Lakota women's role in Mary Crow Dog's generation differs from traditional white culture of her era but are still below men in an unofficial hierarchy. Lakota women fight, drink, be rowdy, and do many things men do including fighting off cops. Many of MCD's interactions with brawls are Sioux and white men fighting with herself inserting herself where she can. No white women are involved in the brawls except if a woman angers MCD in bar when she is drunk. In the AIM movement the characteristic of Lakota women being much more aggressive than white women but less than any man is revealed again. The men led the AIM movement becoming a psuedo-warrior that women praised. Women either attempted to be "free" with the warriors or become their wife. Women participated in the movement that made its way all the way to DC however, men were always at the forefront.
MCD addresses this disparity between the two sexes after analyzing another Native American culture, the Pueblo. "I could not help noticing the great role women played in Pueblo society. Women owned the houses and actually built them. Children often got their mother's last name, not their father's. Sons joined their mothers' clans. It made me a little jealous" (106). She blatantly states her jealousy for the female hierarchy advantage in Pueblo society. She subtly brings up her discontent with her status as a woman in her writing but rarely as open than on page 106.
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