Jesse Short Bull is a filmmaker from the Oglala Lakota Tribe in the state of South Dakota, who is currently touring his second feature film, “Free Leonard Peltier.” The film is showing at this year’s Seattle International FIlm Festival (SIFF), which The Observer was granted access to cover. The following is a Q&A with Short Bull, which was conducted over Zoom.
Q: Taking it back to childhood, is there a key moment that you think, this is where my passion for filmmaking began? Or was it something that developed over time?
A: The big influence in my life has always been my grandparents, on both my mother’s side, who’s non native, and my father, who’s from Oglala and Sicangu Lakota tribes in South Dakota. And it was through my grandparents that my grandfather, on my mom’s side, had history books. And when I would go to his house, I would just become enthralled, he had a lot of American Indian history books, and that’s where I started to develop a curiosity for events of the past. And then my great grandmother, Katie Rubidoux Blue Thunder, she was an oral Lakota storyteller. And what I appreciated about it was the art of storytelling as a form of a learning device or medicine in a way that it was a gift and it had a very spiritual potency for trying to understand the world around you.
And there was no money, it was just something that you gifted to people. [So] between those two, history and the art of storytelling through my grandmother, that’s where I got the desire and curiosity for stories, and saw that [Indigenous history] talked about … especially to the Great Plains, was how the West was lost when I was a kid. That’s what helped my understanding, my first introduction into American Indian history through film.
Q: After the success of “Lakota Nation vs United States” was Leonard’s story always one that you wanted to tell?
A: Growing up in South Dakota and growing up near the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, that’s where I first heard about it. I just remember the people that I was around saying he’s innocent, he needs to be free. However, I would have never, even two years ago, never in a million years thought that my path would cross with Leonard’s story. Not that I wouldn’t have been interested in it. There’s so many things in life, and there’s so many challenges and I guess the way that I look at it, I’ve always been one for following my intuition and my Co-Director, his name is David France, knew a lot of the Leonard story through the news. Our paths crossed, and it was just right at the tail end of my work with Lakota Nation, and once I met David and consulted a lot of the producers on the film, almost all the producers, the native producers, I’ve had a relationship prior to working on Leonard’s film. So it was through their encouragement. Then I had to wait to see if this was where I was supposed to be. And it dawned on me quite early that I was on the right path. Once I felt that confidence, we went full steam ahead.
Q: How do you balance telling stories with engaging in them? Where do you find the balance of just telling the story as an outsider, but also as someone who’s invested or engaged with it?
A: It’s a little difficult, and it does take a toll. Part of the reason that Leonard came to South Dakota and came to Pine Ridge was because there was a lot of violence going on. The span of a few short years is infamously known as the reign of terror on Pine Ridge. And when I was younger, a lot of the aftermath of those events, I would come across through people that I would meet, or were affected by them, on both sides of the fence. There’s clearly two opposing forces that were at play in Pine Ridge at the time, and I grew up around people on both sides. The haunting part is, even in my close circle I have friends and family who lost loved ones in ways that were never justice was never achieved, and so it’s hard to find closure. And a lot of times, it seemed like there wasn’t a lot of healing.
Don’t get me wrong, some people have really found ways to overcome that time, but there’s a lot of this history that is still very active. Those agents that are ingredients that culminated in that time of violence are still very active today, whether or not you know it, they’ve evolved. I think it’s paramount, and part of the reason that the timing of this seemed to be now for some odd reason, that we can revisit and talk about these things, whereas before, it was a taboo subject in some circles. So then in managing that, it’s a little hard … It’s hard to be exposed to, even if it’s a story of violence from a long time ago, and even if you think you can immerse yourself in that trauma, you just have to be careful with it. And that’s something that I learned, and that’s part of the tricky part of growing up here and knowing a lot of the people that were affected by these events.
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