Sitting Bull on Netflix

I've just watched a really good Netflix 2-part series on Sitting Bull and the Lakota people.

The documentary is called 'Sitting Bull' and can be viewed here

This fine film covered all the basic elements of the story plus some new points that I was not aware of. I've been following this history since I lived in the Black Hills from 1962-1964 when my step-father was stationed at Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota. 

The experience of living there and being nearly daily exposed to native history, culture and spirituality changed my life for the better. I go back there every chance I get - the last time my son went with me and I was able to share with him the sacred places in the Black Hills that have meant so much to me over the years. 

He even went to the Black Hills while in his mother's womb in 1980. We attended the Black Hills International Survival Gathering. I still have a poster from that event hanging on our wall in my home.

The Netflix show covered the feverish US Army attempts to destroy the indigenous people across the Great Plains - particularly after the Civil War was over. 

The Battle of the Greasy Grass (the whites called it Custer's Last Stand), the coalition of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Red Cloud and other tribes, the slaughter of the buffalo as official policy of the US  Army in order to starve the native people, horrible life on the reservations, the Ghost Dance movement, Sitting Bull joining the Wild West Show, and the eventual killing of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull by the US Army because they feared both warriors even though they were stuck on the reservations.

Also covered in the film was the massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1890 where the US Army killed more than 300 mostly unarmed Lakota people.

I was even thrilled that the Netflix documentary told my favorite story about Sitting Bull. In 1885 Buffalo Bill asked the government to send Sitting Bull to the east coast on a train so he could be the feature act of his Wild West Show that was touring the east coast and drawing big crowds. 

While in New York City Sitting Bull was walking the streets and was broken hearted to see the massive poverty at the time. It is told he sat on some door stoops and poor kids, street urchins, came up to him begging. So he gave all his money away to these poor people.

When he got back to the reservation, just before he was killed, the told his people, 'We are in big trouble. You should see how the white man treats his own children'.

During his time with the Wild West Show Sitting Bull tried to pass on to the eastern white colonizers a bit of the Lakota way of life - their spirituality, their thirst for freedom and independence, and their deep reverence for the natural world.

I'd also highly recommend this excellent book about Crazy Horse by Mari Sandoz. 

Bruce