Native Horse

Announcer: This film was made in part from the kind support of Vision Maker Media & Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Judy and Stan Philanthropy, Laurel Roselle & Creative Visions Foundation, The Harold & Marion Gordon Family Foundation, Equine Collaborative International Foundation, and the Woodward & Ellie James Foundation.

[Native American music] [Hoofbeats] [Wind blowing] [Buffalo lowing] Black Elk: Many of our Elder Lakota Knowledge Keepers have documented that we have existed in our lands since time immemorial.

Over this time, we have evolved with Sungwakan, the Horse Nation.

Sungwakan is a part of us, and we are a part of them.

Wendell Yellow Bull: One of the things that was always the foundation for us in our family was the Horse, and we always talked about how the Horse came to be.

My relationship with horses has always started with when I was younger and learned from my grandfather William Horn Cloud, and his relationship with the horses were really amazing.

He had a lot of knowledge about horses.

He had a lot of knowledge about a way of life of long ago, and he learned a lot from his father-in-law Charles, Chief Charles Red Cloud.

Black Elk: Chief Charles Red Cloud, Mahpya Lta, was a leader for the Oglala Lakota from 1865 to 1909.

He was one of the most capable American Indian opponents the United States faced in the western Indian territories.

Chief Red Cloud's victories against the U.S. Army ushered in a peace agreement that was signed on November 6, 1868.

This treaty was agreed upon under the sacred pipe.

Mahpya Lta never broke the treaty, which is still here today for the generations to come.

Yellow Bull: That's kind of the foundation of my beginning, and so--and I would always ask him, you know, "Did we ever have the Horse?"

and he would say, "The Horse was always with us," because it was involved in our songs.

It was involved in our relationship, emotional relationship.

It was always by our sides.

We even have dances for that.

[Black Elk drumming and singing] Yellow Bull: We have a really understanding of that deeper relationship with the Horse, and that takes time.

It doesn't evolve over a brief period of time.

That's the point that everybody should understand, is that, like anything, we had to learn and evolved with our-- with the animals that are here, our plants.

We learned from them, we acknowledged them, and it's the same thing with the Horse.

We evolved with them, and when we evolved with them, we created a relationship based on a human and a spiritual being, and that's really the foundation of who we are.

[Buffalo lowing] N. Scott Momaday: Speaking of the Kiowas, of course, who made the last migration from the Yellowstone region to the Southern Plains, and they had acquired horses on the way, and the Horse is the missing link.

You know, it is the highest-- It enabled them to make the highest expression of nomadism, and that had always been their destiny, and their greatest enemy was distance, and with the Horse, they were free to range a thousand miles in every direction, elevated to a height from which they could see the far world, so they were cut free of the ground, and they did become, in a real sense, centaurs.

The Horse and the Man were one entity on the Plains, so it's an exciting story, you know, the hundreds of books about the importance of the Horse to the Indian, but it can be summed up in that way, that they came together and that marriage was-- it enabled them to reach the pinnacle of their culture.

Saganaw Grant: It's amazing what can happen when you're by yourself and you're conscious of your surroundings.

You see a lot of things happening that people don't actually see or don't pay attention to.

You know, the animals come out during quiet times, and when you want to see them they're there for you.

You know, it's the Creator's way.

We have to realize that these animals are here for a reason, and that's to maybe not entertain, but to let us know that they're there and that they can teach us yet.

You know, there was a time when we could converse with each other.

Momaday: I spent about 5 years of my most impressionable period on the back of that horse.

I must have ridden a thousand or more miles, you know, in that time, easily more, and, just as I say, I got to know the land in a way that I could not otherwise have known it.

You know, I had the-- There's something wonderful about a horse putting you in touch with the Earth.

You're riding the horse, there's this living motion under you, and it is striking the earth, you know, and that's bringing the energy of the earth up into you.

It's a wonderful experience, and I wish everybody could have that.

I was certainly fortunate when I was a teenager to have that experience, and it has meant the world to me.

Grant: Like I said, our philosophy is that we respect everything on Mother Earth.

You know, the way that we live our lives has a great deal to do with the way that we treat our animals.

You know, there are some Tribes that really devote themselves to their horses, their ponies, especially the Crow people, the Tribal Crows.

They respect their animals, and they're so close to them that even the babies can be around these horses, and these horses will look after the babies.

These horses will-- won't step on them, won't scare them, or anything like that because they have that maternal feeling towards our people, all people.

Momaday: This man owned a fine hunting horse, and it was afraid of nothing, and he could point it in the direction of an animal or an enemy, and it struck at full speed, need have no hand upon the reins, but the man was a coward.

He knew fear, and once during a charge, he turned the animal from its course, and the hunting horse died of shame.

To me, that's-- you know, that's worth all of the books that have been written about the meaning of the horse to the Indian.

That's truly a story that does define the amalgam, you know, man-horse, and in that case, the horse was superior to the man.

Yeah.

I love that story.

Black Elk: In the 1990s, a group of Lakota Elders and youth began leading spiritual horseback rides to reconnect with the strength and wisdom of our great nomadic horse culture.

As a young boy growing up on the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Nation, I had the honor to experience many of these rides firsthand, starting at the age of 12.

I'll never forget the deep sense of personal power and relatedness to my Lakota heritage that these sacred rides instilled in me.

On rides to Wounded Knee and Sacred Sites, I would hear stories from the Elders about how the Great Spirit sent relatives who would help us on our Earth journey.

One of those relatives is the Horse.

The Horse shares our spiritual journey.

They're our family member, and we travel together, live together, experience together.

They are an intricate part of who we are.

The Elders would tell old stories of how the Horse has always been with the Native people.

This is confirmed by the Museum of the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre in Canada.

Paleontologists have long been studying the evolution of horses, in part because they are a remarkably complete series of species.

Horses were abundant across North America, Eurasia, and Europe during the last Ice Age.

In fact, paleontologists throughout the 20th and 21st centuries have defined over 50 different species of Ice Age horse based on the size and shape of their skeletons.

However, recent DNA analysis suggests that all of these various species of Ice Age horse likely represented regional populations of a single, wide-ranging horse species.

The Ice Age horses in Beringia were remarkably similar in appearance and are genetically related to today's last truly wild horse.

Carbon-14 dating of mitochondrial DNA have been meticulously analyzed by Dr. Ann Forsten and have substantiated the origin of the modern horse in North America at 1.7 million years ago.

The significance of this fact is slowly being recognized and should result in the horse being classified as a native wildlife species in North America.

The Yukon horse gave rise to today's domesticated horse-- Equus caballus.

The fact that the Yukon horse is genetically identical with the modern horse reveals that wild horses are one of the most deeply established and justifiably Natives in North America.

Grant Zazula: The standard model has always been "12,500 years ago, North America lost all its horses," but that is--that is changing.

Beringia plays a massive role in the global horse story.

They evolved to occupy these Arctic regions and then eventually were able to disperse across the Bering land bridge westward into Siberia and then eventually made their way to Europe and Africa.

For the most part, the horse fossils that we find here in the Yukon are really the direct ancestors of the horses that were later domesticated over in Eurasia, so we now have really good genetic information that confirms that these horses from the Ice Age of the Yukon and Alaska genetically fit well within the genetic diversity of Equus caballus, which is the Latin name, of course, for domestic horses.

There was an amazing study that was done in the Yukon by a guy named Tyler Murchie from McMaster University, and he was working on frozen cores from the Yukon and, you know, shockingly recovered DNA from both wooly mammoths and Ice Age horses of the genus Equus that are about 6,000 years old.

That just kind of blows up the whole paradigm.

It really confirms that North America is this homeland of horses.

That whole concept of horses and mammoths living till at least 6,000 years ago, possibly later, in Yukon brings in this amazing Aboriginal history, Indigenous history, because, you know, people were living alongside these animals for a very long time, and there's a lot of stories in the Yukon from Indigenous people about these ancient animals, these "monsters of the past," if you will, and so telling us that, yeah, people knew about these animals.

They lived with these animals.

They hunted these animals, so we have to go back and start to reimagine, re-establish new information, get new evidence for how long horses lived here.

We know, based on the environmental DNA now, that they were living here till at least 6,000 years ago, and now there's growing amounts of evidence from Indigenous people across the continent that are saying, "No, no, no, no.

"We have known about horses for a long time.

"The horses were here when we were here, and they were here before European people came," so it's just trying to piece together these different pieces of evidence, right?

There's historical writing.

There's Indigenous oral history.

There's fossil records, and there's archeological records.

The jury's out.

Like, I think the jury's out in terms of when the last horses, and whether they actually ever were, completely wiped out in North America or not.

You know, I think we have to now keep our minds open to the possibility that horses were always, always here and we never actually lost them in North America.

Black Elk: A recent study from Mexico on post-Pleistocene horses radiometric dated ancient horse bones, indicating evidence of horses in the early to mid Holocene period.

This data implies that horses may have persisted in North America well after the classic late Pleistocene extinction event.

In 2023, a study published in the "Science" journal titled "Early Dispersal of Domestic Horses into the Great Plains and Northern Rockies" included a genomic analysis of horses.

In it, the genomes of horses studied were measured against two ancient Alaskan horses that lived roughly 29,000 years ago.

The analysis done focused on the less than 1% of the gene that appeared different across all the horse lineages investigated.

In recognition of the fact that the horses originated in North America, Lakota scientists who coauthored this study preferred instead to focus on the fact that more than 99% of the genome of all the horses in the study was shared with those ancient Alaskan horses.

In other words, by DNA, the living horses in North America measured were at least 99% the same as the ancient North American horses sequenced.

These scientific studies lend weight to the idea that the common narrative of the Spanish introducing the horse to North America is challengeable.

Furthermore, in 1521, herds of horses were documented as grazing on the lands of what would become Georgia and the Carolinas by early settlers.

In 1579, Sir Francis Drake-- an English sea captain, privateer, and slave trader-- documented herds of horses living among the Native people along the California and Oregon coasts.

However, the official narrative in the history books and still persists is that the American Indians had no horses before the arrival of the Spanish.

In Europe of the 15th and 16th centuries, horses were associated with cultural refinement, status, nobility, and power.

If American Indians had an established horse culture, then under Europe's standards at the time, American Indians would be civilized.

Denying that horses existed before the arrival of the Spanish and classifying American Indians as savages helped the Europeans sell their fallacies of Manifest Destiny and conquest of the Americas.

[Men shouting] Black Elk: There were numerous accounts of early explorers watching the proud buffalo hunters in Plains regalia riding spirited horses in the early 19th century.

This left no doubt that the Plains Indians had developed a deep, skilled Horse culture for some time.

The culture was highly evolved, and the Horse played a complex and crucial role.

One of the earliest Western painters, George Catlin, wrote, "I am ready, without hesitation, to pronounce the Comanches "the most extraordinary horseman that I have ever seen, "and I doubt very much whether any people in the world can surpass them."

On rides to Sacred Sites and Wounded Knee, Elders shared stories of their oral history, how the Horse survived the Ice Age, and how these horses thrived on the prairies of the Great Plains until the late 19th century, when the U.S. government ordered their decimation.

[Men shouting] [Horse neighs] There was an institutionalized policy to eradicate the horse.

Deanne Stillman: The U.S. government realized at some point that really the only way that they were going to vanquish the Tribes was to strip them of their ponies.

Michael Blake: In the Battle of Palo Duro, what they did was, they attacked the Comanches and Kiowas in their sacred winter living area.

Colonel Mackenzie was able to steal 1,200 horses from the Comanche and Kiowa, gave 100 of them to his scouts and officers, and they killed the rest, 1,100 horses.

What's really interesting about it, though, was, a lot of the men, many of them said over the years that they never stopped having bad dreams about it, and their lives were deeply affected by what they had done.

Black Elk: Colonel Mackenzie was diagnosed with general paresis of the insane and died shortly after.

Stillman: These incidents take their toll.

[Horse neighs] [Men shouting] Momaday: After the Battle of the Washita, Custer was asked, you know, "Why did you kill 800 or 1,000 horses?"

and he said, "Oh, the answer is very simple.

They needed them, and we didn't," so that was a prevailing attitude, I think, on the part of the Army, and the loss of the horse was a terrible thing.

It's equal, I suppose, to the loss of the buffalo.

Those two things were crucial to the Plains culture, and when they were taken away, the culture dissolved.

Black Elk: Western academia, along with historians, still argue the false claims that Native horses and horse cultures were imported from Europe.

Western academia has chosen to dispel contrary accounts shared by American Indians, ignore numerous sightings of vast herds of horses by early colonizers, discount sightings and information of Native peoples with horses that were recorded by subsequent explorers well before European horses were said to have escaped from the Spanish, disregarding recorded accounts from settlers who arrived in the Americas in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries and not allow modern scientific evidence indicating the presence of Equus remains during the proposed extinction period, which was between 500 years ago to 12,000 years ago.

American Indian relationships with the Horse was and, in many cases, still is, a vitally important life element historically, culturally, and spiritually for many Native Nations and people of Native descent throughout the Americas.

[Wind blowing] This dominant Western cultural claim has been used as a fundamental attempt to diminish such cultures by proclaiming a Eurocentric position of dominance.

Western science makes claims objectively.

This claiming without proof-- which, in this case, has been labeled as science and history-- continues to defame and distort the history of many Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

It continues to provide distorted facts and other misconceptions.

Karen Ducheneaux: The Lakota and the Horses, to me, they evolved together.

You know, they evolved together.

The relationship that we had with them was so...symbiotic.

That's why we were the greatest horse people, is because we understood them and they had come to understand us, you know?

We were able to move more often.

You know, the Lakota are nomadic people, so it's important for us to be able to move, and the Horse was such a partner of ours in that lifestyle that we lived, and I believe that one of the reasons why the Lakota were one of the last Tribes to still be fighting the United States and one of the only Tribes to ever have the United States come to us and ask us for peace, sue us for peace, is because we had that advantage, because we were so, you know-- With our horses, we were unbeatable, you know, as a Nation.

We were strong, our horses were strong, and we worked together in a way where, you know, other peoples just couldn't do that, and I think, you know, if they hadn't have taken our horses away from us and caged us up on these little pieces of land that we're so proud of now... that we would have been just like we were then.

We were undefeatable.

They couldn't do it to us.

They couldn't do it to us until they killed our horses and took away our ability to roam, took away our ability to roam, killed our buffalo, and then we were--you know, then we were poor.

Before that, we weren't poor, you know?

We might have had some hard times, but we weren't poor.

We were strong.

Black Elk: One individual who showed profound insight into Lakota's connection with the Horse and its intricate role in shaping our essence as a people was my Tanhansi Alex White Plume, a traditional Lakota leader.

Black Elk: Growing up as his neighbor in Manderson, South Dakota, I witnessed firsthand his pivotal role in orchestrating the ceremonial rides by Lakota people to Wounded Knee.

Alex White Plume: I thank you, and I greet everybody with a good handshake today.

Today is a rest day for the Bigfoot Memorial Riders.

They call them Oomaka Tokatakiya, and this ride started when I first met my wife.

We had many issues back then.

We just got over the 1973 AIM and GOON war, which took many lives, around 68 that I can remember.

Black Elk: Wounded Knee is no stranger to conflict-- not just with outsiders, but even among our own Lakota people.

The scene of an intense drama unfolded in February of 1973 when members of the American Indian Movement seized and occupied this church at Wounded Knee in response to the corrupt and criminal ways of Oglala Lakota Nation tribal president Dick Wilson.

Wilson was known for sending out his GOON squads to suppress, terrorize, and murder traditional Oglalas.

Alex White Plume: And it was just violent here on the reservation, was tension, gunfights every place, and the well-to-do were against the ones who didn't have, and it was hard times, and so what do we do so that we could get back on a more spiritual path?

And my wife would always go to ceremonies, Sundance and Inipi, and try to do what she can when I first met her, and here, the holy man came to us, and he said, "You know, the reason life is like this "is because we're living in a grief.

"We never let go of all the pain, all the destruction towards our ways."

To us, there's a ceremony that we go through that's real elaborate, and it's real meaningful, and it actually takes the pain out of you so that you purify your blood, and we didn't do that ceremony since contact because of the situation where they're pointing guns at us, so my wife looked at me and said, "Alex, you have to help bring that ceremony back," so I asked her grandpa, who was a holy man.

He said, "Well, there's a spirit trail, "a death trail that starts from up by North Dakota, "and it comes to Wounded Knee, where they were all killed, "and their spirits are still wandering amongst us "because they were never released.

"The proper ceremonies were never afforded them, so we have to go back and deal with that."

Everything was done on horse.

The Horse brought us all back together because we got on a horse in a modern time, and we had cars or people are flying to the moon, here we're getting on a horse to bring back our ancient ways, the real ways.

[Wind blowing] Ducheneaux: Going on that ride was a whole different experience.

First of all, it's further than I had ever ridden on a horse, you know, and you get so tired, and you get so cold, you know, and I had my own horse, and she was so tiny, and, you know, I just worried about her the whole time, whether or not she could handle it because it was a long ways, a lot to ask of her, and by the end of the day, I had to take off my saddle because she was so tired, you know, that she couldn't handle me and the saddle, and so I took off that saddle, and I rode the last leg of it in bareback.

There were a lot of times when I didn't think I could do it.

You know, I was like, "I just can't do it.

It's just so hard.

It's so far.

You know, it's--" and that day, you know, we rode until after dark, and it was just so hard, and I was young, you know?

Back then, I thought I was pretty old, but now that I'm looking back, you know, I was very young to be doing something like that, and then when you finish that ride, you know, you just feel so-- It's one of those things where you feel like after that, you could do anything.

Black Elk: After 14 days of riding from Sitting Bull's camp in northern South Dakota through icy terrain and bitter weather, participants reached Wounded Knee on December 28.

The following day, on the 100-year anniversary of the massacre, the riders took part in a ceremony of healing and cultural revival.

The wiping of the tears ceremony evolved into Oomaka Tokatakiya, Future Generations Ride, empowering Native communities.

Ducheneaux: Those rides, those ones that I went on when I was young and the ones that are happening now, you know, they really give the people hope and strength, you know, not just the people who ride, who do get so much from it, but the people who, you know, are Elders and are spiritual people that are looking at us, you know, not just looking at us, looking toward us to believe that those ways will be passed on and that those values are being understood.

When we talk about trying to go back and re-energize our ways or, you know, reinvigorate our culture, I think we need our Horse there because a horse teaches you so much about waiting and being patient and understanding.

You have a good relationship with your people and with your, you know, nature when you have that respect for them, the same respect that you expect to get.

You need to be ready to extend that same respect and that same grace that you would hope that someone would extend to you.

The same things that we need to know to embrace our traditional ways are a lot of the same ways that we need to interact with our horses, and not just our horses, all of the--all of nature.

It really is such a good thing in the community not only to strengthen the young people, but to help our Elders, you know, help them have hope and help them understand because, you know, now I'm getting to be old, but I'm looking at that next generation, think, "Who are gonna be, you know-- "who are gonna be the Sundancers?

Who are gonna be the leaders?"

Zuya White Plume: Whoa.

Anybody that knows about horses knows that they--you know, they are healing.

Whether you're around them for 5 minutes or, you know, your life, they give, you know, just like our land.

They give more than you could take.

You know, you can get on a horse, and they heal you.

There's science that is just now proving that theory, and we known it all this time, you know?

They're sacred, call them Sungka-Wacon.

For me, for my culture, it's a part of us, you know.

It's like-- it's like a limb or arm or, you know, like-- There's something about them that makes us just that much better as a people, Nation.

[Horses neigh] Yeah.

Growing up, we had about 7 horses.

I was younger, and I always thought, "Wonder how it'd be to have 20 head of horses," you know.

It's beautiful, beautiful to bring my family out, and, you know, children, my daughters and my son.

Being able to have them ride, you know, makes that dream a lot better, and you know, without my children and horses, I'm nothing, you know?

It's a way of life.

I love it.

[Black Elk drumming and singing] Black Elk: In the times when we used to be a free people, the Lakota used to have a really good relationship with all the animals that were around us... [Wind blowing] and we had a special relationship when we had the Horses.

They carried our burden, but not just physically.

They carried our burdens spiritually, as well.

They carried our burdens emotionally, as well.

This was a song that was used when a horse would come dancing in in what they would call a sacred way.

Sometimes every once in a while-- once in a great, great, great, long time, maybe once a generation-- there would be a horse that would come dancing into camp.

Lakota would always sing the Horse Dance Song for the horses to remember that these horses came to take the burden and that they are responsible for carrying the burdens for those horses, as well, so this song is very applicable to not only my culture.

It's applicable to the situation that we find the wild horses in.

It's applicable because they were our burden to carry us for so long, and now we have to be the carriers of their burden.

We have to understand that it's our time to stand up and carry them.

[Black Elk drumming and singing] [Horse neighs] [Horse nickers] [Horse whinnies] Ha ha ha!

[Speaking Lakota] [Wind blowing] Raoul Trujillo: Horse medicine is a really powerful thing, but I think Horse medicine, ultimately is a way to give us back our humanity and in a way that will teach us how to harmonize with our environment and our world a little bit better, but it's about finding that compromise, that compromiso.

I've always liked that word.

It's a promise with a responsibility from both parties evolving together and sharing something.

Hah hah.

Heh heh.

[Horse snorts] Yeah.

Good girl.

All right.

You're workin' up a sweat, little fatty.

Our connection with horses just goes back forever, and I think on some genetic level as human beings, we can tap that.

I remember my first ride when I was probably 5 years old up in the Mora Valley in Mora County, New Mexico, and one of my older cousins, I asked him, 5 years old, "I wanna go!"

and he put me on that horse right in front of him, and I never forgot it.

I still remember that power and the joy and that instinct and that wild nature that is not, you know, about "tamable" or "untamable."

It's just about being-- representative about being free and understanding freedom in the biggest sense because you understand harmony, you understand balance, you understand being at one with spirit, at one with the world, and I think that's what, you know, my horses and I try to do up here, is to find a way to harmonize our lives with the environment and, you know, with the universe, the Creator.

Horses always give me the paradox about life-- tragedy and just perfection all in one moment, but that horse gave me this gift about the reminder that the moment is all we have, and if we can live it with those attributes of joy-- you know, seeking and feeling joy and abandonment and the power of ourselves-- that's all we got because it can be taken away in a minute, and horses are just that reminder for me.

They embody that, that surrender to you as their owner.

You feed them.

You take care of them, a little stroke here and there.

You ride them, and that feeling when you're riding-- like long ago when we rode, that moon coming up, the sun going down, the snow kicking up all around us, and you feel that surge of power and balance and harmony with this horse-- you kind of just think, "This is really what life is all about."

Yeah.

I don't know what I'd do without these, these things, these things around me.

[Wind blowing] One of the greatest losses on this continent is if we destroy our herds of wild horses.

They basically represent the spirit of the Americas in a way that we could only begin to understand, and it's through understanding these horses and the power and the medicine that they have.

El Caballo, para m, es un smbolo que significa la vida, la pura vida, el poder de la vida, y el romanticismo seguro, pero, ms que menos, el caballo significa que la vida, tenemos un ms en el momento en la vida para vivir, para sentir todo en el momento perfectamente.

El contentisimo, la libertad, de poder es lo puedo sentir ms en un momento, y ya en uno, dos momentos, as fue, as perdido, so El Caballo para m, es un smbolo para recordar de los antepasados.

Tenemos una historia con caballos desde, bueno, los Europeos, los rabes, los Judos, porque tengo sangre de todo y de los Apaches tambin, los Utes.

Tengo todos sangre, y, para m, es un recuerdo de sentir siempre el voz de los antepasados que me hablan siempre.

I'm rooted to this land, and, you know, I'm a New Mexican, and the people still speak to me here in these woods, in these mountains.

[Wind blowing] Grant: You know, we go to other Tribes, we hear different songs.

They all have meaning.

Everything here on Mother Earth, for us, has a meaning, and we're losing that.

Everyone here on Mother Earth has a purpose in life.

I also believe in taking care of all animals.

They're here for a purpose.

We should treat them with respect.

[Horse neighs] Black Elk: The loss of America's Wild Horses, the loss of innocence and consciousness, loss of ancient wisdom.

Wild Horses and the Lakota roamed and flourished together.

Black Elk: Lakota sense the Oniyan, life force, and Nagi, spirit, of our relative Sungwakan.

In contemporary times, he could sense it and feel the connection with Sungwakan... one of the last wild horses to be rescued before the management for extinction policy rubbed out America's wild horses.

Something was lost of the people, too, a way of life with Unci Maka dissolving.

It was challenging to ride with the wild one, but all the more stimulating to the mind and body, the red horse powerful, strong, on a majestic landscape from which it had risen like the rising sun.

He thought he could stay in the state of Skan, multidimensions, riding with wild horses and Tunkasilas, but it was fleeting, its wild energy, its spirit escaping.

As the wild ones gallop and prance to the 4 directions, they merge with Mother Earth, wind, and the stars together, evolving into rays of consciousness.

[Horses neigh] [Man whooping] [Wind blowing] Alex White Plume: Bigfoot Ride brought back the ceremonies to our people, and today this is the 37th time this ride has taken place.

It expanded from Sitting Bull's camp into Bigfoot camp, and then on into Wounded Knee to the killing fields, and so today we deal with those grief, and we're having an easier time because now we can go to a ceremony.

I'm so proud of all the people that went on this ride and continued on, and they're doing good because it's a hard ride, all the way from North Dakota to Wounded Knee in the cold, in the winter, and they believe in it, so they believe in their culture, and they want a better way, and today the youth are starting to realize what needs to be done, so I have faith in the new generation that is growing up into this new way, so I support them, and I teach them anything I can when they ask for my assistance.

[Wind blowing] [Birds chirping] Adam Joaquin Gonzalez: I grew up in a rodeo family, actually.

I have pictures of me when I was, like, 6 months old on the horse.

I roped in rodeos for almost 20 years.

It doesn't matter if you're a Native American or if you're a cowboy.

You have this--again, this reverence for the Horse because it is a part of you.

It is a part of your life.

It's a part of your lifestyle.

I've always respected horses not just because of my Native American heritage, but I kind of respect them because of what they do for us.

Any cowboy will tell you in a rodeo that it's 80% horse and 20% cowboy.

It's always about the horse.

Half of this country, if not most of it, was founded on horseback, and doesn't matter if you're Native American or if you're, you know, a cowboy or a rancher.

Without horses, again, we would not have what we have today.

Horses gave us that next step.

Horses were the ones that took us there, and it helped with farmers in their fields.

It helped with Native Americans to continue their way of life, their survival for the next generations.

They are a part of our life.

I mean, in every aspect in our home and our stories and our lifestyle, the horse is there.

You were one with that horse when you're on a horse, and horses know this, and there is a certain association, communication, that only you have with your horse, and Indians knew this.

The cowboys know this, and any other Tribe, any other culture in the world knows this.

The type of strength, the type of, you know, medicine that they bring to a people, it's a utopia.

Horse medicine is exactly that.

It's medicine.

It's medicine for the soul.

It's medicine for the heart.

Something about being on a horse, about feeling the horse's energy, about what the horse is giving back to you, and what you give to that horse, it's a certain compassion that you won't get from anything else or any other animal.

If you just ride a horse once and understand that they're there to actually serve you, perhaps you too will feel the medicine that I speak of.

[Horse snorts] [Wind blowing] Black Elk: As Lakota, we know the lands and life forms have evolved over time and our role in that sphere of life.

We have cared for, loved, and developed scientific and spiritual systems to care for the life and spirit within and around us, these systems created through our observation of and experience with Taku Skan Skan and Wo'ope, the sacred movement, great vibration, and Earth Mother law.

Yellow Bull: We evolved with songs, spiritual, and even emotions and human conduct.

We created a bond, and we traveled together through this timespan.

Black Elk: As the teaching offered by Tanka Omniya indicates, you cannot have a Lakota separate of the Horse, as we "were, are, and one with them."

Alex White Plume: All the riders coming off Bigfoot Pass yesterday, oh, that was beautiful to see.

We're seeing a shift from my generation to my son's generation to the grandsons', to the great-grandsons' and daughters', so that's 4 generations that have been on this ride from just our direct family.

Grant: This is our land.

We may not have a title to it, but this is our land.

We are responsible for this land, and we have to try to correct everything that is being done to Mother Earth.

You ever hardly seen cancer among our people, among the Native people.

Today-- today it's very prominent.

I have an Elder that is a good friend of mine who's dying of cancer right now.

She should never have had that.

Because of pollution, she has that disease.

Black Elk: Debris from uranium mining litters landscapes in the Southwest, causing cancer, kidney disease, and birth defects.

Grant: I was taught to love mankind regardless of the color of their skin.

I was taught to respect people, never to criticize, never to say, "You're not doing that right."

They have times that they know right from wrong.

We have to help one another.

These are my thoughts.

Thank you.

Yellow Bull: The narrative is gonna change, and that's really the important part.

In today's time, we need to come to an understanding as human beings, and we need to start respecting each other, but if we have a common ground to build on, I think this is it--the Horse.

Momaday: The Indian has survived.

You know, there's a lot to say about that.

The Horse is probably not able to survive on its own as the Indian was.

It needs the other half of the equation, the human part of the centaur, so I'm hoping that that will somehow be possible, that man will save the horse, because in so many instances, the horse has saved the man.

[Birds chirping]