![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() She recalls finding among her grandfather's things a poster he had been given to tack over his boarding school bed. Mary looks back at the history of Indian boarding schools and names them as the "white Indian-lovers' " solution to the "Indian problem." In order to prevent the outright extermination of the Indians, these people established schools where Indian children were to become "useful farmhands, laborers and chambermaids who will break their backs for you at low wages." ![]() (who) like all Sioux, were a horse people, fierce riders and raiders, great warriors." But the Sioux were all driven into reservations between 18, and their children, like Mary and her sister Barbara, were forceably sent to boarding schools. "I belong to the "Burned Thigh,' the Brule Tribe. Born into harsh poverty on the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota, Mary experienced the bitter lot of a formerly proud people. Her simple sentence, "That is not easy," echoes through the narrative as stark understatement. I am a woman of the Red Nation, a Sioux woman. "I am Mary Brave Bird," she writes "After I had my baby during the siege of Wounded Knee they gave me a special name _ Ohitika Win, Brave Woman, and fastened an eagle plume in my hair, singing brave-heart songs for me. The narrator establishes herself as one of the women determined to keep her nation alive. ![]()
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