53 pages • 1 hour read
Lakota Woman
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Drinking and Fighting”
After quitting school, Crow Dog spends her time in poor towns on the reservation, where “lease money and ADC checks were drunk up” (43) and people cram into broken-down cars to joyride from town to town. Though she was a heavy drinker at an early age, Crow Dog herself doesn’t drink anymore; she stopped when she “felt there was a purpose to [her] life” (45).
Drinking is illegal on the reservation, but towns within the reservation are incorporated, or put “under white man’s law” (46); also, bootleggers are easy to find. Crow Dog’s older sister, Barb, sometimes catches Crow Dog drinking or smoking and angrily confiscates the alcohol or cigarette, insisting she is too young. Crow Dog retorts that Barb does those things, too.
Fighting and drunk driving are common, and people are often killed or injured. Crow Dog describes an incident in which she fights a woman who makes a racist comment in a bar, as well as a large drunken brawl between full-bloods (“whoever thinks, sings, and speaks Indian”) and half-bloods (“whoever acts and thinks like a white man” [49]). Drinking makes people remember “all the old hatreds, real and imagined” (48). Native Americans suffer racial attacks exacerbated by alcohol. The women additionally have to fend off “brutalization and sexual advances” (51).
Now that she’s a mother, Crow Dog tries to avoid fights, but sometimes they’re unavoidable. Once, she, her husband and baby, and two friends are violently attacked by a group of armed, drunken white men hurling racist insults. Though Crow Dog and her husband plead for peace, the white men beat them and destroy their car with baseball bats. Nearby officers merely watch with amusement; ultimately, they send the white men home and arrest the Native Americans.
Crow Dog stops drinking permanently after an incident in which alcohol fails to alleviate her sorrow at the loss of a friend. She concludes the chapter by stating that the “Indian drinking problem” is in fact “a white problem,” for white men make and distribute it, and they “cause the conditions that make Indians drink in the first place” (54).
Chapter 5 Summary: “Aimlessness”
Crow Dog doesn’t feel she belongs anywhere. She and her mother clash frequently. Her mother worries about what her friends will think of her pregnant daughters and calls Barb “a no-good whore” (56). Crow Dog attempts to assuage her restlessness by running away. However, “[n]owhere was better than the place I was in” (56).
She attaches herself to a large group of kids who “drifted from place to place, meeting new people, having a good time” (58). They also steal food, drink, and use drugs, “waiting for something, for a sign” (59).
Crow Dog and her friends find “moral satisfaction” (60) in stealing; they see it as compensation for what’s been taken from their people. White shopkeepers watch them closely, a practice that makes “even the most honest, law-abiding person” (62) yearn to steal something. Crow Dog steals jewelry, packages, and a credit card from an admiral’s wife. Ultimately, she decides it’s “not worth the risks” and that “there were better, more mature ways to fight for my rights” (64).
People in these “roaming bands” are sexually promiscuous. Most of the young men expect sex but are uninterested in relationships. As a result, Crow Dog “was a lot by myself and happy that way” (68). She speculates that “a little residue remained” (65) of their mother’s Christianity.
Crow Dog is brutally raped when she’s a teenager; ashamed, she tells no one. White officers frequently arrest Native American girls and rape them in jail or in squad cars. Few girls come forward because the courts are told “they’re always asking for it’” (68).
Crow Dog discusses the “curious contradiction in Sioux society” (65). Warrior women fill Sioux legends, and girls’ first periods used to be celebrated. Now, women are honored “[f]or being good leaders, quilters, tanners, moccasin makers, and child-bearers” (66). No celebration surrounds a girl’s first period, and women during “moontime” (67) are considered too powerful to participate in rituals.
Despite this contradiction, Sioux men come to women’s defense when they’re harassed by white men. In one instance, two Sioux men defending Barb are beaten badly; the police arrive to arrest them and others who’d tried to help. A tense standoff occurs. Though no charges are made, it remains an example of how “one little incident will set off a major confrontation” (72).
Chapter 6 Summary: “We AIM Not to Please”
In 1971, Crow Dog attends a meeting with the American Indian Movement, which “hit our reservation like a tornado” (73). A Chippewa speaker talks about “genocide and sovereignty, about tribal leaders selling out and kissing ass”; Leonard Crow Dog speaks, saying “he was not afraid to die for his people” (75).
At first, AIM is suspicious of all outsiders. However, they experience a “widening of our horizons” (77) as they talk to more people, learn from black civil rights groups, and gain support from white celebrities.
Crow Dog engages in a short relationship and becomes pregnant. Her sister has a cesarean in the hospital, where her uterus is removed without her consent; her baby dies in the hospital after two hours.
The kids of AIM protest at anthropological sites and trials. Their movement is joined by “traditional old, full-blood medicine men” who “still remembered a time when Indians were Indians” (79). The elderly teach young AIM members legends and rituals, connecting them to their past.
Crow Dog states that though they “were always the victims” (80), AIM is feared. They’re accused of planning horrific acts of violence, and gun sales soar after their appearances. Crow Dog speculates that “it was their bad conscience which made the local whites hate us so much” (81).
Partly in response to incidents in which white men murder Native Americans without retribution, AIM and other organizations plan the Trail of Broken Treaties, a caravan leading to Washington, DC. The caravan retraces the Trail of Tears and represents the coming together of different tribes. When they arrive, they are begrudgingly offered cold, pest-infested accommodations and go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to complain. Before they know it, they’ve taken over the building.
Though they’d hoped for a peaceful, amicable visit, they’re ignored by politicians. Realizing “as long as we ‘behaved nicely’ nobody gave a damn about us” (88), they force the guards from the building and develop a list of twenty demands, which are rejected. Police clash with their security, and they’re ordered to leave the building.
After a week-long standoff, the government promises to consider their points and sends them home without prosecuting. Though the points are never actualized, AIM considers it a moral victory. They “had faced White America collectively, not as individual tribes” (91).
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Crow Dog details how generations have learned to cope with racism and discrimination in different ways. She describes her mother’s “Puritan” values (56), and says that she and her mother “spoke a very different language” (57). Her mother, “concerned about her neighbors’ attitude about us” (56) and fitting in with “the right kind of people” (57), belongs to the “lost” generation of middle-aged people who were waiting for white people to save them. When AIM is joined by medicine men, it’s “the real old folks” who support them, those “who still remembered a time when Indians were Indians” (79). However, those of her mother’s generation, too young to remember, do anything possible to ensure their children enjoy a life better than their own—even if they must “whitemanize” to do it.
Crow Dog describes feeling lost and the many ways she attempts to find meaning in her life. As established in the first three chapters, drugs and alcohol are rampant on the reservation and in Crow Dog’s life. However, they fail to fill the emotional void left when their culture is taken from them. Though people “drink to forget,” drinking actually makes them remember “all the old insults and hatreds, real and imagined” (48). It fails to comfort her after the loss of her friend. Like the warrior men whose only outlet is drinking and fighting, Crow Dog and her sister, Barb, use drugs as a vehicle to unearth “a sign,” a “message [from] the eagle” (59) that never comes. Crow Dog feels “an urge to get away, no matter where” (56). Her wandering from town to town is indicative of her search for meaning in a life in which she’s not allowed to be who she really is.
Though she continues to try to find herself, white people she encounters seem to believe they know exactly who she is. Racial profiling is a constant danger: Native American drivers are pulled over for the slightest reasons, and even the most law-abiding Native Americans are watched warily by shopkeepers. She and her husband are attacked outside a motel, and an incident in which Barb is sexually harassed escalates until white officers threaten to arrest the Native American men who defend her. Native American rape victims don’t come forward because the courts assume they were “asking for it” (68).
Discrimination and attacks by white people have the effect of creating in Crow Dog and others exactly the kind of lawlessness and aggression white people criticize. For example, white men sell them the alcohol they use to assuage the depression they suffer on the reservations. Perhaps even more importantly, the “exploiting” (81) of the Native Americans—such as the government agents’ stealing of rations while “[o]n some reservations people were starving to death” (60)—creates the poverty that makes stealing almost necessary for survival. Native Americans like Crow Dog begin to see stealing as enacting justice, as “getting a little of our own back” (61) after being “shadowed and harassed” (65). They also learn quickly that diplomacy doesn’t help them win their rights: “support and media coverage” (88) come only when they demand it. In short, after suffering “[e]nough of this shit,” they decide to forcefully take back the rights that were taken from them, and in the process they reconnect with their culture, so they can say, “I am an Indian again” (83).
Unlock all 53 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs