Warrior Princesses Strike Back: Lakota Twins on Overcoming Oppression and Healing

Interspersing personal memoir with radical notions of self-help and collective recovery, Warrior Princesses Strike Back focuses how Indigenous activist strategies can be a crucial roadmap for contemporary truth and healing.

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is home to the original people of this land, yet it is also one of the poorest communities in America. Through intimate and vulnerable memoir, Lakota twin sisters Sarah Eagle Heart and Emma Eagle Heart-White recount growing up on the reservation and overcoming enormous odds, first as teenaged girls in a majority-white high school, and then battling bias in their professional careers. Woven throughout are self-help strategies centering women of color, that combine marginalized histories, psychological research on trauma, and perspectives on “decolonial therapy.” Through the lens of Indigenous activism, the Eagle Hearts explore the possibility of healing intergenerational and personal trauma by focusing traditional strategies of reciprocity, acknowledgement, and collectivism.