Lakota Woman, winner of the American Book Award for 1991 and a national best-seller, is the moving and impassioned story of Mary Brave Bird (then Mary Crow Dog) growing up a Sioux in a hostile world. In Ohitika Woman, Mary continues her powerful, dramatic tale of ancient glory and present anguish, of courage and despair, of magic and mystery, and, above all, of the survival of both body and mind.
Coming home from Wounded Knee in 1973, married to American Indian Movement leader Leonard Crow Dog, Mary was a mother with the hope of a better life. But, as she says, "Trouble always finds me." With brutal frankness she bares her innermost thoughts, recounting the dark as well as the bright moments in her always eventful life. She not only talks about the stark truths of being a Native American living in a white-dominated society but also addresses what it is like to be a mother, a woman, and, rarest of all, a Sioux feminist. Filled with contrasts - between the life philosophies and life-styles of whites and Native Americans, between full-bloods and half-breeds, between the traditional Crow Dogs, adherents of the ancient Sioux religion, and the Christianized Brave Birds, and between men stuck in the old, macho ways and women struggling for a sense of self and freedom - Ohitika Woman is a powerful testament to Mary's will and spirit.
Mingling stories of her ancestors with those of her grandchildren, she discusses the breakdown of her marriage to Leonard Crow Dog, raising children when she wasn't sure where she would get her next dollar to survive, near fatal accidents, the death of close friends, her battle with alcoholism, and, finally, her union with Rudy, a Chicano, with whom Mary has found happiness.
Feisty and funny, angry and passionate, Mary Brave Bird once again presents a truly triumphant story of female valor in the face of overwhelming odds.