Lakota Woman Is About Mary Crow Dog Coming Into a Sense of Identity as a Lakota Woman - Essay Example

Lakota Woman Is About Mary Crow Dog Coming Into a Sense of Identity as a Lakota Woman Mary Crow Dog is a woman in search of her real identify, in a world where the white dominance has threatened to stifle the cultural identity of the Lakota people, creating an identity crisis between embracing the Whiteman’s ways or to embrace her ancestral cultural identity (Brave and Erdoes, 49). The major cultural identity crisis emanates from the fact that Mary Crow Dog does not belong to any specific culture between the white and the Indian Lakota culture, having been born of an Indian mother and a white father. This being the case, she is undergoing a crisis of identifying with each of the culture, but the crisis is deepened even more by the fact that the whites do not readily accept and appreciated the Indian Lakota culture, since they have isolated and rejected Mary Crow Dog’s mother (Brave and Erdoes, 21). Her mother has persistently tries to fit into the new white culture, but the whites do not seem ready to accept her within their community. In fact Mary puts it thus, "the life of an Indian is not held in great value in the State of South Dakota” (Brave and Erdoes, 25). It is this struggles that Mary’s mother is undergoing that has made her opt to look for her elderly relatives and connect with the Lakota culture and tradition, where she would be readily accepted. The major impediment to Mary Crow Dog adapting the white culture is the fact that she is also doubtful whether she will be accepted, considering the fact that the white community had already rejected her mother. The journey in search for identity as a Lakota woman is neither smooth even in the Sioux nation where she embarks on building her identity (Brave and Erdoes, 77). Mary Crow Dog also faces hate, rejection and resistance in that community. She starts by joining an American Indian youth group, where she is initiated into the membership of the American Indian Movement. During her tenure in the movement, struggles are many and abuses are also present, thus Mary Crow Dog does not come out of it free, because she ends up becoming pregnant by one of the members of the movement. Even though the man by whom she got pregnant was one of the Indian Americans whom Mary wanted to identify with, she is rejected and abandoned, and thus has to bear and take care of his son on her own. Therefore, rejection and abuse serves as the two major factors that challenges Mary’s journey to establish an identity, and instead leaves her with a “split personality” (Brave and Erdoes, 251). She had initially thought that she could be readily accepted and appreciated in her mother’s homeland as opposed to being in her father’s homeland, but the reality turned out to be different. Nevertheless, one of the major factors that enabled her to overcome the challenges of her identify crisis is her strong-willed spirit that kept her moving and still working for the AIM even after she got pregnant and was abandoned. This is because; the Indians believed “once the land is gone, then we are gone too” (Brave and Erdoes, 11). The identity crisis is also increased by the fact that Mary bore a child out of wedlock and that aspect served to increase her problems because she had to deal with the issue of the cultural identity crisis, as well as the one of rejection due to bearing a child out of wedlock, thus lowering her standard in the society as a woman of low morals. However, the journey towards establishing an identity takes a turn when Mary meets Leonard Crow Dog who is a medicine man and a respected member of the Indian society, and for the first time she gets on the path of being accepted (Brave and Erdoes, 102). Meeting Leonard Crow Dog is a major milestone towards the establishment of a solid identity for Mary, because in him, she finds an educator on the culture and ways of life of the Lakota community, on top of being trained further to become a medicine woman in the society, a position that attracts much respect. Therefore, it is through meeting Leonard that the journey to acceptance and towards overcoming the identity crisis begins, since Mary no longer desires to identify with the white culture, after she started being taught the Lakota cultural ways (Brave and Erdoes, 92). Nevertheless, even after building her identity as a Lakota woman, Mary gets to enjoy some privileges of the white community when she traversed with her husband through different parts of the country, as his husband was being shuffled to different prisons. Despite the privileges that are identified with the white life, Mary is not inspired to change her identity, but comes to the realization that she has now completely changed at heart, and her desires are now fully to live as a Lakota woman. Mary discovers that the time she has spent with Leonard has completely converted his will and heart desires towards sticking to a single identity, and thus she realizes that she is now full-blood Lakota at heart (Brave and Erdoes, 49). The strength that she found while working in the American Indian Movement is yet another factor that finally contributed to her ability to overcome the identity crisis, and establish herself as a complete Lakota woman. Her life as a member of the AIM was risky, even dangerous, since the movement acted as a social and a political force that was fighting the oppression of the white against the Indians (Brave and Erdoes, 12). Thus, it took a lot of strength to be able to survive through the risky activities of the movement, to the point of giving birth amidst gunfire as she recollects, "I had my first baby during a firefight, with the bullets crashing through one wall” (Brave and Erdoes, 3). Living among the Indians was not a pleasant experience either, because life for the Indians was hard and they did not have respect especially for women. Therefore, the Indian men beat women and used them for sex. Mary observes that “if you plan to be born, make sure you are born white and male” (Brave and Erdoes, 4). It is such experiences that played a significant role in hardening Mary and making her ready to overcome her identify crisis, considering the fact that the challenges she was facing as a woman in the American Indian Movement served to make her belief that she could overcome any challenge. Therefore, she changed her life as a criminal who could be involved in drinking, shoplifting and other social vices which she had started as “the natural way of life” (Brave and Erdoes, 45). In its place, she became an honorable wife of a medicine man, a move that gave her the full identity of a Lakota woman. Works Cited Brave, Bird M, and Erdoes Richard. Lakota Woman. New York, NY: HarperPerennial, 1991. Print. Read More