the events. She speaks like many of me people do about things like death and abuse. We talk of these things like most people talk of the weather.
Rating: 
Summary: in depth revelations of the social problems in native americ
Review: this book shows the troubles that the native american nation underwent and still is suffering in their social and economic lives. The oppression that the US forced them under killing them all, removing them from thier land and forcing them to live in horrible reservations earning very low salaries therefore living miserable lives. Not only that but the men then arrived home to take out their frustration on their female counterparts (if they had a steady one). Men would not respect the women mostly because of the already distraught lives that they lived. "If you didn't cooperate then they were no longer interested in you as a person" (Crow Dog 68). This is how the indian man treated their woman becuase of the social problems caused by the oppresion of the white man.
On the other hand the book illustrates the grandness of the indian man and how he confronted his enemies (white man & enemy tribes) with such glory and courage. The indian man was brave and fearless with a respect for nature and (in the old days) respect for their fellow women.
All these stories were told though the eyes of dog mary crow, by her experiences in her life and the stories that her family told her.
Rating:
Summary: Lakota Woman - Mary Crow Dog
Review: This is a book review on the book Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog. I liked this book because the main character, Mary Crow Dog, stands up for what she believes in. She is also a strong-willed Native American woman. She and her husband, Lenard Crow Dog, were great leaders in the American Indian Movement(AIM). I enjoyed reading this book because Mary Crow Dog stands strong through the many difficult situations she had to go through. One part I liked in the book was when AIM protested outside of a police station, and the police got scared, so AIM got what they wanted. People who like to stand up for themselves or admire people like that will enjoy this book. I encuorage anyone who is looking for a great biography or autobiography to read this book. After reading this book, I highly admire Mary Crow Dog for what she accomplished. This book would please many kinds of people; it just depends on you and your personality.
Rating:
Summary: Lakota Woman - Mary Crow Dog
Review: This is a book review on the book Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog. I liked this book because the main character, Mary Crow Dog, stands up for what she believes in. She is also a strong-willed Native American woman. She and her husband, Lenard Crow Dog, were great leaders in the American Indian Movement(AIM). I enjoyed reading this book because Mary Crow Dog stands strong through the many difficult situations she had to go through. One part I liked in the book was when AIM protested outside of a police station, and the police got scared, so AIM got what they wanted. People who like to stand up for themselves or admire people like that will enjoy this book. I encuorage anyone who is looking for a great biography or autobiography to read this book. After reading this book, I highly admire Mary Crow Dog for what she accomplished. This book would please many kinds of people; it just depends on you and your personality.
Rating:
Summary: WARNING: This book can be addictive...
Review: This is a book you may have a very hard time putting down. It is a dramatic autobiography of a life full of struggle, oppression, action and empowerment. This book is intense and a must read. The challenges and experiences of Native Americans during the peak of the American Indian Movement in the 1970's is highlighted here. You get it first hand from the personal experience of an amazing woman. She was in the middle of it all standing up for the rights of her people and supporting the others around her who were fighting like hell for justice and their rights. This book sparks a lot of tears and anger, as well as much laughter. You will find history of the American Indian Movement and the siege at Wounded Knee, as well as a great story and much more here written in an easy to read, personal manner. It's as if you were sitting across from her at the kitchen table listening to her tell the tales of her life. It reads like a magnetic, fiction novel while educating like a history book. Highly recommended!!
Rating:
Summary: WARNING: This book can be addictive...
Review: This is a book you may have a very hard time putting down. It is a dramatic autobiography of a life full of struggle, oppression, action and empowerment. This book is intense and a must read. The challenges and experiences of Native Americans during the peak of the American Indian Movement in the 1970's is highlighted here. You get it first hand from the personal experience of an amazing woman. She was in the middle of it all standing up for the rights of her people and supporting the others around her who were fighting like hell for justice and their rights. This book sparks a lot of tears and anger, as well as much laughter. You will find history of the American Indian Movement and the siege at Wounded Knee, as well as a great story and much more here written in an easy to read, personal manner. It's as if you were sitting across from her at the kitchen table listening to her tell the tales of her life. It reads like a magnetic, fiction novel while educating like a history book. Highly recommended!!
Rating:
Summary: utterly fascinating
Review: 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:
Summary: Worthy read
Review: Though this book is not the work of a master writer, and despite the fact that the author is clearly biased, this book does tell a very important story. Namely how Native Americans have been and still are systematically discriminated against by both the U.S. government as well as individuals. Most Americans are blind to this mistreatment, and at the very least this book will enlighten you to the fact that terrible wrongs have been done toward an entire culture, and more importantly, wrongs are still being done to this day. This is a worthy read for anyone looking to open their minds and view America from a very different, and often dark perspective.
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