Leonard Crow Dog was born on August 18, 1942, into a Sicangu Lakota family on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
[citation needed] AIM organized the large march of the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties to Washington, D.C., to demand presidential attention to Indian issues.
Crow Dog’s priorities shaped the Native American Self-Determination and Education Act,[citation needed] a landmark bill signed in 1975 that swung the pendulum away from assimilation and toward greater respect for cultural traditions.
In 1973 the Oglala Lakota of Pine Ridge took over the village of Wounded Knee to demand justice from the federal government and an end to Wilson's tenure.
After receiving a vision, Jerome had warned several dancers to stay away from a large gathering of tribes in 1890; he saved them from being victims of the Wounded Knee Massacre.
[citation needed]Shortly after the Wounded Knee incident ended, the federal government began prosecuting AIM leaders for various charges.
They arrested Crow Dog as a suspect; he was first held at the maximum security unit at Leavenworth, where he was placed in solitary confinement for two weeks.
His son, Leonard Alden Crow Dog, is an artist, spiritual Leader and Sundance Chief; Jancita Eagle Deer was his step-daughter.
[1][4] In a statement posted on Facebook, Philip Yenyo, executive director of the American Indian Movement of Ohio, called Crow Dog's death a "huge loss to the Indigenous community of Turtle Island and to the American Indian Movement.”[4] In 1978, Leonard Crow Dog was part of The Longest Walk from Washington, D.C., to the Black Hills.
Crow Dog also details Lakota tribal ceremonies and their meanings, and his perspective on the 1972 march on Washington and the 1973 siege of Wounded Knee.