53 pages • 1 hour read
Mary Crow DogLakota Woman
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Ghost Dance
The Ghost Dance is mentioned in passing several times before Crow Dog explains its history and importance. We are told that “roaming Indian kids” use drugs because they “were waiting, just as the Ghost Dancers had waited for the drumbeat, the message the eagle was to bring” (59). The American Indian Movement affects the reservation “like the Ghost Dance fever that had hit the tribes in 1890” (73). It isn’t until Chapter 10 that Crow Dog describes the origin of the Ghost Dance and how Leonard revives it in 1973. As a result, the Ghost Dancers, who seek to “meet our dead relatives whom the wasičun has killed” (148), seem like ghosts themselves; we have fleeting glimpses of them before the story moves on, leaving them a memory. The Ghost Dance becomes a thread that is almost suppressed within the text until the full story emerges, just as the actual Ghost Dance is revived after eighty years.
The Ghost Dance came as a vision to a holy man who made his disciples “die and walk on the new world that was coming” before coming to life again. It was a message of hope for the people, who danced to bring back the world to the way it was prior to the arrival of whites. Seen as “the signal for a great Indian uprising” (149), its continued practice was “at the core” (144) of the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. Leonard, who leads a Ghost Dance “not only for us, the living, but also for the spirits of those lying in the mass grave,” believes the dancers “should not have expected to bring the dead back to life, but to bring back their ancient beliefs by practicing Indian religion” (148). Like the Ghost Dance eighty years before, the Ghost Dance of 1973 is meant to evoke the memories and spirits of those who died before, to be “a link to our past […] at the place where this dance had been killed” (153). In this way, it’s not only a revival of their ancestors but also of their own spirits, and of hope.
Crow Dog writes that “[i]n that ravine, at Cankpe Opi, we gathered up the broken pieces of the sacred hoop and put them together again” (155). It’s also arguably why Crow Dog is so determined to give birth at Wounded Knee, and why the birth of Pedro is so meaningful to the people. Before the Ghost Dance, Leonard declares they dance “for the whole unborn generations” (154). Pedro appears to be a physical manifestation of the people’s rebirth in a place where their ancestors were killed, a celebration of their newfound determination not to succumb to oppression.
Whitemanization
The conflict between those who staunchly refuse to abandon their traditions and those who decide to “whitemanize” is perhaps best exemplified by the killing of Chief Spotted Tail, who believed “[i]t was useless […] to try to resist the wasičuns” (8), by Kangi-Shunka, a Ghost Dance leader. Crow Dog’s grandmother believes whitemanizing—“going to church, dressing and behaving like a wasičun”—will lead to “the good life” (23). Though some Sioux may find adopting white ways advantageous for a time, the costs of whitemanizing are high. Having been raised Catholic and not allowed to learn the Sioux language, Crow Dog spends many years feeling without a home and without an identity, and she is fulfilled only when her experience with AIM inspires her to reconnect with her full-blood relatives. In any case, Crow Dog suggests, one can’t ever truly fit in with white people. Children returning from boarding school wearing “stiff, high collars” and “starched white blouses with clumsy, high-buttoned boots” were like “caricatures of white people” (30); finding now that they fit in neither with white people nor Native Americans, they often turn to alcohol. Those who whitemanize are often seen as having quite literally sold out, trading their land for money so they can buy material things. They do not fight for their rights but rather wait “for the Great White Father to do for them” (79).
Alcohol and Drug Use and Abuse
Though alcohol abuse is rampant on the reservation, it is a “white man problem” rather than an “Indian problem,” for white people sell it to Native Americans and “cause the conditions that make Indians drink in the first place” (54). Crow Dog writes that she doesn’t blame her mother for marrying her stepfather, who taught her to drink when she was ten years old; with no skills, no job, no options, and no purpose, the men turn to alcohol to alleviate their suffering. It also leads to arrests, injuries, and deaths; in fact, Crow Dog dedicates an entire chapter of her memoir to “Drinking and Fighting.” She writes that men drink up their food and lease money, then drive around in beaten-up cars, causing rows and accidents. Alcohol makes white people more likely to throw racist epithets and the Sioux more likely to respond with violence. Drugs, too, are abused on the reservation; “waiting” Sioux like Crow Dog hope the visions help them see “the message the eagle was to bring” (59). For the Sioux, drugs and alcohol represent a desperate attempt to find meaning, or to forget that there is none. Crow Dog, who used to drink heavily, stops drinking when she joins AIM, thus demonstrating further how alcohol abuse is inextricably tied to feeling lost.
