Madonna Thunder Hawk
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Madonna Thunder Hawk
Madonna Thunder Hawk (1940 – ) is Oohenumpa Lakota from the Cheyenne River Reservation. She is a veteran of every modern Native resistance action from the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969-71, Mount Rushmore in 1970 & 1971, Wounded Knee in 1973, to Standing Rock in 2016-17. She’s a firm believer in the idea that community organizing and advocating for social change is a commitment to your ancestors and your grandchildren—it’s not a duty from which one retires. Instead, it is ongoing and serves as a bridge between generations.
Raised across the Oceti Sakowin homelands, she first became active in the late 1960s as a member and leader in the American Indian Movement (AIM). In the 1970s, she co-founded the ‘We Will Remember Survival School/Group’, Women of All Red Nations (WARN), the Black Hills Alliance (BHA), and was a tribal liaison for WKLD/OC. She continues her work to protect Native children and the land through the Wašágiya Najin Grandmothers’ Group at home in Swift Bird on Cheyenne River.
Thunder Hawk was arrested on the first night of the occupation but later snuck back in against the magistrate’s orders, packing in ammunition. She was a medic inside Wounded Knee, and later was among the first group of activists facing trial.
“At Wounded Knee I realized that there’s very few people that experience true freedom…physical freedom, but also mental freedom, emotional freedom. We had the freedom to build a small society right there for the short time it lasted.”
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