Mary Ellen Moore-Richard, AIM activist and author, passes at 58

Monday, March 4, 2013  

Mary Ellen Moore-Richard, an American Indian Movement activist and author, died on February 14. She was 58.

Moore-Richard was a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. She joined AIM in her teens and later wrote about her experiences in Lakota Woman under the name Mary Crow Dog and Ohitika Woman under the name Mary Brave Bird.

“Before AIM came, people didn’t have their long hair, people didn’t have their Indian pride,” Moore-Richard told The Los Angeles Times. “Everybody was assimilated. These people still put AIM people down, but now they are having sun dances."

Moore-Richard also detailed her experiences in a Catholic boarding school on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation. She was punished for speaking the Lakota language and for criticizing priests and nuns at the school.

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Mary Ellen Moore-Richard, American Indian Memoirist, Dies at 58 (The New York Times 3/4)