Gaining an Understanding of Mary Crow Dog, Essay

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gaining an understanding of Mary Crow Dog, what did you find most interesting about this chapter? Be sure to explain why you found it most interesting.

This chapter provides a lot of insight into gender roles and norms in the society, beyond learning about how these norms impacted Mary Crow Dog on a personal level. The phenomenon of child marriage, and of the lack of power women had over their own destinies, is evidence from the very first sentence of Chapter 12 "Sioux and Elephants Never Forget." The first sentence is tellingly written in the passive voice, when Mary Crow Dog writes about her marriage to Crow Dog. She writes, "I became Crow Dog's wife," not "I married Crow Dog," which would be the active voice phrasing. Mary Crow Dog purposely uses the passive voice because she was not even eighteen years old when she married. And more than that, the marriage evolved after Leonard Crow dog literally preyed on her when she was too young to resist a man with age, power, and status in the community. This chapter shows the status and role of women in Sioux society through practices like pervasiveness of child marriage.

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Mary Crow Dog writes, "I didn't want to be with him," and describes his kissing her as being a one-sided affair (p. 171). She was "cornered," like an animal (p. 172). It may even be qualified as rape, and would be called statutory rape in the white culture's law. Mary Crow Dog also had a free spirit that was difficult to tame. She was "in no way prepared" for the role she was required to fill as a submissive wife, a mother, and "housekeeper," which is code for domestic servant (p. 174). Domestic life for a Sioux woman was not easy, either, as poverty and lack of infrastructure meant no indoor plumbing and many discomforts especially in the wintertime.

One thing that becomes evident in Chapter 12 is the irony of Leonard Crow Dog being a civil rights leader who does not believe in or practice gender equality. Whereas Leonard Crow Dog was keenly aware of the senselessness of ethnic and racial hierarchies, he and other Lakota men viewed gender hierarchies as inevitable and even as sacred. After all, Leonard was a medicine man who was deeply respected in the community.

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