Mary Brave Bird

Mary Brave Bird , also known as Mary Brave Woman Olguin , Mary Crow Dog , Mary Ellen Moore-Richard (born September 26, 1954 in Rosebud , South Dakota ; † February 14, 2013 Crystal Lake , Nevada ) was a Lakota Sioux activist. In the 1970s she was a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Her autobiography Lakota Woman won the American Book Award in 1991 and was made into a film in 1994.

Life path

Mary Ellen Brave Bird was born into the Lakota tribe of the Sicangu Oyate (also known as Brulé ), who are native to the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. She grew up with her grandparents and was raised by them while her mother studied and worked at a nursing school. Brave Bird was shaped by her traditional Indian environment, especially by her great uncle Dick Fool Bull, who introduced her to the peyote religion. During the 1960s, Brave Bird attended St. Francis Indian School in St. Francis, South Dakota , a Roman Catholic monastery school. As a student, she described abuse and misconduct by priests and nuns and was punished for it. She described some of these experiences in her biography Lakota Woman in the chapter Civilize Them With a Stick .

In 1971, Brave Bird joined the AIM, fascinated by a speech by Leonard Crow Dog , the spiritual leader of the AIM. She participated in several well-known meetings and resistance movements. These include the 1972 March of the Broken Treaties and the subsequent siege of the BIA headquarters in Washington, DC It was also part of the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee . During this protest movement their first child Pedro was born - the only birth during the siege. For Bird's bravery, two medicine men named her Ohitaki Win or Brave Woman .

She soon married Crow Dog, with whom she had two sons, Anwah and June Bug, and a daughter, Jennifer . Later, however, the divorce took place at her request. In 1991 she married Rudi Olguin and had two children: the daughter Summer Rose and the son Rudi . After separating from Olguin, she stayed on the rosebud reservation with her youngest children. She became a grandmother and continued serving in the Native American Church.

Career as a writer

Brave Bird is the author of two autobiographies, Lakota Woman (1990) and Ohitika Woman (1993). The well-known Indian lawyer Richard Erdoes supported her with the publication. Lakota Woman was published under the name Mary Crow Dog and won the American Book Award in 1991 . It describes her life until 1977. Ohitika Woman continues her life story.

Brave Bird's books describe the circumstances of the Lakota Indians and how they grew up on the rosebud reservation. The conditions in the neighboring Pine Ridge reservation under the leadership of the tribal chairman Dick Wilson are also the subject of the texts. Brave Bird also wrote about the role of the FBI , the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and the treatment of Indians and their children in the mid-20th century. The work focuses on gender, identity and race. Both books have been translated into German, French and Dutch.

Movies

Crow Dog and Brave Bird made a brief appearance in the 1991 film The Doors directed by Oliver Stone .

Brave Bird's autobiography was filmed as Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee in 1994 . It was produced by TNT and Jane Fonda . Irene Bedard starred as Mary Brave Bird . This film depicts the events in Wounded Knee around 1973 and the uprising of the American Indian Movement. Brave Bird made a brief appearance in this film.

Quote

“None of us had any illusions that we could take over Wounded Knee unopposed. Our message to the government was: 'Come and discuss our demands or kill us'. "

- Mary Brave Bird on the dicission to occupy Wounded Knee 1973

bibliography

• Mary Crow Dog (co-author Richard Erdoes): Lakota Woman . New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990, several editions, most recently in 2011.
• Mary Brave Bird (co-author Richard Erdoes): Ohitika Woman . New York: Grove Press, 1993, several editions, most recently in 2009.

literature

• Christopher Wise, R. Todd Wise: A Conversation With Mary Brave Bird . In: The American Indian Quarterly, Volume 24, Number 3/2000, pp. 482–493 ( foreword online , preview online )
• Brave Bird, Mary , in: Gretchen M. Bataille, Laurie Lisa: Native American Women. A Biographical Dictionary , Routledge Chapman & Hall 2001, ISBN 978-0-415-93020-8 , pp. 50 f.
• Michelle Mannering: Mary Crow Dog. A Story of the American Indian Movement and the United States. , In: Charles William Calhoun (Ed.): The Human Tradition in America. 1865 To the Present , Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2003, ISBN 978-0-415-93020-8 , pp. 267-284
• Mary Brave Bird , in: Edward J. Rielly: Legends of American Indian Resistance , Greenwood Publishing 2011, ISBN 978-0-313-35209-6 , pp. 303-321

Web links

• Literature by and about Mary Brave Bird in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} William Yardley: Mary Ellen Moore-Richard, American Indian Memoirist, Dies at 58 , The New York Times March 3, 2013
2. ↑ ^{a b} Brave Bird, Mary , in: Gretchen M. Bataille, Laurie Lisa: Native American Women. A Biographical Dictionary, Routledge Chapman & Hall 2001, ISBN 978-0-415-93020-8 , pp. 50 f.
3. ↑ Michelle Mannering: Mary Crow Dog. A Story of the American Indian Movement and the United States., In: Charles William Calhoun (Ed.): The Human Tradition in America. 1865 To the Present, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2003, ISBN 978-0-415-93020-8 , pp. 267-284
4. ^ Foreword to: Christopher Wise, R. Todd Wise: A Conversation With Mary Brave Bird . In: The American Indian Quarterly, Volume 24, Number 3, Summer 2000
5. ^ Edward J. Rielly: Legends of American Indian Resistance , Greenwood Publishing 2011, ISBN 978-0-313-35209-6 , pp. 304f.
6. ^ Liz Sonneborn: Chronology of American Indian History . Infobase Publishing, New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-8160-6770-1 , p. 322