Michael Greyeyes says his role as Sitting Bull in the upcoming film Woman Walks Ahead is the most significant and important artistic endeavour he has undertaken.

 "The humanity of Sitting Bull and how he represents a community in crisis is really gripping and I think people can't help but come in to a new understanding of how history works, how history repeats," said Greyeyes.

Greyeyes, an associate professor of performance and devised theatre at York University, will play in the film as Sitting Bull opposite Academy Award-nominated actress Jessica Chastain as Catherine Weldon.

He said he hopes the story find its audience and that people really appreciates what the story is about.

"I think they'll learn something really significant about Indigenous rights, about empowerment and the power of people who resist," Greyeyes said.

The film's screenplay was written by Steven Knight (Eastern Promises) and is directed by Susanna White (Generation Kill). The film, currently in post-production, will be released in 2017.


"There was violence around each corner and I look at the United States right now and it's not dissimilar," Greyeyes said.

Greyeyes mentions an instance where he was reciting his lines, lines he says which were about not giving up ownership to the land. While he was saying his lines, he said he was very aware of the events unfolding around him such as the U.S. election and the protests in Standing Rock.


"For a movie that's been in the making for over a decade, it's timely beyond anything I could have imagined," he said.





Greyeyes thinks the movie has the potential to have a huge impact because of the way media is consumed now. He said people might read a book about what happened but actually seeing it will be a different experience.


"When you see it unfold in human terms, it grabs you in a different way," he said.
 Source

“In John Ferry’s captivating documentary the viewer is yanked head and heart...this is the Sitting Bull few people know.” - Carole Levine, Native American Times

Told mostly in his own words from speeches and printed interviews Sitting Bull gave, and through the use of over 600 vintage photographs and images.

For historical accuracy Lillimar Pictures engaged Robert M. Utley, one of the most respected historians of the American West and author of The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull, and Donald Fixico PhD, Distinguished Professor of American Indian History and prominent Native American, to serve as historical advisors on the film.

THE GREAT LAKOTA SIOUX CHIEF was a spiritual leader, medicine man, humanist and diplomat. This award-winning films tells his remarkable story, creating an intimate and vivid account told extensively through his own words.


Journey through his life as he becomes warrior and chief, fights the army and is the last of his people to surrender to life on the reservation. The life and times of the great Lakota chief Sitting Bull. An intimate in-depth portrait of one of America's great historical figures.
 Source

Ernie LaPointe, Sitting Bull's lineal great grandson, tells his great grandfather's oral history. In this film clip he tells who the family holds most responsible for the death of Sitting Bull. Full two part DVD series available at www.reelcontact.com. This clip is from part two of 'The Authorized Biography of Sitting Bull By His Great Grandson".

Throughout history, the name “Sitting Bull” stands out. But Ernie LaPointe lets his audience know that this is a created name and that his great grandfather’s true name, Tatanka Iyotake, is actually Buffalo Bull Who Sits Down. In his presentations, Mr. LaPointe introduces himself and traces his connection to the famous, but incorrectly remembered, Lakota (“Allied to All Living Things”) leader and medicine man.

 Then Mr. LaPointe, answers audience questions about ceremonies whose meaning and protocol he continues to perform and perpetuate. And he shares stories and cultural values passed down to him from his mother, a medicine woman. For example, in the Lakota language, there is no word for freedom because it is already here. And there is no word for goodbye.

The Lakota culture is learned through storytelling, being shown by example, and by looking and listening to the elders. Raised in the 1950’s, when it was against the law to burn sage or sweet grass or even sing sacred songs, the culture went underground. In 1992, when Ernie LaPointe was told it was time to speak, he “came out of the shadows” to talk about his ancestors and his culture.


Since then Mr. LaPointe’s presentations have been standing-room-only, including his lecture series in Germany and Finland, speaking to anthropologists and professors at Toledo University, addressing Native American groups at the University of Michigan and the University of Notre Dame, and appearing for the Smithsonian Associates in Liberty, New York: “Yours is the only presentation to receive a standing ovation from college professors and high school history teachers. You really educated the educators about Lakota culture.” Wally Mertes.


Audiences are hungry to understand how the Lakota Nation survived atrocities, how they once lived and continue to co-exist with Mother Earth, with the Creator’s Creations. Sitting Bull / Buffalo Bull Who Sits Down advised, ”Let us put our minds together and see what we can do for the children.” Ernie LaPointe counsels, “We need to work together. Not with violence, but with negotiations and with the Truth that we speak, the Truth that we know…My own ceremonial connections tell me that Mother Earth is a Mother who cares for her children very much. And she’s not going to harm them, but her children are harming her…for some pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents on them.” (Source)

The great Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux holy man Sitting Bull resisted forced settlement on reservations in the 1870s. In 1877, after he defeated General Custer at Little Bighorn, he decided to migrate to Canada. He had mixed feelings about such migration as he pronounced the following words:

“Behold my brothers, the Spring has come; the earth has received the embraces of the sun and we shall soon see the results of that love!

Every seed is awakened and so has all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves, to inhabit this land.

Yet, hear me, people, we have now to deal with another race – small and feeble when our fathers first met them but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough they have a mind to till the soil and the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break but the poor may not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule.

They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own and fence their neighbors away; they deface her with their buildings and their refuse. The nation is like a spring freshet that overruns its banks and destroys all that are in its path.

We cannot dwell side by side. Only seven years ago we made a treaty by which we were assured that the buffalo country should be left to us forever. Now they threaten to take that away from us. My brothers, shall we submit or shall we say to them: “First kill me before you take possession of my Fatherland…”

Our love of possession is our disease.
Source