Mary Crow Dog In The 1970's

From the 1800’s and the struggles of Tecumseh all the way through the 1970’s and the challenges Mary Crow Dog faced, the life of a Native American took great determination. Long before “white man”, Native Americans called America home. Slowly it was all altered. They were forced to give up their way of living, rituals and beliefs, and take drastic measures to prove their equality. In the words of Mary Crow Dog, “I do not consider myself a radical or revolutionary. It is white people who put such labels on us. All we ever wanted was to be left alone, to live our lives as we see fit. To govern ourselves in reality and not just on paper. To have our rights respected” (Lakota Woman, 111). Native Americans did not choose the life they were forced …show more content…
Many of their traditional ceremonies were prohibited, including the Ghost Dance and the Sun Dance. For the younger generation some of these ceremonies had never been seen. They had not been performed since the time of their great-grandfathers. In 1973, Leonard Crow Dog performed a Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee and proclaimed that the hoop had not been broken and so the Ghost Dance was reborn (Lakota Woman, 154-155). He also performed many other ceremonies on their land at Crow Dog’s Paradise. Mary Crow Dog felt that “Indian religion was forbidden. Children were punished for praying Indian, men were jailed for taking a sweat bath. Our sacred pipes were broken, our medicine bundles burned or given to museums. Christianizing us was one way of making us white, that is, of making us forget that we were Indians” (Lakota Woman, …show more content…
They formed several organizations protesting their equality. Among these organizations was AIM, the American Indian Movement. In many ways the views of AIM were similar to those of Carlos Montezuma. “The time has come that we Indians are ready to battle our own way in the world. Justice from the world can be no worse than the reservation system” (Montezuma, 525). That is exactly what AIM did. They protested in Washington at the Bureau of Indian Affairs hoping for the government to consider their twenty proposals. When it was all over they had made a compromise. There were other protests similar to this and some were made by other organizations but the one that was the strongest was at Wounded Knee. AIM and other organizations came together as one and stood at Wounded Knee as their ancestors did. The siege lasted for seventy-one days surrounded by local police, military and the FBI. During this time many ceremonies were performed, a baby was born and a lives were taken. The Native Americans stood strong. Finally they had reached an agreement with the authorities. Not all Native Americans were satisfied with this but the Siege of Wounded Knee for most was more about the meaning behind it, to show that they would not go down easy, their history and beliefs meant a lot to them and they would remain Native