In “Lakota Nation vs. United States,” land acknowledgements are the main attraction, and reparations may well be the end goal. Central among the film’s concerns are promises made (and later broken) by the United States in the peace treaty of Fort Laramie, which established the Great Sioux Reservation in 1868. The steps by which the United States took back 90 million acres and reallocated it to settlers are too complicated for the movie to untangle, but the overall picture couldn’t be more clear, compounded by a litany of other injustices. Solutions don’t come easy when attempting to rectify decades of dehumanization, subjugation and erasure, but the Native tribes have not given up their fight. In targeting this particular monument, carved into the Lakota’s ancestral lands, the movie boldly pits Native grievances against the country’s romantic image of its own past.

Source: Daily Nation July 22, 2023 22:10 UTC