While still a teenager, Brave Bird became involved in the protest activities of AIM, where she began to find new spirit and meaning in being Indian.

She later ran away from the school and began her teenage life drinking heavily and getting into fights. Francis Mission boarding school at the age of five, where she reported that nuns beat Indian students who practiced native customs or spoke their native languages. Her mother would not teach her her native language because, she said, “speaking Indian would only hold you back, turn you the wrong way.” She was sent to St. Although she descended from a distinguished family, she was not taught a great deal about her heritage. Growing up on the Rosebud Reservation, Brave Bird faced poverty, racism, and brutality from an early age. He was a descendant of the legendary warrior Pakeska Maza (“Iron Shell”), who became chief of the Wablenicha (“Orphan Band”) of the Brulé or Sicanju tribe of the Lakota Sioux. Robert Brave Bird trapped in the winter and farmed in the summer. While she studied nursing in Pierre, South Dakota, her four children were raised by their grandparents. Francis Mission boarding school where she was converted to Catholicism. Mary Brave Bird’s mother, Emily Brave Bird, had been raised in a tent in the village of He-Dog on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, then taken to St. Lakota Woman, written under the name Mary Crow Dog, portrays her life from her birth to 1977, and Ohitika Woman written under her current name of Mary Brave Bird, covers events up to 1992 and adds new details to the earlier history. In these two books, written 15 years apart, Brave Bird told how the American Indian Movement (AIM) gave meaning to her life.

Mary Brave Bird and her life story were published in two books: Lakota Woman and Ohitika Woman. 14, 2013) is known as Mary Brave Bird, also known as Mary Crow Dog and Mary Brave Woman Olguin.

Mary Brave Bird was an inspiring Brulé Lakota author and activist who was a member of the American Indian Movement during the 1970s and participated in some of their most publicized events, including the Wounded Knee Incident when she was 20 years old.

Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog