SOURCE: A review of Lakota Woman, in The New York Times Book Review, July 1, 1990, p. 15.

In the following review, Guthrie assesses Lakota Woman.

"Two thousand came to Wounded Knee in 1973. One stayed," reads the epitaph of a Sioux Indian buried at the South Dakota site. Mary Crow Dog was part of the 71-day siege of Wounded Knee's museum, church and trading post by the American Indian Movement. Seventeen years old at the time, she lost an uncle and bore a son during the takeover, which pitted the Federal Government's military might against medicine men and young men armed with old rifles. Ms. Crow Dog's Lakota Woman, written with Richard Erdoes, the author of The Pueblo Indians and The Sun Dance People, details how she arrived at that fateful confrontation. Raised by Sioux grandparents and a mother who refused to teach her the native language because "speaking Indian would...