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
Just as the Ghost Dance religion was a central part of the Wounded Knee Massacre, so were several Native American religious rituals at the heart of the siege of Wounded Knee. Leonard Crow Dog was the primary spiritual leader during the siege, where he performed ceremonies along with healing the wounded and participating in negotiations. Before their first negotiation with government officials, Leonard set up an altar and prayed, saying that “this land [they’re] defending” was their “holy place.”
The prominence of religious rituals—and the existence of a spiritual leader—during the Occupation of Wounded Knee illustrates how reviving indigenous cultural traditions was central to AIM's mission. Leonard even emphasizes how the occupation itself was a cultural act: the activists were fighting for their ancestral lands. In this way, the occupation also united the Native American activists, as they were always aware that their fight was an echo of all their ancestors' battles against colonization.
Themes
In addition to the occasional peyote or yuwipi ceremonies, the sweat lodges were operating daily. After one evening sweat, federal officers started firing on Leonard and the other men as they exited the lodge. It was a close call, but luckily no one was killed.
This incident not only shows the U.S. government's callousness toward Native American lives (the activists they fired at were vulnerable and not fighting, yet the officials shot at them anyway), but also their lack of respect regarding indigenous religions and cultures. The government's disregard of the sweat, which is a religious ceremony, is representative of their racist disdain of Native American cultural traditions in general, which white society tried to suppress for several hundred years.
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Leonard was also the primary doctor at Wounded Knee during the siege. He used various herbs and animal parts to heal the wounded. The white doctors who volunteered during the siege deferred to Leonard, evening learning how to use natural medicines and to pray prior to operating on a wounded person. But Mary believes that Leonard’s most memorable contribution is that he revived the Ghost Dance.
Leonard was instrumental in the cultural revival of AIM. He incorporated traditional healing methods during the Occupation of Wounded Knee, in which he was a doctor as well as the spiritual leader. By teaching the volunteering white doctors how to use natural medicines and which prayers to pray, Leonard demonstrates his inclusivity—it appears that he was open to sharing his traditional wisdom and religious customs to anyone who was a willing and open-minded learner, regardless of their race or beliefs.
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Mary interrupts the story’s narrative to tell the history behind the Ghost Dance, which begins with Leonard’s great-grandfather, the first Crow Dog. The elder Crow Dog received the instructions for the Ghost Dance from a man named Short Bull, who had been taught by Wovoka, a Paiute holy man. The holy man gave them a new dance that Short Bull interpreted to be the means by which they would bring a new world—one that would undo the evils brought by the white settlers. Word of the Ghost Dance spread quickly, and many tribes embraced it, as its “message brought them hope.”
The Ghost Dance is a religion that many Native American tribes incorporated into their religious beliefs. As Mary explains here, the Lakota learned of the Ghost Dance from a Paiute holy man. Mary suggests that this cross-cultural exchange between tribes was beneficial and enriching—the Lakota found hope in the Ghost Dance, as it promised an end to white society’s colonization, which devastated their tribes and threatened their cultures and livelihoods. It’s clear that the Native American tribes who adopted the Ghost Dance were searching for a way to revive their traditional way of life.
Themes
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During the Ghost Dance ceremony, dancers wore upside-down American flags, “symbolic of the wasičuns’ world of fences, telegraph poles, and factories which would also be turned upside down, as well as a sign of despair.” The dancers would dance for hours at a time, with some dancers “dying,” or falling into a trance, during which they walked among the stars and spoke to their ancestors.
Undoing the evils of colonization was central to the Ghost Dance religion and was symbolized by the inverted American flags that the dancers wore. The upside-down American flag is a symbol of distress, so, by wearing it, the dancers showed that they and their people were suffering. In this passage, Mary adds that the American flags were also symbolic of the world that white people have created, a world in which land is divided, colonized, and polluted. But she says that this world “would also be turned upside down,” which reflects the mission of the Ghost Dance: to undo the systems of white society and usher in a time of peace and prosperity for Native Americans.
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This new dance frightened the white government agents, who feared that it was a sign that the Lakota people would rebel against the government. Mary adds that she believes it was the officials’ guilty consciences that spurred them to misinterpret this peaceful dance and order that the religion be exterminated.
Mary believes that the government agents misinterpreted the dance as a sign of impending rebellion because they knew that their mistreatment and abuse of Native Americans would prompt retaliation. So, the agents reacted by trying to stamp out the religion, which is yet another example of the U.S. government waging war on indigenous cultures.
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In the winter, white soldiers started driving the Lakota dancers into the hills of the Badlands, where the dancers began to starve. The first Crow Dog was one of the chiefs who, along with his people, were driven into the hills. Realizing that continued resistance would mean certain death, he surrendered to the white soldiers, thereby saving his people. Other chiefs were not as fortunate—most notably, Big Foot and his people were massacred at Wounded Knee, after he had surrendered.
The U.S. government persecuted adherents of the Ghost Dance religion to try to exterminate it. The first Crow Dog, one of Leonard’s ancestors, resisted until he and his people faced certain death. Although he did eventually relent to save his people, his resistance illustrates how dearly he held the religion—being able to practice his beliefs was clearly of paramount importance to him. As Mary previously mentioned, the Crow Dog tribe has a reputation for refusing to assimilate. In this passage, it appears that the first Crow Dog established this precedent of defiance so, even if he was eventually forced to surrender to the government officials, he set an example of resistance for future generations. This passage also illustrates how, even when the dancers surrendered to the U.S. government, their cooperation was only met with more oppression. Most notably, the U.S. soldiers massacred Big Foot and his people after his surrender.
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Mary jumps back to Leonard’s role in reviving the Ghost Dance. He believed that the Lakota dancers of the late 1800s had misunderstood Wovoka’s message. The purpose of the dance, Leonard believed, wasn’t to bring back the dead, but to revive their traditional wisdom and beliefs by means of a Native American ceremony. The dance also stressed the importance of unity among different tribes.
Leonard believed that the primary value of bringing back the Ghost Dance was that, by putting on and participating in the ceremony, the dancers were bringing back Native American cultural traditions. In hosting the Ghost Dance, Leonard and the dancers were contributing to the preservation of these Native American religious beliefs. Additionally, the dance encouraged unity between tribes, which Leonard routinely preached. By having indigenous people of various tribes participate together in the religious ceremony, Leonard hoped to foster intertribal cooperation.
Themes
The night before the first Ghost Dance at the siege of Wounded Knee, Leonard gave a speech to the activists. Having learned the songs and rituals from his father and grandfather, Leonard explained to the activists that they would dance without stopping. Whenever someone got “into the power, the spiritual power,” they would let that person fall into a trance. And above all, they would unite in the dance, no matter one’s race or tribe. As he put it, they were “not goin’ to have this white man’s attitude.” The Ghost Dance ceremony that Leonard initiated lasted for four days.
The fact that Leonard learned the Ghost Dance rituals from his father and grandfather shows how the Crow Dog family resisted assimilation and preserved their cultural traditions; because they (the Crow Dogs) embraced their Lakota identity and passed on their culture to their descendants, Leonard grew up knowing the religion of his ancestors. During the Occupation of Wounded Knee, Leonard taught indigenous people of multiple tribes—as well as non-Native American people—the Ghost Dance ceremony. He was adamant that all people should be allowed to participate, which reveals how he believed in the value of intertribal and interracial unity. He indicates that excluding people based on tribe or race was one of the problems with white society, whose discrimination led to the oppression of people of color.
Themes
Mary interjects to recount the words of Black Elk, an Oglala man who wrote about the Wounded Knee Massacre. In his book, he said that Wounded Knee wasn’t just the massacre site for people, but for a dream as well. He wrote that “the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered.” When the activists joined together at the Wounded Knee siege to revive the Ghost Dance, they demonstrated that the dream is not dead—they “mended the nation’s hoop.”
While Mary doesn’t specify what dream died at the Wounded Knee Massacre, she implies that it was the message that the Ghost Dance promised: that the evils of white society’s colonization would end, and a new age—one of peace and prosperity for all Native Americans—would begin. Black Elk also writes that “the nation’s hoop [was] broken and scattered” after the Wounded Knee Massacre, which suggests that another aspect of the dream was intertribal unity, which the Ghost Dance promoted. Mary then says that the activists at Wounded Knee revived this dream of intertribal solidarity, as indigenous people of multiple tribes joined together to perform the ceremony.
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