‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ Directors on Capturing the Evolving Battle for Indigenous Land Rights: We’re “Still Hemorrhaging People”

Abbey White
·14 min read
1

In Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli’s nearly two-hour documentary, Lakota Nation vs. United States, the filmmaking duo captures the history, present and future hopes of the indigenous peoples of the Dakotas through a singular issue: land.

That issue, according to the film written and narrated by Layli Long Soldier, is at the core of practically every other Indigenous struggle since the beginnings of European, and then American, colonization. Facing down wave after wave of manifest destiny-fueled violence, the Lakota, other members of the Sioux Nation and various Native communities beyond the Black Hills have persisted, even when their cultural symbols have been carved up, their language stripped, their people assaulted, and the ever-shrinking land poisoned.

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Respect for the land treaties that followed the Commerce Act of 1886, the film suggests, was tantamount to staving off the kind of extermination attempts that Indigenous communities — once recognized by the U.S. as independent nations, now treated as “domestic dependent nations” — are still dealing with the ramifications of today. They were also, as one expert argues, the reason the U.S. exists.

“If not for the treaties the United States signed with tribal nations, the world would not have legitimized the sovereignty of the United States,” says Mary Kathryn Nagle, a Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma attorney specializing in tribal sovereignty, in the film. “President George Washington knew that one of the ways to tell France, Spain, England — all these countries — ‘Hey, the United States is a legitimate nation just like you are, [is], ‘You’re signing treaties with these tribal nations and so are we.'”

But with every new document, the U.S. failed to uphold its end of the agreement and continues to do so, Short Bull and Tomaselli’s film charges. In response sprung an ongoing legacy of active resistance — from all-out war to staunch protest — that underscores the spirit of the people native to the Black Hills.

Short Bull and Tomaselli, who also served as editor, spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about why land and the #LandBack movement is at the center of Indigenous and American history and present; why they leaned into poems, pop culture and a nonlinear story to detail the ongoing fight for Native rights; and why the Sarah Eagle Heart, Mark Ruffalo and Marisa Tomei executive produced Lakota Nation vs. United States isn’t just a take on the Western but “a riff on the superhero genre.”

You touch on many issues, historical and modern, that have affected the Lakota, but you zero in on land rights. Within that subject, how did you decide which historical moments were key to telling the story of the Lakota and the #LandBack movement?

JESSE SHORT BULL Ever since a treaty was enacted here, on the homelands of the Dakotas, there have always been people that have been upholding their side of the treaty. It’s been an ongoing thing, even though it feels like the United States has relegated it to being a relic, an antique or something not necessarily applicable. On our end, it’s always been a very active, living, breathing document. We’ve had these moments since the time of warfare that have continuously happened — our people advocating in Washington, D.C., or being on the front lines of an issue that affects treaty territory. So what we really did was follow all of those moments, from the 1860s to as recently as last year when a hotel banned Native Americans in Rapid City from utilizing it.

LAURA TOMASELLI It’s such a good question and such a good entry point because I think the hardest part about making any film like this is figuring out what you can not keep in the film while still maintaining a level of truth. It’s the causal relationship of everything, so it wasn’t easy. There are a couple of sections that we love that were on the cutting room floor. In terms of putting it together, one of our first footholds was the poetry of Layli Long Soldier that’s featured throughout the film. One was a preexisting poem called “38.” That’s the poem that starts the film and says, I may not go in chronological order. I’m not a historian. It gave us license to follow that literally with our film’s approach. It also gave us tools for how to approach putting it together in a nonlinear way.

When she’s talking about history repeating, to Jesse’s point, we were concerned about making sure that this is something that is active — showing all these levels of resistance that have maybe ebbed and flowed in the public eye but have always been there. And pairing them alongside this cycle that has been happening over and over again, where treaty rights have been denied, and then more land has been taken.

You tell this story through a lot of mediums, from poetry to reenactments. The animation and Westerns are particularly glaring in terms of addressing the discriminatory myths and portrayals. How did you decide what mediums would best underscore your point?

TOMASELLI In terms of pop culture, cartoons certainly play a huge role in showing that those stereotypes or propaganda are happening with children. To me, it’s suddenly shocking when you think about it deeply. But more than that, there are great films that show the extent of propaganda towards Indigenous people in America. We didn’t have space, or it wasn’t the right film for us to do that, but that seemed to be a necessary starting point.

One thing that we wanted to do in this film was present people with material they’re familiar with, or at least the texture of material they’re familiar with, whether it be cartoons or westerns, with added context. When you allow people to see something familiar with a new layer of understanding beneath it, that’s when people’s opinions can actually change. That’s when they can understand what you’re saying and make the connection to how much this is taught to us, how insidious this is.

The reenactment goes back to what Jesse’s saying, which is this isn’t a dead document. This is something that exists today and in activating that history, we had to be a little bit creative. There’s a version of this film that could have been talking heads — and there’s nothing wrong with that — where it’s very dry and, “Let’s cut to the map, and we’re going to do a slow push into the map.” There is that in our film, but I think we really wanted to use all the tools at our disposal to make it dynamic, to hold people’s interest.

SHORT BULL Some of those elements that Laura’s talking about also reflect some Lakota perspective because the period of my parents’ generation, they had almost absolutely nothing to look up to. Everything was, “the Indians were bad. We’re standing in the way of the creation of America.” It created a lot of self-hatred amongst our people. It almost eradicated a lot of indigeneity that our nation still had.

My dad was a student at Holy Rosary [Mission] and St. Francis [Mission] in South Dakota. What he wanted to be was a cowboy. He wanted to be an American. He wanted to be adventurous in that way. But it was all just a lie. So with Layli’s guidance and Laura’s intuition, we created a multi-elemental, multilayered gumdrop to really invoke images — some from our recent past — to turn them against itself and try to show or quantify in some way how damaging that was. Then there’s just Laura’s amazing ability to weave across different things that move and flow.

That’s why I continuously enjoy watching the film. It’s so embedded with all of these details and how it moves across a lot of the subjects, like the reenactment, the newscasts. They’re so woven together that it invokes a lot of curiosity.

The editing work frequently embraces the pacing and tones of the natural world, less often the intensity of the difficult imagery or conversations the film is exploring. Laura, what was your thought process around editing to navigate people through this film?

TOMASELLI It’s hard to talk about this without sounding too “woo-woo” but I think that a lot of the best editing that comes out of me feels like it comes from a place that is not necessarily me. It comes from sitting with the footage, sitting with the cadence of the people who are speaking, listening to Layli’s cadence, and also giving people space to make connections. I think that one of the things we wanted to do in this film is — while it’s very, very clear what side of history we’re on and what we’re trying to do — is leave people space during those quieter moments, natural moments, where you’re looking at the Black Hills, to think a little bit. My background is as a trailer editor, so I’m naturally a little bit like da-da-da-da-da. In this film, there’s some of that. There’s some fun, fast-cut sections that should be exciting. Then there are some sections that we wanted to give space just for people to think about all the information that they had absorbed.

At one point, you cast the mass execution of the Dakota 38 against the Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued in part by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War — arguably its own land battle — to prevent recognition of the Confederacy as its own nation. What inspired you to zone in on the contradictions of progress in a historical moment like that, or even some of these treaty moments?

SHORT BULL There’s something pushing us, I think, that wants to try to expose some of these narratives, expose what has happened and what’s really the truth. Nick Estes alludes to it in the film, but what’s happening to the land, it’s still very active. In the sense that it is still trying to keep our people even within their own land — what’s left of it — separate. A lot of these things are still very active, even if we don’t necessarily think about them. We’ve become so used to it that in whatever community we don’t see some of these things — that they’re still actively manipulating us to whatever outcome. That’s something that I myself still don’t really understand, but it’s the one gift that I think the film has given me personally — just seeing how are people specifically still under an immense amount of duress, and how the land is reflected in that as well. Things have not improved, even though now there’s no war.

Two quotes stuck out while watching: “Peace is through death” and “The best way to kill people is to dehumanize them.” These statements address the violence hidden within the language that can shape how we understand history. Peace is only peaceful for the victor, and dehumanization removes a desire to look, but even if it isn’t visible or overt violence, it doesn’t mean people aren’t still dying. How did you want to help viewers understand America’s visible and invisible violence against Indigenous people as a mechanism of war?

SHORT BULL What you just mentioned is the first time that I’ve heard it put in that way. I think that you’re onto something. We oftentimes, in American history books, present the big major event as having passed. It’s over with, so we just move on. But the thing is, it was just in the 1890s that America had amassed its largest assemblage of federal troops within the United States for an action against our people. As recently as that.

We had cannons pointed at the town of Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Now, a lot of them, they’re long gone. The cannons are rested. The guns are obsolete. The soldiers are long dead. But what you just said is exactly what is going on. Our nation is still hemorrhaging people through violence that has evolved itself to a point where the soldier isn’t a physical manifestation like it used to be. It’s in our minds. The state of South Dakota — and not just the state of South Dakota — doesn’t understand why things are happening. Why are our kids taking their lives? Why do we lose so many people to violent death? It’s so many frustrating things, but we’re getting close to putting a face on this thing that has been staring at us.

Like I said, I grew up in the Badlands of South Dakota and there are two towns, one due North, one due south of where I live. They’re less than 50 miles from each other. One’s off the reservation and one’s on the reservation. In one town, I can count on one hand how many young people — it’s less than five — whose time has been cut short too soon. On the other side of the community, I’ve lost count of how many young people we’ve lost to either suicide or violent death like a car accident.

Two communities, a stone’s throw from each other, but yet they’re completely different as far as the safety of the people. But we don’t know how to talk about it. We can’t talk about it. That’s the biggest frustrating thing — we don’t have ways to say that this is disproportionate.

This doc is specific to the Lakota experience, but it speaks broader, like its challenges to the negative historical framing of resistance. You also address treaties, and certainly, communities domestic and abroad can relate to the notion that what is legal is not inherently just. Why was it important here to unpack the way that resistance and laws have been weaponized against people?

TOMASELLI You said two things that are my favorite things to hear. I am forever in service of resistance movements because I do think there are in there lessons of what the tipping point is for society on these different issues. Donna Murch [historian, author and Rutgers associate professor of History] said in the last movie I worked on, MLK/FBI, this very simple sentence that I think about all the time, which is society is designed to uphold the status quo. So in making this film, we’ve had a lot of conversations where people are like, “It’s a take on the western genre. You guys are playing with that.” And it is, but I think for me specifically, it also is a riff on a superhero movie.

People fear these movements they don’t understand, or they don’t want to be uncomfortable or they don’t want to be inconvenienced. So for me, it was very important — I’m thinking of Krystal Two Bulls here — to show the dignity of resistance and what it means to put your life on hold to try to fight for a better future for society, and yes, for the Lakota people. But in terms of everything else she’s standing up for, it’s for everybody to have clean water, clean air. I think you can apply that to a lot of different activist movements regardless of what they may be right now. To me, it was all about showing the sacredness and the dignity of these people who are day in and day out in a hostile environment, going out and speaking their truth.

SHORT BULL I recognize that I had the other way of thinking ingrained in me, the anti-Lakota viewpoint. I recognized it inside of me. I was not happy. I was so empty. But once I started to uncover the truth about things or a different side, I started to see more and more. It pushed me to a level of servitude to my tribe, to young people who also may not be happy.

I think that’s why this project has come to me. It wasn’t something I actively wanted to pursue, but I think that Laura and I felt that we could try to hold the story, do it justice. Crystal, Alex, everybody that we feature — I don’t mean to put them on a pedestal and that’s not a very Lakota thing to put people on a pedestal and say look at these amazing folks — we wanted to create a cross thread of what the Lakota Nation is like. These people represent the Lakota Nation like the threads of a blanket.

Laura’s right, they are superheroes to me. That’s what I believe is true honor, and I question anything that attacks these things. As we uncover the truth, we understand that a lot of times we might have been lied to, and once you come out of that denial, you can see things more clearly.

Best of The Hollywood Reporter