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Rebecca Martinez
English 101 Sec. 28192
Comparison: Civilize Them with a Stick
29 August 2015
Treated Like Dogs
In the essay written by Mary Crow Dog and Richard Erdoes, Civilize Them with a
Stick, is about her childhood spent in a godawful boarding school in St. Francis. Marys
experience could be compared to Immaculees experience in Rwanda. These two woman endured
relentless days in which discrimination and abuse ceased to never end. The battle between two
cultures in which they had to adapt, but never seem to be understood, were forced to live with the
torment they faced every day. These two woman who were in different parts of the world, were
facing the same kind of racial conflict in their own land.
The burden Immaculee faced during the genocide of Rwanda, was losing every member
of her family. Following up to insomnia, a nightmare that she couldnt wake up from. Ninety-one
days of vigilance, making sure not to make a sound, or death would come to her and the other
five woman holding refuge. The tribulation of Mary Crow Dog is similar to that of Immaculee,
except that Marys pain came from a Free Country, a land of her people, which has been
overrun by the white. Taking place in the 1960s, an era in which history changed, an era in
which segregation ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964; It seemed as if St. Francis didnt care
much of what was happening outside their school walls. Mary described her school as a Nazi
concentration camp. Given the spoils as their meal of the day, while the nuns, priests and
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privileged ones ate fresh ham and eggs. Immaculee and the other women had to go days on end
without any food, just as bad as mold grown food Mary ate.
Much like Immaculee, Mary was taken away as a child to attend first grade at St. Francis,
taken away from her family and could only see them for a week every year. Just as the Hutus
persecuted Tutsies in Rwanda, the Native Americans in St. Francis were also being mistreated.
They were treated like dogs, expected to obey their every command and not bite the hand that
fed them. The nuns way of conduct was believing that beating the Indian girls with a stick
would correct their misconduct. Little did they know, the actions the nuns took, rebelled the
girls, the girls stood up for themselves creating an underground paper which they exposed about
life inside St. Francis. These nuns were contradicting, saying sin was within the girls, when in
reality the priests were fornicating with the nuns; the priests were sexually abusing the little girls
from the school.
Fear is very common for the women in Immaculees and Marys surroundings. Fear is
what eats at your brain and torments you with thoughts of surrendering to the man with the whip,
in Immaculees case, the man with the machete. Fear could get the best of you, telling you have
lost this battle and its better to get it over and done with. In the genocide of Rwanda, Immaculee
gave up for a moment, telling Pastor Murinzi if the Hutus have found them in the bathroom it
didnt matter if they were enraged more than what they were because they were going to die
either way. Same goes to the girls at St. Francis who had given up and hanged themselves,
jumped out of a window trying to kill themselves, trying to escape from the nuns and priests

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who have been agonizing them like demons from hell. Immaculee and Mary both fought for life,
withstanding thoughts of giving up, because they wanted to live and keep on enduring the
persecution they faced in their time.