Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Lakota Woman, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Activism and Resistance
Assimilation, Tradition, and Identity
Unity, Inclusion, and Equality
Racism and Sexism
Summary
Analysis
Mary introduces herself as Mary Brave Bird and says that, after she gave birth to her first child during a firefight that was part of the 1973 siege of Wounded Knee, she was given another name by her people: Ohitika Win, or Brave Woman. Being a Lakota woman, she notes, is not easy.
By mentioning that she gave birth during the Occupation of Wounded Knee, a political demonstration, she immediately establishes her dedication to activism—the implication is that advocating for civil rights is so important to her that she participated even while giving birth. Her giving birth while literally under fire is symbolic of the challenges that Native Americans—and Native American women in particular—experience; in this case, U.S. government officials fired upon Mary and the Native American protestors, even while Mary was going through labor.
Themes
As soon as Mary left Wounded Knee and before she had even healed after giving birth, “they” put her in jail and took her baby son from her. A few years later, government officials put guns to her head, threatening to kill her. It’s hard, she notes again, to be a Native American woman.
Mary gives two examples of how government officials mistreated her. First, government officials imprisoned her even though she was still physically unhealed from giving birth. On top of this, they separated Mary from her newborn son, which illustrates a lack of empathy for both Mary’s emotional state and her baby’s health. Mary then implies that they were this cruel to her because she is a Native American woman. The second instance mentioned in this passage is that government officials used excessive force on her, which suggests their unconcern for Native Americans’ lives.
Themes
Mary describes the deaths of two Native American women: her best friend Annie Mae Aquash and Delphine, her sister-in-law. The fierce and tough Annie Mae was murdered by a gunshot, but the police initially declared that she died from exposure to the cold. Delphine died after a drunken man beat her and left her outside in a blizzard.
The murders of both Annie Mae and Delphine are tragic examples of how Native American women are victims of physical violence at disproportionate rates. Additionally, another aspect of Annie Mae’s murder is that the police lied about the nature of her death, which suggests that government officials killed her. Although Mary hasn’t explained the situation surrounding Annie Mae’s death, the implication that government officials killed her and then callously covered up her murder demonstrates a lack of respect for indigenous women’s lives.
Themes
When Mary’s sister Barbara went to a government hospital to give birth, the providers sterilized her while she was under anesthesia. Her baby died only two hours after birth. Once more, Mary notes that it’s hard to be a Native American woman.
Forced sterilization is a medical procedure that makes a woman unable to reproduce. It’s generally ordered by a government or organization without regard to the woman’s own preference, and sometimes without her even knowing. Barbara is one of many Native American women whom doctors sterilized during the 20th century. This widespread effort to prevent Native Americans from having children was one way that the government carried out a genocide against Native American communities. Barbara’s sterilization also speaks to how racism and sexism overlap in the oppression that Native American women experience. The book suggests that doctors targeted Barbara because of her race and gender—they exploited a moment of vulnerability when she was giving birth to sterilize her. Additionally, Barbara’s baby’s quick death implies negligence on the part of the doctors, which demonstrates their disregard for the life of a Native American child, as well as the emotional, mental, and physical health of the child’s Lakota mother.
Themes
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When Mary was still a young girl, she attended the St. Francis Boarding School, a Catholic school where the nuns brutally punished the young girls for inoffensive acts, like holding hands with a boy. When Mary was 15, she was raped.
The missionary boarding school that Mary attended was one of many boarding schools designed to separate Native American children from their families and culture and force them to assimilate to white society. In this passage, Mary briefly touches on the poor treatment she received while at the boarding school, specifically pointing out the sexism of the nuns, who sought to control the girls’ behavior, especially in romantic contexts (like holding hands with a boy). This is especially abhorrent and hypocritical, since the nuns failed to protect her from being raped, even as they policed her behavior. Tragically, Mary’s experience is not uncommon—Native American women suffer from a disproportionally high rate of sexual violence, particularly in comparison to white women.
Themes
In addition to big, dramatic traumas, Native Americans struggle every day to protect their cultures and languages from “an alien, more powerful culture.”
Mary calls attention to how Native Americans must fight against the pressures of assimilation in order to maintain their culture.
Themes
On top of this, women in particular face additional hardships—Native American men expect women to perform sexual favors and then care for any resulting children. Mary believes that this sense of male superiority compensates for what Native American men have suffered at the hands of white society, which has stripped them of their livelihoods and disparaged their wisdom as “savage superstition.”
Mary explains one way in which the loss of Native American culture affects Native American women. The implication is that, since white society has ostracized, mocked, and abused them, Native American men impose reductive sexist expectations on Native American women because they (the men) want to feel like they still have power, relevance, and control over another group.
Themes
Mary is a Lakota woman from the Sicangu, or Brule Tribe, in South Dakota. Her tribe is one of the seven tribes of the Lakota, or the Western Sioux. The Lakota have a legacy of being fierce warriors and “a horse people.” But in the late 1800s, the U.S. government forced the Lakota onto reservations and took away many aspects of Lakota life. Nonetheless, they never fully gave up their traditional beliefs and pride.
Even though many U.S. government policies were aimed at destroying the Lakota people, the Lakota still resisted, which allowed them to maintain some of their cultural traditions. Mary emphasizes the tragedy of the attack on Lakota culture by contrasting the Lakota’s legacy of being a fierce and proud nation to the 20th-century reality of a nation that has lost much of their land and culture.
Themes
The reservation that Mary grew up on was called He-Dog, after a chief. On the Native American side of her family, Mary is related to the Brave Birds and Fool Bulls, including Old Grandpa Fool Bull, who was the last maker of a kind of traditional flute. He lived 100 years and has memories of the Wounded Knee Massacre—he was camped by Wounded Knee when the massacre took place. Later, he saw the corpses of the Lakota men, women, and children who were murdered.
The fact that Old Grandpa Fool Bull was the last maker of a traditional kind of flute provides one specific consequence of the loss of Lakota cultural traditions: traditional knowledge and craftsmanship die with the older generation when younger generations are forced to assimilate to a different culture. After showing one casualty of the cultural genocide against the Lakota (the loss of the knowledge to make these traditional flutes), Mary then gives Old Grandpa Fool Bull’s account of the Wounded Knee Massacre, in which U.S. soldiers murdered nearly 300 Lakota people. By putting these side-by-side, Mary draws attention to how the Lakota people and their culture have been under attack by the U.S. government and white society for hundreds of years.
Themes
Although Mary wishes that she could tell more stories of her relatives’ bravery, she doesn’t know much of her family’s history before the year 1880. She does know that her people on the Rosebud Indian Reservation did not participate in many battles because their chief at the time, Spotted Tail, decided that fighting and resisting the wasičuns, or “white people,” was a doomed effort. Mary’s family treated Christianity the same way, with many of them converting because they feared retribution—like reduced rations—for resisting white culture.
By recounting Spotted Tail’s decision to stop resisting white society and the U.S. government, Mary illustrates how sometimes assimilation happens out of necessity. Spotted Tail saw that the U.S. government and white settlers outnumbered and out-resourced his people and so, to protect his people, he decided to cooperate. But Mary shows that the U.S. government did not reward him for his cooperation—they still forced his people onto a reservation where they restricted resources and coerced the Lakota to conform to white society by threatening punishments for those who resisted conversion to Christianity and other aspects of white culture. The implication is that, while Spotted Tail’s reasons for cooperation were reasonable and understandable, assimilation only resulted in worse conditions for the Lakota.
Themes
When Mary’s mother gave birth to her, her mother had to go to the Rosebud hospital because there was a pregnancy complication. That hospital wasn’t properly equipped for any kind of surgery, so they drove Mary’s mother to Pine Ridge to a different hospital. After Mary’s mother gave birth to Sandra, Mary’s sister, the doctors sterilized Mary’s mother against her will, which was not uncommon—sterilization was another way to perpetuate the genocide of Native Americans.
The fact that Mary’s mother needed to go to a distant hospital to give birth highlights the fact that reservations are often very under-resourced. In this case, the local hospital on Mary’s reservation didn’t have the equipment to handle a complicated pregnancy. The implication is that the U.S. government was not investing resources to keep the Lakota people alive and thriving. Mary then reminds the reader of another way that the U.S. government and white society threaten the existence of the Lakota people: forced sterilization. Like Barbara, Mary’s mother underwent a forced sterilization. Mary has now identified two Native American women whom doctors sterilized against their will, which emphasizes the pervasiveness of this method of genocide against a people.
Themes
Mary is an iyeska, which means she is part Native American and part white. She often wishes that she could wash away all traces of whiteness in her body and remembers longing for the summer sun to tan her skin darker.
Mary makes it clear that she wants no part in assimilating to white society. In fact, her biracial identity causes her pain, as she sees her white ancestry as holding her back from being wholly Native American. By describing her childhood desire to remove physical traces of whiteness (such as by tanning), Mary communicates how she has always wished to be more connected to her Lakota identity.
Themes
The people of Mary’s husband’s family, the Crow Dogs, don’t struggle with identity, as they are “full-blood[ed]” Lakota. The Crow Dogs isolated themselves as much as they could from white society, refusing to go to church or give up their religious ceremonies. Mary commends their courage.
Mary depicts her husband’s non-assimilating, “full-blood[ed]” Lakota family as spared from the confusion that a biracial identity brings. She describes them as being more connected to their Lakota heritage, which they maintained by resisting white society and the U.S. government’s efforts to force them to assimilate. Mary implies that their resistance—as opposed to Spotted Tail’s cooperation—is the preferred way to react when confronting white society.
Themes
The first Crow Dog was a chief who got his name after a coyote and crow helped him while he was lying wounded after a battle. The white interpreter bungled the name, calling him Crow Dog instead of Crow Coyote. This first Crow Dog chief became famous after being a part of many historic incidents, from when he led the Ghost Dancers to when the Supreme Court freed him after deciding that the federal government had no jurisdiction on Native American reservations.
By mentioning several of the first Crow Dog’s successes, Mary creates an association between resistance and achievement. In this case, the first Crow Dog was instrumental in a legal victory that established that the federal government couldn’t make legal decisions on Native American reservations, which protected tribal sovereignty. He was also a leader of Ghost Dancers, participants in an important Native American religious movement, which highlights his resistance to Christianity. In contrast to Spotted Tail’s cooperation and his people’s assimilation to Christianity, Crow Dog resisted and became a historical figure who was instrumental in protecting Native Americans’ legal rights and cultural traditions.
Themes
Native American land is also a legend in and of itself—it is central to Native American people’s lives and cultures. The land is studded with historically and culturally important sites. But one cannot only reminisce about the great deeds of one’s ancestors—one must “make [one’s] own legends now. It isn’t easy.”
Mary stresses how important land is to Native American tribes. Not only does it sustain them, but it is filled with sites that are culturally relevant to tribes. The land’s centrality to Native American life highlights the tragedy of white society’s stealing indigenous peoples’ land. Mary then says that “it isn’t easy” to accomplish historically important deeds—perhaps because of how the U.S. government has stripped Native Americans of their land and forced them onto under-resourced reservations—but one must try to do so anyhow. Given that she has just described the first Crow Dog’s resistance and accomplishments, it is likely that she is suggesting that, in order to “make [one’s] own legends,” one must carry on in Crow Dog’s tradition of resistance, even if it “isn’t easy.”
Themes
