Prompt 6: Lakota Woman Paragraph 1 Chapter 4 of Crow Dog’s “Lakota Woman” titled “Drinking and Fighting” highlights the alcohol/drug abuse that has overtaken many Native American communities as well as the causes and effects of substances penetrating into the lives of the Indians. In the last few sentences of this chapter Crow Dog explains, “People talk about the “Indian drinking problem,” but we say that it is a white problem. White men invented whiskey and brought it to America. They manufacture, advertise, and sell it to us. They make the profit on it and cause the conditions that make Indians drink in the first place.” (Crow Dog 39). Crow Dog emphasizes on the conditions throughout her chapter that brought Indians to drink/abuse drugs mentioning squalid living conditions, broken families, violence, and racism. It should be noted that Indians being forced onto a reservation separated them from the rest of civilization in which they lacked basic utilities, access to media, and even adequate services such as medical/police. The effects of alcohol on the Indian community is harsh enough to turn even decent people into degenerates. Crow Dog recalls “One of the nicest, gentlest men I knew killed his wife in a drunken rage.”(Crow Dog 36). This is an instance of what a substance can do to a family and the ripple effects it can have on the tight knit reservations. In other words, although alcohol provides a temporary escape from a miserable reality, it serves as the bane to the existence of Native Americans. Paragraph 2 Chapter 3 titled “Civilize them with a stick” stood out as it encompasses the brutalities faced by young Native American children shipped off to mission institutions such as St. Francis as part of an effort to assimilate them into American culture. The conditions faced included that of brainwashing, mental, physical, and sexual abuse from the nuns and priests. One such incident included Crow Dog’s grandmother being locked in an attic for a week after being caught playing with jacks instead of praying. After attempting to escape, she would be subject to longer solitude along with beatings/whippings. Physical abuse was commonplace in this institution, especially towards Native American girls. If nuns caught girls praying to the Indian deity, Wakan Tanka, they were beaten and whipped. It should also be noted that the nuns would try to “cleanse” new joins in St. Francis by methods that would be considered barbaric in today’s standards. Crow Dog recounts that, “...they would dump the children into tubs of alcohol, a sort of rubbing alcohol, “to get the germs off.”” (Crow Dog 28). This was done according to racist stereotypes that Indians were unkept or lacked hygiene due to the assumption that they were uncivilized and did not have the same technology as white people such as plumbing or electrcity. The atrocities in St Francis also highlight instances of sexual assault from priests being swept under the rug. After experiencing this, Crow Dog mentions, “So there was this too to contend with— sexual harassment. We complained to the student body. The nuns said we just had a dirty mind.”(Crow Dog 30). The ignorance from higher authority surrounding this event is appalling to say the least since it displays little regard for the mental/physical well being of the boys/girls forced to attend the mission. Attempts were made to spread the news of mistreatment when an activist associated with movements such as Black Panther or Young Lords made contact with Crow Dog and encouraged her to speak out against the horror faced by Native American mission children. And so a paper called Red Panther was formed as an effort to spread the word, however, this only resulted in more disciplinary action from the nuns up until the point where Crow Dog quit the mission. To summarize, this passage is a reminder of the difficult trials faced by young Native American boys and girls being forced to acclimate to the white people’s way of life. Paragraph 3 Crow Dog’s autobiography coincides with Ligon’s “Double America” installation in that it shows two sides of one nation. America is commonly perceived as a welcoming, bountiful, and free nation in which everyone lives a better quality of life than the rest of the world. There is an notion that America is more developed and opportunities for becoming wealthy and influential on society is a regular occurrence here, even for underprivileged people. This is not always the case, however, as Crow Dog’s book highlights the surreal living conditions of the Native Americans combined with violence, racism, and isolation from white society due to ethnic differences. As a result of these trials against the Indians, they have succumbed to a poor quality of life in which they lack even the most basic resources such as running water. Crow Dog mentions how far behind Native American communities are by explaining the lack of media available stating that, “We knew little about the outside world, having no radio and no TV. Maybe that was a blessing”(Crow Dog 19). While she may have interpreted that as a good thing to be away from television, it does show that Native Americans have little awareness of how life could be better for them; they, therefore, continue to toil without having a share of the fruits of the developed world. Having being faced with constant racism and violence from white communities and authorities, it is hard for Native Americans to level up in society beyond working menial labor jobs or taking to substances to cope with reality. Regarding the common good, Native Americans are held back from participating in the idea of “land of the free” in which they are met with scrutiny if they try to act as individuals or do what they wish in their own cultural ways alongside white Americans. To recap on the connection between the works of Crow Dog and Ligon, America has two sides to it, a prosperous half rich with opportunity and wellbeing and a struggling half that suffers the effects of this development from being pushed away and shunned by this prosperous half. Works Cited - Crow, Dog, Mary, and Richard Erdoes. Lakota Woman, Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, Accessed 29 Nov 2023. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/templeuniv-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5503899. - Ligon, Glenn, Double America, National Gallery of Art, 2012, Double America, Ligon (nga.gov). Accessed 29 Nov 2023.
