Madonna Swan
Madonna Mary Swan-Abdalla (September 12, 1928 – 1993) was an American Indian woman Lakota. Born on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, Madonna Swan prevailed over extreme difficulties including the Native American tuberculosis epidemic of the 20th century to lead a fulfilled life. She overcame the terrible conditions of socio-economic deprivation, restricted education, poor health care, and confinement to the Indian tuberculosis sanatorium and the reservation, to attend college, become a Head Start teacher, marry, raise a child, and be named Native American Woman of the Year. Madonna Swan become an inspiration to both Indian and non-Indian women.
In the autobiographical narrative Madonna Swan: A Lakota Woman’s Story as told through the author Mark St. Pierre, Madonna Swan relates the stories of her life.
Read more about Madonna Swan: Early Life, Boarding School and Disease, Tuberculosis and Life At The Indian Sanatorium, Sanator, Life After Tuberculosis, Legacy
Famous quotes containing the words madonna and/or swan:
“In our minds lives the madonna image—the all-embracing, all- giving tranquil mother of a Raphael painting, one child at her breast, another at her feet; a woman fulfilled, one who asks nothing more than to nurture and nourish. This creature of fantasy, this myth, is the model—the unattainable ideal against which women measure, not only their performance, but their feelings about being mothers.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“I have seen this swan and
I have seen you; I have seen ambition without
understanding in a variety of forms.”
—Marianne Moore (1887–1972)