Female Film Critics 24/375
Coming-of-age dramas don’t get much more authentic than Gina Gammell and Riley Keough’s War Pony. Born out of the two women’s deeply personal, long-standing relationship with the Oglala Lakota people of the Pine Ridge Reservation, the film follows two young Lakota men as they deal with the ups and downs of their daily lives. In the process, it offers a frank but tender look at the realities of contemporary life at Pine Ridge.
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Does any part of you still doubt that the United States’ relationship with the Indigenous people who called North America home long before anyone ever thought of naming it “America” in the first place is based in duplicity, theft, and genocide? If so, then watching Laura Tomaselli and Jesse Short Bull’s compelling Lakota Nation Vs. United States will make it crystal clear that, as one interviewee eloquently puts it, “Fundamentally, the intent of the United States is to gain access to native land.” Lakota Nation Vs. United States is an ardent call for justice.
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Lakota Nation Vs. United States is a compelling advocacy documentary that chronicles the United States’ government’s ongoing land grab of Lakota territory in Northeastern Wyoming in violation of the Black Hills Treaty of 1868. At this moment in US history, when the Constitution — our government’s essential treaty with our nation’s citizens — is being challenged and our civil rights are being eroded, Lakota Nation Vs. United States is an effective cry for justice. It is an essential watch.
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Directors Jesse Short Bull, Laura Tomaselli and writer Layli Long Soldier give an exquisite and accurate account of how land treaties have been broken and Native Americans have been physically and verbally bullied and belittled and met with horrific stereotyping and lies promoted by colonizing attitudes and greed. Whether seen in the context of the struggle to retain rights to the Black Hills region that that rightfully belongs to the Lakota people, it’s clear that the influx of settlers from the east looking to strike it rich with gold in the west had no compunction about violating land treaties, sending kids to dehumanizing boarding schools, disrupting tribal culture. This documentary is a must watch.
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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.
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