Returning the Sacred Black Hills

An interview with the brilliant directors of 'Lakota Nation vs. United States'

Welcome back to The Link, a bi-weekly newsletter making the connection between “regenerative farming,” and you, every other Sunday.

Photo by ‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ co-director, Laura Tomaselli.

A few months ago, I took you down a rabbit hole about your front lawn. Not sure where you ended up on the other side of that journey, but I hope that it made you reflect on much more than just pulling weeds. 

I know. It’s the middle of winter and you’re like, “girl, the grass is dead and I’m tired, so I’m taking naps over here thanks to The Nap Ministry.” And I do hope that’s the case—at least the nap part. If you’re here for the first time, welcome, and if you’re back for a minute from your winter slumber, hi friend! I just wanted to just refresh our notions of what this regenerative farming focused newsletter is all about. Most importantly, I want to acknowledge that “regenerative farming” is not a term, but a worldview, for Indigenous communities. This newsletter will continue to be dedicated to speaking with different voices from a wide variety of viewpoints to stay curious in bridging Western and non-Western perspectives on a path forward around our farming system in the fight against climate change. 

Every other week, I’m focusing on a topic that starts you in a familiar place, in hopes that you’ll end up on the other side of the tunnel with a wider frame. All it takes is doing so with an open mind and an open heart. So if you’re picking up what I’m putting down, you probably get what I mean by rabbit holes after reading about why you should give your lawn a break. Alright, enough grass talk. 

I’ve been expanding on the various topics that regenerative farmers face, like land access. I’ve interviewed the brilliant James Skeet of Spirit Farm on the deeply interconnected relationship we each have with soil, and Wilderness Club General’s Fegan Carter on why disrupting the toxic system is on your to-do list. I’ve even nerded out on the infinite intelligence that mushrooms possess with Smallhold’s co-founder, Andrew Carter. I’ve written about how we are living on stolen land in North America, but have not had a larger discussion about it here. 

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli, who co-directed, Lakota Nation vs. United States, a brilliantly powerful documentary that covers the ongoing multi-generational battle between the Lakota Nation and the U.S. government in the fight for justice in returning the sacred Black Hills to the Lakota Nation. 

And frankly, Writer/Director Cedar Sherbert’s review of the film captures it better than I ever could: “The sacred land has been the site of conflict between the people it has nurtured and the settler state seeking to exploit and redefine it in its own image. Beginning with the Indian Wars of the 1800s, which saw the U.S. Army continually on the losing-end against Sioux and Arapaho warriors, and leading to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868—one of many broken treaties separating the Oyate from their land—the Black Hills have witnessed a greed-driven gold rush, the systematic erasure of its original inhabitants, and the creation of a most ironic shrine to white supremacy, Mount Rushmore. 

…This powerful new documentary is a searing testament to the strength of the Oyate and a visually stunning rejoinder to the distorted image of a people long-shaped by Hollywood. Using a treasure trove of rich archival material, electrifying on-the-ground footage and intimate interviews with veteran activists and young leaders such as NDN Collective founder Krystal Two Bulls and activist Candi Brings Plenty, Lakota Nation V United States  is a lyrical and provocative testament to a land and a people who have survived removal, exploitation and genocide—and whose best days are yet to come.”

Jesse Short Bull is a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe in South Dakota and wrote and produced Istinma, a film set in Pine Ridge, South Dakota before co-directing Lakota Nation vs. United States. Laura Tomaselli is a filmmaker whose credits span several narrative, documentary, and commercial projects, and was the editor on Sam Pollard’s incredible MLK/FBI. 

I sat down with the duo to discuss the film, the LandBack movement, how to heal broken treaties, land stewardship, and what returning the Black Hills could look like. But before we get into the interview, take a moment and watch the trailer below:

In this newsletter, I always interview people from different perspectives and always begin by asking what the term “regenerative” means to them. However, I do want to acknowledge that I understand and respect that it is a worldview, not a term, for Indigenous communities. 

Jesse Short Bull: What I would say, and I think that “Lakota Nation vs. United States” touches on—is that the relationship between the Lakota people and buffalo was definitely regenerative. We looked at each other as equals. What I hear a lot of the old folks saying is that “we don’t exist if the buffalo don’t exist” and vice versa. Obviously, when you look at our relationship with the buffalo, we depend on them to live and you would say, “Well, you guys eat the buffalo, so how does that work out?” But it was how we utilized the buffalo—there’s not a lot of relationship between you and your food in the modern world. 

With the buffalo, we were very intentional and very careful when it comes to taking an animal’s life and utilizing that animal to the extent that you don’t waste anything. You’re very grateful for that animal to give you the gift and the tools that you need. For Lakotas, I would say there are hundreds of uses from a single buffalo, from the hooves to the hide, the skin, the meat, the bones, and all kinds of products. We utilize them like a commissary. So again, that guiding philosophy of the buffalo and us as one, we can’t push it to the limit to where the buffalo would be dwindling. We need to maintain those numbers of that herd for regeneration so that it remains vibrant and only take as much as we need, never to the point of excess. 

Laura Tomaselli: For me—Helen, this is something that we’ve talked about before—Jesse, when we did the interview with Alex Romero-Frederick, I remember how passionate she was about caring for the health of the grasslands and really believing in the grasslands as an ecosystem that can trap carbon. At the end of that interview, I went up to her and told her “that’s so cool, I am also doing some editing on a movie about regenerative agriculture,” and her reaction was like, “huh, regenerative agriculture...” That was the first time where I, myself, understood that the term regenerative agriculture is a colonized way of stating an innate thing for Indigenous people. I think you and I, Helen, have a similar path in understanding that the best method of conservation is the oldest wisdom on the continent. A lot of this film, when dealing with the “regenerative agriculture” question, was really just reframing what that word means.

Photo by Laura Tomaselli.

Absolutely. Thank you both for sharing your perspectives. I’d like to shift into the backdrop of “Lakota Nation vs. United States,” and begin by asking what it’s like to actually step into the Black Hills?

Jesse Short Bull: From a geological sense, it’s the Easternmost outcropping of the Rocky Mountains formation—it’s the top of the Rockies. It’s very unique because if you look at it from above, the Black Hills are heart shaped. To the Lakotas, I guess you could say, it’s kinda like a buffalo heart shape. If you look at the United States as a body, it would be very similar to where a heart would be positioned. If you picture mountains and trees and clear flowing streams, it’s a very ideal mountainous place in the country. I think that’s what makes it special not just to Lakotas, but to many tribes who use the Black Hills, from the Mandans to the Arikaras, Cheyennes, and all the Great Plains Tribes who have some sort of tie to the Black Hills. I think that Milo Yellow Hair says it best in the film: “It’s just a good place to find solitude.” Everything that you would need to survive is in abundance in the Black Hills: water being principle, game, fruits, all of our medicines can be found in the gullies and streams and places where water accumulates. It was a place of everything. On top of that, it’s a very spiritual place to offer prayers, a place to look at yourself and your own soul and its relationship to the people and the land around you. You would go to the Black Hills and try to find your life’s purpose, which could come to you in a multitude of ways: whether through a dream, I don’t want to say vision, because people corrupted that term, but it was a place to really ground yourself within Mother Earth and find out what you need to do to help your people. and ask what is it that you need to do? 

One of the many remarkable parts of experiencing the documentary as a viewer was the story structure. What inspired you to approach telling it in three parts? 

Laura Tomaselli:  Because the film is not just about today, but about this massive timeline of unending resistance, it forced a kind of formalism onto the project. As an editor, I always ask, What’s the best container to help tell the story? Initially, we were trying to think through a lot of different frameworks to put it all together and cover such an enormous chunk of time legibly. Those ‘chapter’ titles themselves largely came out of the archival research into those historical sections. The word “Extermination” emerged and felt apt for the First Act of the film, which loosely covers Columbus through to Custer. The Second Act is where the word “Assimilation” is used most —the United States’ drive to assimilate Native Americans begins in the late 19th century, and I could argue continues today. We felt like the word “Reparations” was a natural fit for Act Three in terms of both content and intent. I think that Act Three is also about personal reparation; it’s about Henry Red Cloud going back to the land and finding what is there for him and I think there’s a similar theme in Alex Romero-Fredrick’s story. After being in the school district where she was othered and taught a history that wasn’t hers, she stood up. The Third Act is not only what should and will happen, but also the steps that people have taken individually themselves.

JSB: To build on that, Laura, I think that what I’ve encountered my whole life is a curiosity of what really happened and who the Indigenous peoples are here in South Dakota: their complexities, their histories, and I think a lot of people weren’t satisfied with what they had as far as their own education around the matter. I think Laura just did an amazing job with a limited amount of time—it’s a big ball of wax, that even if we devoted a lot of our lives to, it would still be hard to understand what happened and what needs to be done. 

We tried to put everything that goes on in the hearts of people like Henry Red Cloud, Alex Romero-Frederick, Milo Yellow Hair, and Phyllis Young. If we can get a little bit into their hearts and what they see, because they live it every day, then people can kind of understand, “This is where we are today.” A lot of the treaty tribes specifically, under extreme duress, through extermination and assimilation, we still want some sort of semblance of what we had. And some people carry hope for that semblance. So how can we make it better? How can we improve the quality of people’s lives so they can feel good about themselves?  If we feel good about the environment that we’re around, and we have access to that relative, the land, then we can have a good quality life, but it’s hard, you know? We still have so much to work through and it will still be going on long after you, Laura, and I are long gone. But we can move in that right direction, you know? 

It makes me think of the powerful impact that Layli Long Soldier’s voice carried throughout the film. As a viewer, it helped me detach from the dominant Western colonized notions of linear time and mindset as I listened to the words in her poem, “38,” which mentions how a century can feel just like yesterday. It makes me reflect on the Indigenous generations ahead of us and behind us that have suffered and continue to suffer under colonization. How did Layli become a part of the film? 

Jesse Short Bull: I think that there’s a serious argument that can be made about contemporary storytelling and the responsibility that it keeps—there’s been a real struggle to connect to Indigenous storytelling and specifically for Oglala Lakotas, you know? What are our desires? What is drama? And Layli is very scrupulous about what she puts her name on and I think that she really is intentional about sharing her work. Laura might have some good insight on this, but we really had to prove ourselves to her to make sure that we would uphold that standard of responsibility with telling this huge story, which is a hard story to try to tell. You’re not gonna be able to cover all of your bases. There are so many people that have devoted their entire lives to this, which is treaty work, of making the United States uphold the treaty. There’s an incredibly high degree of responsibility that has to come from within and obviously that pressure has been exerted on Laura and I. I think that once Layli felt confident that we were gonna hold as much responsibility as we could and try to tell the story of the Lakotas and the United States and the treaty, I think she felt good about participating. 

Laura Tomaselli: Two important things that Jesse is leaving out—one: Layli was his teacher, and two, there are lines in her poem “135 X’s” that are about him:

“X marks the summer day when we walked among the shale pillars of the Badlands—me, my kid, a good friend—relaxed, marveling at the beauty.

X marks the little things we picked up from the topsoil, still scattered across the land of our people: five arrowheads and one bullet. Kept warm in our pockets for the ride home.”

But I digress. Before we even had the fundraising pitch for this film, our producer Ben Hedin introduced me to Layli’s work, and I immediately loved it. Every clip of her doing readings online was completely mesmerizing to me. Throughout the process of putting this film together, I was a nervous wreck trying to make sure we were honoring her work but told myself that if she would let us use it in the movie, I will try to be worthy of it, is what I thought. Layli’s poetry is essential to this film full stop: she is the narrator whose words drive the story. Beyond that, for me, her approach to writing that poem gave me a jumpoff for thinking about filmmaking in the same way. In her work, “38,” she breaks down the English language and talks about the ways in which language can downplay certain details and emphasize others. That kind of structural analysis of written language allowed me to think about trying to build parts of this film in the same way. We tried to use the ways in which Native Americans have been depicted in cinema, even some tropes of filmmaking itself to break apart that language and make it serve our purposes. 

Co-Director Jesse Short Bull. Photo by Phil Pinto.

That makes so much sense. It makes me think a lot about the approach you took to telling the story that allowed viewers like myself to see the Indigenous perspective while contrasting it with the colonizer worldview we have been raised with in Western culture by the pop culture references you thread throughout the film. One example I’m thinking of is Sacred Mountain, and how it was stolen by the U.S. government and turned into a shrine to white supremacy, which Americans recognize as Mount Rushmore. From a creative approach, what other ways beyond Layli’s poetry helped you to break away from Western devices of storytelling?

Laura Tomaselli: The first time we met, we were nervously ripping cigarettes in a hotel parking lot and had a strong, “what are we getting ourselves into,” sort of feeling. I remember, I think this is how you said it, Jesse, that we’re trying to get around the walls, conscious and unconscious, that people have in thinking they understand these issues. And so I think there’s two ways to get there—at least structurally. The first way is pop culture that you’ve seen with a different subtext and Jesse, I am curious about your thoughts on this, but we also didn’t want it to feel like we’re shaming people. I think that we wanted to appeal to people’s goodness. If someone watching the film is not Indigenous and doesn't know a lot about this—the central push of the film is these human beings talking to you about their experiences as another human being. I do think that documentaries can be extractive in interviewing people, and we were not trying to do that. 

Jesse Short Bull: That’s what’s tough, Helen, is what Laura said. Interviews are extractive in and of themselves. You’re taking someone’s information, just like taking from a goldmine. But also, growing up here in South Dakota, and being of mixed blood descent; my mom’s white and my dad’s Sicangu and Oglala Lakota, the difficulty in talking about the history of how the state was created–in fact there was no conversation. It’s just something you didn’t do. Only people like Russell Means dared to challenge that status quo, Phyllis Young, people like that. The current climate is that if you have a different perspective, we all just shut down and then it becomes “I don’t like you, you don’t like me.” But with a story, if you have that barrier, it has the ability to go into your subconscious and you can work around that gate. 

Even if you come out with the same belief system after watching the film, you still can see something in the humanity of the other person that maybe changes your perspective a little bit. So I think that’s why Laura and I did not want to say, “Hey, you guys are bad because you did all of this stuff in the past,” but at the same time this is a perpetual thing that keeps going on. We’re all good people who can do good things, so let’s try to figure this out. All of our parents grew up in a much different time, and I think that’s what works about cutting those Westerns into the film. That’s how they got introduced to Natives. But it was also false because along the lines of what Nick Estes said, it made invasion seem like self-defense or something that was patriotic. It made invasion into these peoples territories heroic. Laura found all of those brilliant clips so that older folks can latch on to what they remembered from when they were young, but introduce this newer idea that they might not have had access to as they went throughout their lives. 

Pictured left, Co-Producers Phil Pinto and Benjamin Hedin. Co-Directors Laura Tomaselli and Jesse Two Bulls, pictured right.

Thinking about the climate crisis ahead of us, we are being led by a dominant Western worldview that is extractively minded, where individualism is considered “the way” and material wealth is what mainstream culture tells us we’re supposed to work towards. However, in many conversations taking place around climate change, that is falling away. I feel that Westerners have to radically shift our mindsets in order to examine our relationship to ourselves and the land alike in order to create healing and interconnectedness of all of these things; the land, ourselves, and the systems we are all working within, together. To bridge back to what you are saying, one must walk with an open, introspective heart as we examine the past and the future for anyone who is not Indigenous in North America. 

Jesse Short Bull: One thing I really liked about growing up here—One thing I know is that people who appropriate our culture make it into a cheap thing, but what it boils down to is, and this is something that anybody can practice: you can’t do it with ego. At the end of the day, you’ve got to look at the planet as you, as a body. A plant has life. A tree has life. A mouse has life. You have life. Christianity tells us that our creator has given us this planet to utilize for our benefit—whatever God has given us on this planet, utilize it, because it’s for us. I think that we have to shift away from that and look at the planet as an extension of our whole selves. I smoke cigarettes. If my body was a whole world, I know that when I smoke, I’m not doing the best for my health. 

You have to look at the planet as your relative or as you. That way, you don’t look at it as something that Creator has given you to use and drive everything into the ground. You have to look at it as something that needs care and balance and responsibility. In the Lakota way, the prize isn’t at the end of your life, the prize is how you live in relation with whatever is around you. The more we pull from the Earth, the more we drive it into an unhealthy state. You have a connection to everything that’s around you. Everything that has life is something that you have to maintain a sense of balance. We have to be a part of the planet instead of being above the planet. I think that we’ve gotten into a bad habit here.

Krystal Two Bulls. Photo by Co-Director Laura Tomaselli.

Well said, it makes me think of what you said at the beginning of this conversation and the buffalo. We are not in charge, but we are related to all creatures and systems. I loved that you included Krystal Two Bulls around the discussion of LandBack, a conversation so vitally important for all Americans to be actively listening to and engaging in. LandBack is so important to reconcile the past and the future alike, not only in acknowledging the erasure of Indigenous communities and fixing broken treaties, but also in efforts around land stewardship and climate change. With LandBack in mind, what does the future of the Black Hills look like to you?

Jesse Short Bull: It’s like a heart. You can treat anywhere like a heart, but for us, there’s a heart here in the Black Hills and you have to treat it that way. That land was taken and the reality is that something was done wrong here. America boasts itself on being a place of honor and righteousness and good things for all people. Until it can look itself in the face and see that it did something that was a bad decision, until it can say “hey, I screwed up here,” we’re gonna have problems. There’s people that live in the hills who might not share the same beliefs as the Lakota people now, but at the end of the day, we have to have some sort of justice. That’s a holy place. I work in the tribal government and have to deal with people every day. Some of them have the luxury of going into the Hills and some of them don’t. That’s not good. However we fix it is to be determined, whether it’s looking at public lands but it’s not what the United States thinks we want, which is money. It’s a holy place and it’s not being treated that way.

Laura Tomaselli: I just want to say something that ties into climate change: working on this really made me feel a lot less jaded and more hopeful. I say that mainly in order to throw it back to Jesse. Jesse, I remember when we were talking to people, we wanted to ask  “What is a beautiful future that is possible if the land is returned? What does that look like?”

Jesse Short Bull: If you look at Lakota people and the timeline that we’re on and how it was dramatically shifted by this asteroid-like collision that pushed us on a different path that wasn’t on our own terms, let’s just say what would the other universe look like if that big shift never happened? Whatever that path looks like—we were knocked off of it—how do we get back on that path? If you use your imagination, the one thing I could see is happy kids, no more suicides, no more racism, no more violent deaths, drugs, or alcohol. I see good things, happiness, and I think that looking at what our desires for a healthy community look like and having our artists or people envision that means we can move towards that. Because oftentimes, we don’t get to put our desires out on the forefront. You could come here, Helen, and ask people, “What does Pine Ridge desire?” I’m not sure if anybody would be able to answer that, because nobody has ever dared to dream it, you know? I think it’s trying to get ourselves back to where we’re supposed to be. 

Jesse, what do you want people to take away from this film? If they don’t get a chance to see it, what’s something you wished that they could see or understand better?

Jesse Short Bull: I’ve had the luxury of going either way. I could go on the one side of the border and be with my non-Native friends and live a life and forget that I am Lakota. But I have two ways around me: two ways of thinking and the only way that I have found solace and peace in life and a comfort and safety is by being around my Lakota relatives and how they see the world. How they treat one another. Don’t get me wrong, we have a lot of bad things, but if you go a bit deeper, which I think Laura has done a great job of getting beyond those first few couple of layers in the film, the Lakota way of living enhances your spiritual literacy and there’s something going on here in life that’s more than just about making a dollar. There is something that’s really spectacular with life and its mystery which really makes our own lives super unique and super special and super valued. And that’s the thing: I think that given that choice of going the American way or the Lakota way, I want people to know that there’s something really special about a lot of Indigenous world views, and if you can find a way to take your ego out and nurture your own inner spirit, then the uniqueness of life becomes more apparent and makes you feel good in a world where we’re straddled with bad news and tragedy. 

Thanks so much to you both for taking the time to speak with me!

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Lakota Nation vs. United States will be available via IFC next summer, followed by on-demand thereafter. Follow the film here. Here is a great resource to deepen your knowledge of LandBack and how you can support the movement. For those of us who are not Indigenous, dedicate some time to learn more about the tribal nations whose unseated land you occupy.