Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

One morning in the fall of 1876, Red Cloud was surrounded by United States troops under the command of Colonel McKenzie, who disarmed his people and brought them into Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

Thence they were removed to the Pine Ridge Agency, where he lived for more than thirty years as a reservation Indian.

In order to humiliate him further, government authorities proclaimed the more attractable spotted tail head chief of the Sioux.

Of course, Red Cloud's own people never recognized any other chief.

he had much ease of manner and was a master of repartee i recall his saying that if you have got to wear golden slippers to enter the white man's heaven no indian will ever get there as the whites have got the black hills and with them all the gold it was during the last struggle of his people at the time of the messiah craze in eighteen ninety to eighteen ninety one that he demonstrated as never before the real greatness of the man While many of his friends were carried away by the new thought, he held aloof from it and cautioned his band to do the same.

When it developed into an extensive upheaval among the nations, he took his positive stand against it.

Presently all Indians who did not dance the ghost dance were ordered to come into camp at Pine Ridge Agency.

American Horse was the first to bring in his people.

And the only thing that she knows for sure is even though the story made the news, she's the only one that saw it coming.

Years ago, I went to jail for 70 days on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

And what happened in those 70 days scared me so bad that I never want to go back.

This is Grace's submission to Spooky Scary Storytime.

And the only thing that she knows for sure is even though the story made the news, she's the only one that saw it coming.

years ago I went to jail for 70 days on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and what happened in those 70 days scared me so bad that I never want to go back this is Grace submission to spooky scary story time and she said that this jail is so haunted the correctional officers know this jail is haunted the inmates know this jail is haunted and she had several experiences while serving out her sentence the first happened one night a few months after she arrived and she was in gen pop which is I guess a big area with like a ton of different bunks and the correctional officers had left the door open I guess so that they could keep an eye on the inmates Of course, there's cameras everywhere, but the inmates are instructed to go to bed and the lights were dimmed.

And the correctional officers start yelling down to the inmates and through the intercom to get away from the door.

And one of the bad apples of the group yells back, there's nobody by the door.

And yeah, it was, it was very, very powerful and, um, emotional.

Um, one of our interviewees, uh, Alex White Plume, who's a former chairman of the Oglala Sioux tribe and whose family, uh, endured a lot of the violence from the 1970s um he he wept you know at Leonard's story and you know there's there's so many things that link Leonard to Pine Ridge and And there's a lot of, you know, injustices that occurred on Pine Ridge that never received a good ending.

But however, I think that Leonard has kind of become a symbol for a lot of people to still have some sort of hope and, and, that's what I really was grateful for as we took it to, you know, the communities that were the most impacted from that time.

Yeah.

You go, Jess.

Oh, no, what I was going to say is what I really want to hope for and encourage people is, you know, it's not a coincidence that our film is coming out in a time of political unrest and uncertainty and lack of trust.

And that's Welcome to Pine Ridge in the 1970s.

But see, that's the thing.

Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads, and let's head off into the woods if you dare.

In the spring of 2015, parents on the Pine Ridge Reservation started walking their kids home from the bus stop.

Some of them did it because of what was happening to the young people on the reservation that year, and that part was in the newspapers.

Some of them did it because of a man nobody had ever photographed, seven feet tall, standing at the edge of the road at night with his arms held out.

There's a stretch of highway on the Pine Ridge Reservation where, for about a year, grown men wouldn't let their teenagers walk home after dark.

It's Highway 18, mostly, and the county roads that peel off it toward the little towns.

Porcupine and Kyle and Wanblee and Manderson.

A hundred square miles of eroded clay standing up in walls and spires the color of old bone, with bands of red and pink running through it where the ancient rivers laid down different mud.