SOURCE: "Fleshing Out Our Story of America," in Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women, Vol. VI, No. 4, Summer, 1991, p. 5.

In the following excerpt, Skillman praises Brave Bird's candid portrayal of the American Indian Movement during the 1960s in Lakota Woman.

Mary Ellen Crow Dog tells such an entertaining story of her life in Lakota Woman that it is easy at times to overlook the fact that the tale is about the Native American struggle to stave off genocide. Crow Dog relates how a young hippie from New York visited the Rosebud reservation on which she lived in the late 1960s and challenged the "res" Indians: "Black people are getting it on. Indians are getting it on in St. Paul and California. How about you?"

The American Indian Movement spread like wildfire in the political vacuum that existed on the reservations, and of all the rights movements...