Madonna Thunder Hawk

Madonna Gilbert
Native name Madonna Thunder Hawk
Born Madonna Gilbert
1940 (age 75–76)[1]
Yankton Sioux Reservation
Nationality American Indian
Ethnicity Oohenumpa
Occupation Grassroots activist
Water Rights activist
Years active 1969–present
Organization American Indian Movement
Pie Patrol[2]
Women of All Red Nations
Black Hills Alliance[3]
Wounded Knee Legal Defense Offense Committee (WKLDOC)
Known for Occupation of Alcatraz
Wounded Knee incident
We Will Remember Survival School
Lakota Law Project
Relatives Russell Means (first cousin)[4]
Website Lakota Law People Project

Madonna Thunder Hawk, born Madonna Gilbert, is the name of a Native American civil rights activist who is best known for her roles as a leader in the American Indian Movement (AIM), a co-founder of the American Indian organization Women of All Red Nations as well as the organizer and tribal liaison of the Lakota Law Project.[5]

Early life

Born in 1940 as Madonna Gilbert, Thunder Hawk was born on the Yankton Sioux Reservation. She hailed from the Feather Necklace Tiospaye (extended family).[6] Madonna was raised in a strict environment by her mother, who had been raised in the culturally restrictive environment within the boarding schools of the 1920s and 1930s.[1] She is apart of the Oohenumpa band of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.[3] During her lifetime, Gilbert graduated with her bachelor's degree in human services.[7]

Activism

Madonna was an early proponent of the Red Power Movement. She took part in the 1969-1971 Occupation of Alcatraz,[8] with the goal of persuading the federal government to end its policy of termination and adopt an official policy of Indian self-determination.[9]

Madonna took part in the American Indian Movement occupation of the Wounded Knee. She was a member of the Pie Patrol, a group of women active in AIM, consisting of Madonna Gilbert, Thelma Rios-Conroy, Theda Nelson-Clark,[10] and Lorelei DeCora Means.[8] Mary Crow Dog (née Moore), wife of civil rights activist Leonard Crow Dog, who was also present during the siege at Wounded Knee, referred to the Pie Patrol as "loud-mouth city women, media conscious and hugging the limelight," who loved the camera and took credit for what the women of AIM were doing behind the scenes. This group of women bore particular resentment against an individual by the name of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash.[11] Anna Mae, a MikMaq woman from Nova Scotia, was having an affair with Dennis Banks, founder of the American Indian Movement while he was still involved in a common-law marriage with Darlene “Kamook” Nichols.[12] The affair did not sit well with the women of different tribal affiliations within the movement, and these women (as well as the Pie Patrol) viewed the relationship as a threat to AIM’s stability.[11]

Madonna Gilbert also served as director of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Offense Committee (WKLDOC) in December 1975.[10] She was also participant in the interrogation of Annie Mae, where she slapped Annie Mae around.[13][14]

Various sources have placed Madonna in the lone medical facility operated by AIM during the 20th-century Wounded Knee Siege when Ray Robinson was brought into the facility.[13] One account details how Robinson was shot in the knee, dragged outside, beaten and taken to the Wounded Knee Medical Clinic ran by Madonna Gilbert Thunderhawk and Lorelei DeCora Means, as well as several other volunteer nurses and medics. Ray was then reportedly shoved into a closet, where he died of exsanguination.[15]

Madonna, along with Lorelei De Cora, founded and established, the 'We Will Remember Survival School,' a place where American Indian youth whose parents were facing federal charges or who had dropped out of the secondary education system.[3] Specifically, the school was founded for the children of participants who were defendants in the Wounded Knee trials which followed the American Indian Movement occupation of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This alternative model was a component of the National Federation of Native-Controlled Survival Schools that was established during the movement.

Thunder Hawk was a co-founder and spokesperson for the Black Hills Alliance. The Black Hills Alliance was responsible for preventing the Union Carbide corporation from mining uranium on sacred Lakota land.[3] Thunder Hawk fought to preserve the land in sacred Black Hills from developers wishing to raze the area, and conducted analyses on the water supplies on the Pine Ridge Indian Resrvation, proving there were dangerously high levels of radiation in the water supply. The result of her activism was the implementation of a new water system.[7]

Madonna also one of the original co-founders of The Lakota Peoples Law Project (LPLP), whose main objectives are geared at more vigilant federal enforcement, as well as the reform of The Indian Children Welfare Act (ICWA) so that American Indian children continue living with their families, or at least on the reservation.[16]

Filmography

Film
Year Film Role Notes
1992 Incident at Oglala Herself Documentary
1996 Crazy Horse Head Seamstress Costume and Wardrobe Department (1 credit)
2009 William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe Herself Documentary
Television
Year Title Role Notes
2009 The American Experience Herself One Episode: We Shall Remain: Part V - Wounded Knee (PBS Documentary)

Legacy

Madonna has also been mentioned in numerous publications, including Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War, authored by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, ETHNOGRAPHIES OF CONSERVATION: Environmentalism and the Distribution of Privilege, edited by David G. Anderson and Eeva Berglund, We Worry about Survival: American Indian Women, Sovereignty, and the Right to Bear and Raise Children in the 1970s, authored by Meg Devlin O'Sullivan, Timelines of American Women's History, authored by Sue Heinemann and American Nations: Encounters in Indian Country, 1850 to the Present, edited by Frederick Hoxie, Peter Mancall and James Merrell.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Jessepe, Lorraine (14 October 2010). "Red Power activist Madonna Thunder Hawk going strong at 70". Vermonters Concerned on Native American Affairs. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
  2. ↑ "Annie Mae Timeline I - Wounded Knee". Indian Country News. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Waterman Wittstock, Laura (31 October 2012). "Elizabeth Castle and Madonna Thunder Hawk". KFAI. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
  4. ↑ "Lakota People's Law Project's Madonna Thunder Hawk and Daniel Sheehan Remember Russell Means". PRWeb. 29 October 2012. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
  5. ↑ "Our Team". Lakota Law Project. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
  6. ↑ "Madonna Thunder Hawk to Present Cash Lecture at The U". 12 October 2007. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
  7. 1 2 Noriyuki, Duane (14 October 1998). "The Women of Wounded Knee". DickShovel. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
  8. 1 2 "An Evening with Madonna Thunderhawk A Fundraising Event for the Lakota People's Law Project". Brecht Forum. 21 April 2007. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
  9. ↑ "Alcatraz is Not an Island". Indian Activism. 21 April 2007. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
  10. 1 2 O'Driscoll, Patrick (January 1997). "Annie Mae Pictou Aquash Time Line An Investigation by News From Indian Country". Dick Shovel. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
  11. 1 2 Konigsberg, Eric (25 April 2014). "Who Killed Anna Mae?". NYTimes. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
  12. ↑ Billingsley, Lloyd (2 May 2014). "American Indian Murder, Inc.". Front Page Magazine. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
  13. 1 2 "Madonna Gilbert Thunder Hawk". Oneida Eye. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
  14. ↑ "B. J. Jones Turns LLBO into Kangaroo Court". Influenced to Death. 20 October 2012. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
  15. ↑ Lammers, Dirk. "American Indian Movement & Wounded Knee". First Thoughts. Retrieved 22 August 2014.
  16. ↑ Morris, Dottie (21 April 2011). "Madonna Thunder Hawk and JJ Kent on Campus April 26". Keene State University. Retrieved 22 August 2014.

External links

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