Racism and Sexism Theme Analysis

In the first paragraph of Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog states that being “a Sioux woman […] is not easy.” Throughout the memoir, she describes many ways in which Lakota women—and Native American women in general—face oppression. Native Americans have long suffered from poverty, police brutality, and unemployment at disproportionate rates. Moreover, Mary argues that the U.S. government (and white society more broadly) racially discriminates against Native Americans by stripping them of their civil rights, resources, and cultural traditions. Overlapping with this oppression is the sexism and sexual violence that Native American women face, both from within and outside of their indigenous communities. As Mary describes through multiple anecdotes, Native American women are often victims of gender discrimination, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and forced sterilization. Although the women’s liberation movement was in force at the time the memoir primarily takes place (the early 1970s), Mary makes it clear that this movement was “mainly a white, upper-middle-class affair of little use to a reservation Indian woman”—the movement simply didn’t address the unique issues that Native American women experience. Through her memoir, Mary suggests that Native American women face a more complex form of oppression than white women do, as they are subjected to both sexism and racism.

The U.S. government’s racist policies create conditions for Native Americans that lead to widespread sexism and gender-specific hardships, often to a degree that is more extreme than what the average white woman experiences. The poverty that plagues Native American communities is the result of several hundred years of governmental policies designed to take land and resources from indigenous people for the profit of the U.S. government and white colonizers. Mary describes how the “reservation towns without hope” eat away at the inhabitants’ morale. With “no jobs, [and] no money” available, many Native Americans develop a toxic relationship with alcohol that often results in domestic abuse. While domestic abuse is also a problem that white women face, studies show that Native American women experience it at a higher rate than white women. In addition, the U.S. government’s attempts to dismantle cultural traditions drastically affected Native American family dynamics. For example, prior to colonization, Lakota society was structured around the tiyospaye, or “the extended family group.” But “the government tore the tiyospaye apart and forced the Sioux into […] nuclear famil[ies],” which were easier for the government to manipulate. Between the destruction of the tiyospaye and the conditions of poverty that often lead men to “live away from their children,” women are often left with the financial burden of raising children alone, a situation that a disproportionate number of Native American women find themselves in. Mary also notes that these situations contribute to sexist expectations for women. She says that “among Plains tribes, some men think that all a woman is good for is to crawl into the sack with them and mind the children. It compensates for what white society has done to them.” She links racism to the sexism that Native American women experience by suggesting that, in response to white society’s dehumanizing discrimination against Native American men, they (the men) impose misogynistic expectations on Native American women because they want to feel like they still have power over another group.

The U.S. government and white society’s racism also leads to targeted gender discrimination and sexual violence against Native American women. From the beginning of her memoir, Mary describes how Native American women suffer disproportionately from sexual assault and harassment from white men (including government officials), which indicates how white society treats Native American women as inferior. She notes how “the favorite sport of white state troopers and cops was to arrest young Indian girls […] take them to the drunk tanks in their jails, and there rape them.” Because Native American women “are seldom taken seriously” and are often unsupported by the U.S.’s legal and justice systems, the perpetrators get away with their violent crimes. Native American women are also targeted for forced sterilizations. Both Mary’s mother and sister Barbara were sterilized against their will, which reflects the government’s attempts to prevent Native Americans from populating. White women do not experience this same widespread violation of their reproductive rights, suggesting that Native American women are uniquely targeted due to a combination of their race and their sex.

Because the sexism that Native American women face is complicated by racism, the issues addressed by the mainstream feminist movement of the 1970s (which catered to white women) often felt secondary to the forms of oppression that Native American women are subjected to. Mary mentions several times that white women’s form of “women’s lib was a white, middle-class thing, and that at this critical stage we had other priorities.” In other words, because the women’s liberation movement centered white middle-class women—who already had many of the basic rights women of color were still deprived of—the issues that the movement addressed tended to exclude the problems faced by poor women and women of color. For example, while advocating for the right to abortion, white women neglected to protest the forced sterilizations that the government performed on indigenous women. Mary suggests that, for the Native American women, their allegiance and priorities lay with AIM and other indigenous civil rights movements, not with white women. At this time, indigenous women wanted to work with indigenous men to advocate against racism and for civil rights for Native Americans as a whole, not just women.

All the same, Mary agrees with some aspects of the mainstream feminist movement. She notes that, after spending time with her white feminist friends, she became more critical of how Native American men treated women, particularly where domestic abuse was concerned. But the point remains that, in many ways, the mainstream feminist movement of the 1970s did not support Native American women, as the movement did not address the mixture of racism and sexism that Native American women face.