LAKOTA NATION Vs UNITED STATES – Review by Loren King

With the year more than half over, I will say now that Lakota Nation vs. United States should be among the nominees for the best documentary Oscar next year. It’s not only a superbly crafted, richly textured film with a fresh point of view, it masterfully blends past and present to serve as both historical corrective and gut-check for the very moment we are in when so many are eager to censor and erase history.

Directors Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli, who also edited the film, tackle the long and complex history of exploitation and attempted genocide of the indigenous people of the land known as the Black Hills in South Dakota by white settlers since the arrival of the first Europeans in 1492. The filmmakers tell this shameful story, one that is still unspooling to this day, with a stirring mix of archival footage, poetry, gorgeous landscape photography, revelatory interviews and film clips from classic westerns that turn Hollywood mythology on its head.

The stylish visual storytelling is paired with first person accounts including those from current Lakota activists Nick Tilsen and Krystal Two Bulls, two organizers of the Landback movement which seeks indigenous control of land, long considered sacred, that was stolen over many years in egregious violation of treaty agreements.

But it is the narration by Ogala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier, winner of the National Books Critics Circle award and finalist for the National Book Award, that gives voice to the unspeakable and grounds Lakota Nation vs. United States in lyrical power.