Mary Crow Dog
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Mary Crow Dog, also known as Mary Brave Bird (born 1953 on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota), is a Native American writer and activist. She is the author of two books, Lakota Woman and Ohitika Woman, and was the subject of the 1994 TNT and Jane Fonda produced movie Lakota Woman, Siege at Wounded Knee, starring Irene Bedard as Mary Crow Dog, depicting the events that occurred during the 1973 uprising of the AIM (American Indian Movement) organization and their stand-off at the grave site of the Wounded Knee massacre of December 1890.
Crow Dog's books and the movie talk about the conditions of the Sioux Indian and living on the South Dakota, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation under the leadership of tribal chairman, "Dickie" Wilson and the role of the FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and the treatment of the Native American's and their children in the mid-1900s.
Mary's first child, Pedro, was born during the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee. Pedro was the only child born at Wounded Knee, during the siege. Another woman was pregnant at that time, but had her child at a local hospital. Mary later married AIM spiritual leader Leonard Crow Dog. The couple had two sons, Anwah and June Bug. They also had one daughter, Jennifer. The 1991 movie, Incident at Oglala, The Leonard Peltier Story, produced by Robert Redford portrays the events that occurred two years after the siege, which graphically illustrate all of the points of Crow Dog's narrative from another point of view. Leonard Peltier is an AIM member who participated in the Wounded Knee stand off. He was subsequently arrested for the murder of an FBI agent.
A fictional movie inspired by these events is Thunder Heart (1992) starring Val Kilmer. The movie features characters who are images of Mary Crow Dog and Leonard Peltier and many others unknown.
