Joe Medicine Crow on early life on the Crow Reservation and government repression

Joe Medicine Crow recounts the government oppression during the early reservation period, which prohibited the Indians from all activities related to their traditional culture. He speaks as an historian, but also from his own personal experience, being raised by grandparents from the nomadic pre-reservation days. Joe Medicine Crow (1913-2016) was the Crow Tribal Historian and a revered elder of the Crow tribe. In 1939, he was the first member of the Crow tribe to obtain a master’s degree. His Master’s thesis, “The Effects of European Culture Contact upon the Economic, Social, and Religious Life of the Crow Indians,” remains the most widely read source on Crow culture. He received honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Southern California and Rocky Mountain College. Medicine Crow was the last traditional Plains war chief, having achieved the war deeds necessary to be declared a “chief” during World War II.