Previous
Chapter 2
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
Each Native American child suffers from mental shock when they arrive at one of the Native American boarding schools, even the newer ones where the teachers have better intentions (although still untrained in the culture and psychology of Native Americans). Mary even knows of children who attempted—and sometimes died by—suicide after arriving at the schools.
Mary immediately establishes that the missionary boarding schools are institutions that negatively affect Native American children. She points out that the teachers do not possess the adequate training to work with Native American children, even at the more modern institutions where teachers want to do good for the Native American community—Mary implies that teachers who work with Native American children should be educated in the culture of the tribe whose children they are working with. By mentioning that some teachers now have better intentions, Mary implies that the teachers who worked in the older missionary schools did not care for the well-being of the children they were working with. As a whole, Mary says these boarding schools—which were designed to assimilate Native American children to white society—are terrible for the children who attend them, as the forced assimilation and separation from their families are traumatic to the children, so much so that some children try to kill themselves.
Themes
The schools were originally founded by white people who thought that forced assimilation to white society was the better alternative to total extermination of Native Americans that many white settlers and officials advocated for. So, these white “do-gooders” kidnapped Native American children from their families, culture, and land, all of which were the children’s original teachers.
The fact that the "do-gooders" believed that forced assimilation was beneficial to Native American tribes shows the racism of the white settlers, who believed that their society was superior to the societies of indigenous tribes. Native Americans already had their own rich cultures and lifestyles, and they had no need for the boarding schools that the "do-gooders" founded; as Mary says, the children already received an education, albeit an education that white settlers didn't recognize. Mary stresses that the kidnappings and forced assimilation were traumatic and devastating for Native American families and communities. So while the settlers believed they were helping Native Americans by "saving" them, their actions contributed to white society's cultural attack on Native American communities.
Themes
At these boarding schools, Native American children were isolated from their families for years, after which they returned to their homes dressed according to white fashions. But they quickly realized that forced assimilation didn’t undo white people’s racism; they still wouldn’t hire or include those who assimilated. Their fellow Native Americans would often exclude them as well, and such ostracization encouraged alcoholism.
Mary explains how forced assimilation to white society led to a widespread identity crisis for the Native American children who attended the boarding schools. Having been taught the customs of white society, the now-grown children struggled to connect with the people of their tribe. Meanwhile, white people continued to discriminate against them because they weren't white, no matter how much they tried to assimilate. In this way, Mary demonstrates how assimilation does not mitigate oppression. In this case, it only made things worse for the Native Americans who attended the schools; as adults, they used alcohol to cope with their identity struggles, as they felt that they were unwanted by both white people and by the people of their tribe. As Mary has mentioned previously, alcoholism is a major issue on reservations, contributing to problems like domestic abuse and violence against women.
Themes
The school that Mary and her sisters attended was the same boarding school that her mother and Grandma Moore went to. All of them tried to run away at some point. Grandma tried running away after the nuns cruelly punished her for playing in church by imprisoning her in a dark cubby for a week. But her runaway attempt was thwarted: the nuns recaptured her, beat her, and imprisoned her again.
Mary elaborates on the terrible conditions in which the children lived while in the missionary boarding schools. The nuns abused Mary's grandmother, beating her and imprisoning her for insignificant offenses. Their abuse speaks to how the purpose of the schools was to force Native American children to assimilate to white culture, not to educate them—the staff of the boarding school were not concerned with providing an education so much as controlling the behavior of the children who attended. Mary, her sisters, her mother, and her grandmother all tried to escape the school, which illustrates how the schools were traumatic to the children within them.
Themes
Get the entire Lakota Woman LitChart as a printable PDF.
Mary’s experience at the boarding school was similar to her grandmother’s: the nuns forced a strict routine on the children, punished them severely for any kind of misstep, and banned them from practicing their traditional religion. Mary resented being forced to follow the nuns’ rigid schedules, which she credits to her Lakota culture—as an old medicine man put it, “Lakotas are not like dogs who can be trained.”
Mary continues to describe the horrific conditions of the boarding schools, in which the nuns brutally punished the children and stripped them of their cultures. Additionally, the rigidness of the schools came to a shock to Lakota like Mary, who stresses that Lakota people generally resist taking arbitrary orders.
Themes
Mary and her older sister Barbara attended boarding school at the same time. Both of them received beatings from the nuns, who would hit their naked backsides with boards and leather straps. The nuns fed the children disgusting food, forced them to do endless chores, and didn’t heat their rooms in the winter, all while the nuns dined on good food and stayed in comfortable quarters. Mary’s terrible experience at the boarding school made her immediately distrustful of white people for years afterward.
Mary continues to detail the terrible conditions of the missionary schools. Nuns beat and humiliated the children and forced them to live in appalling conditions, all while they (the nuns) enjoyed comfortable lodging and good food. Again, Mary shows how the boarding school staff did not have good intentions; not only was the forced assimilation racist (it teaches that Native American cultures are inferior to white society), unethical, and traumatic for the children (and their communities, who lost their young generation), but the staff was cruel and abusive to the children. Mary's time at the boarding school was so horrific that she didn’t trust white people for many years after. This may contribute to her skepticism toward white feminism; Mary was racially discriminated against by the nuns—who are all women—which shows another way in which white women have contributed to the oppression that Native American women face.
Themes
Around the year 1970, a hippie white woman stopped by the reservation and covertly talked to Mary and a few of the other girls about how Black people and Native Americans were fighting for their civil rights across the U.S. She suggested that they start an underground paper to talk about their experiences.
In this anecdote, Mary demonstrates how people of different communities can learn from each other when all fighting for equal rights. Mary and her classmates take inspiration from Black civil rights advocates, as well as Native American activists. The white woman's encouragement that they resist illustrates how the fight for civil rights is most successful when all people—regardless of race, gender, or beliefs—aid each other. The hippie woman was not Native American, but she supported the current movements of different racial groups who advocated for their civil rights.
Themes
Along with her close friends Charlene Left Hand Bull and Gina One Star, Mary started a newspaper called the Red Panther, in which they detailed the terrible conditions they lived in and the hypocrisy of the nuns and priests. But someone told the nuns about the paper, getting Mary and her friends into trouble. The nuns summoned the girls’ parents to tell them about the incident. Mary’s mother calmly said that “it’s supposed to be a free country, free speech and all that,” so the girls didn’t really do anything wrong. The girls’ punishment was reduced to extra chores.
An unidentified individual thwarted Mary and her friends' resistance paper by tattling on them. Although Mary doesn't identify the person who told on them, it's suggested that it was another student. Instead of standing in solidarity with their classmates, this student chose to cooperate with the missionary school staff, which hurt the newspaper writers' mission to expose the terrible conditions that affected them all. Mary's mother, however, argued that the nuns were being hypocritical if they silenced a newspaper while they taught the children about the principles of white America, in which the right to free speech is enshrined in the Constitution. The nuns still punished the girls, although their punishment was not too severe in comparison to the other punishments that they endured.
Themes
As time passed, Mary became more rebellious and tired of the nuns’ colorism—they treated lighter-skinned girls better than the darker-skinned girls. Once, a nun singled out Mary for holding hands with a boy, saying that she was being too promiscuous. Mary responded by citing how, several years ago, many dead white newborns were found in the water lines of the missionaries. She added that the nun should criticize people like the newly transferred priest, who had molested a girl at a different school.
The fact that Mary only became more rebellious with time suggests that, eventually, resisting the nuns felt better than passively accepting their racism and abuse. Mary calls attention to how the nuns treated the students differently based on their skin tone, which shows how her school experiences were shaped by racism. Her teachers racially discriminated against her in a way that white girls—and even lighter-skinned Native American girls—were spared. While white girls also experience sexist attempts to control their sexuality, Mary says that she was especially targeted in this way because of the color of her skin. When a nun called her promiscuous for holding hands with a boy, Mary rebelliously points out the hypocrisy of the missionary staff; while the Catholic staff preaches sexual abstinence, Mary’s accusation that the corpses of many white babies were found by the missionary school suggests that nuns killed their infants to maintain a veneer of chastity. Additionally, Mary points out a priest who sexually abused a girl in a different missionary school, which shows another way that Native American women's race affects the oppression they faced: they are more vulnerable to the abuses of authority figures, who believe they can prey upon the marginalized because they (the abusive authority figures) are protected by the institutions in power. In this case, the priest who abused a Native American girl was simply transferred to another school where, protected by the system of missionary schools, he could continue to molest young girls.
Themes
One day, a new priest was teaching English. During class, the priest commanded a shy student to repeat an answer over and over until he pronounced it correctly. Mary stood up and told the priest to stop mocking the boy. After class, the priest ordered Mary to stop taunting teachers. She punched him in the nose before wriggling free.
This anecdote illustrates the individual pain of one child who struggled to adjust to the missionary school, where the staff forced the children to speak English instead of their native languages. The priest who was teaching the class humiliated the boy instead of teaching him, which once again shows how the staff mistreated the Native American children in the schools. Mary took action, choosing resistance over passivity; even though she wasn't the one whom the priest mocked, she decided to stand up for the other student.
Themes
Mary ran to one of the nuns’ offices and demanded her diploma, adding that she was quitting school—she was tired of being treated so terribly. The nun gave in and told Mary that she was free to go. Years later, Mary became friends with the same priest she punched; he became an advocate for many Native American causes.
Mary's act of resistance led to her release from school, which illustrates how taking action against oppression can bring about meaningful change. She adds that the priest whom she punched eventually became an activist for Native American civil rights. Mary doesn’t specify whether it was her rebellion that persuaded him to re-examine his biases and actions, but it's possible that her outrage prompted him to reconsider his role as a teacher in a missionary school that traumatized Native American children. His later participation in the movement for Native American civil rights also demonstrates how the fight for equal rights is an inclusive one, and that anyone—regardless of race or religion—can participate.
Themes
