SOURCE: "Search for an Indian Self," in The Washington Post, June 19, 1990, p. 4.

Bataille is an American educator and author of several books on Native American culture. In the following favorable review of Lakota Woman, she praises Brave Bird's candor but suggests that the work's "cyclical" structure may be difficult for readers used to linear narratives and chronological autobiographies.

Mary Crow Dog's autobiography, Lakota Woman, is the story of one woman; however, it tells the tale of many Indian women who have faced the wrath and the pride of their own men and the brutality of government control, and benign neglect, but who have emerged strong and whole in spite of their wounds. Mary Crow Dog is a Lakota woman, and the narrative resonates with the anguish of that reality.

Hers is a harsh story of enduring the whip of Catholic nuns in boarding school and the pain of...