![]() ![]() She asked who Leonard Crow Dog was, taking note of his long hair, which was adorned with feathers. ![]() The book also describes AIM's renewal of spirituality as manifested in sweat lodges, peyote ceremonies, sacred songs and the Ghost Dance ritual. Mary first encountered AIM at a powwow at Leonard Crow Dog’s home in 1971. ![]() ![]() government and white society strip away Native Americans’ cultures and force. She says that being a Native American woman is not easy, and she describes how the government sterilized her sister, Barbara, and how her friend Annie Mae Aquash was murdered. The authors write of AIM's infiltration by FBI agents, of Mary Crow Dog helping her husband endure prison, of Indian males' macho attitudes. Mary Crow Dog introduces herself as Mary Brave Bird, a Lakota woman. She ran away from a coldly impersonal boarding school run by nuns where, she reports, Indian students were beaten to induce them to give up native customs and speech. Her girlhood, a vicious circle of drinking and fighting, was marked by poverty, racism and a rape at 14. Written with Erdoes ( Lame Deer Seeker of Visions ), her searing autobiography is courageous, impassioned, poetic and inspirational. It inspires Crow Dog to reconnect with her more traditional relatives like her grand-uncle Dick Fool Bull, who takes her to her first peyote meeting. Seventeen years old at the time, she married fellow activist Leonard Crow Dog, medicine man and spiritual leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM). At the heart of AIM is the rebellion against Christianization and the return to ancient beliefs (93). Mary Brave Bird gave birth to a son during the 71-day siege of Wounded Knee in 1973, which ended with a bloody assault by U.S. ![]()
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