Margaret (Two Bulls) Hawk

Margaret (Two Bulls) Hawk was born in 1913 in Manderson, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Oglala Sioux. She was baptized as an infant at the local Episcopal church, St. Thomas’s, reaffirming the commitment to church that was central to the Two Bulls family’s life. As she later said, “We never missed Sunday worship because no one would be sick enough to stay home.”

At seven years old, Hawk began attending the Rapid City Indian School, where she would be a student for the next nine years. There she received an Anglo-American education with martial discipline, joking later that the students “could have qualified for West Point” due to the superintendent’s dedication to drills. She later attended St. Elizabeth’s Mission School, an Episcopal school in Wakpala, South Dakota.

Hawk married in 1933 and raised four children. Thirty years later, in 1963, she joined the Church Army, a lay missionary organization, and underwent missionary training in New York. On her return to the Pine Ridge Reservation, she served in many capacities including, preaching and playing the pump organ at Christ Church in Red Shirt Table, South Dakota, caring for the records at Holy Cross Mission in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, establishing a women’s shelter, working with Catholic and Presbyterian groups to found the Wowakiye Center, which provided a number of social services to the Lakota people, and, during the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, ferrying supplies to the protestors and evacuated children at great personal risk. Of her service, she said, “I try to lend a helping hand...You see, I feel I am my brother’s keeper, regardless of what race or nationality he or she may belong to.”

In addition to her community work, Hawk served as a deputy at the 1970 General Convention, the first General Convention in which women were seated as deputies. She also served as the Chairman of the Board for the reorganized Church Army in 1975 and held other leadership positions within the organization.

Margaret Hawk died on February 18, 1993. For her service to The Episcopal Church and her community, she was posthumously awarded the President of the House of Deputies Award for Distinguished Service in 2011. The award was presented to her family by House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson.