 | This article reads like a press release or a news article and may be largely based on routine coverage .(December 2022) |
Sarah Eagle Heart | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | c.1977 |
| Occupation(s) | Producer, writer, and activist |
| Partner | Kevin Killer |
| Children | 2 |
Sarah Eagle Heart (born c. 1977) [1] is a Native American producer, writer, and activist. She serves as CEO of Return to the Heart Foundation, a grantmaking group founded in 2020 first to get out the vote. [1]
Sarah Eagle Heart is a member of the Oglala Sioux Nation, from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. [1] She and her twin sister Emma have a brother Troy, two years younger. Their mother, a police officer, suffered serious head injuries when the girls were seven years old. She had to stop working, and depended on her family to raise the children, as their father was absent. [1]
Eagle Heart became an activist while still a teen. She and her sister attended a predominately white high school in Martin, South Dakota. They suffered discrimination and bullying while there. They led a protest against the school's Indian mascots and a homecoming ceremony that featured parodies of Indian tribal figures. They were supported by the local chapter of the American Indian Movement. A few years later, the figures were withdrawn from the homecoming celebration. [1]
Eagle Heart attended Black Hills State University where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications with a multimedia and print emphasis and Bachelor of Science in American Indian Studies. She received her Master of Business Administration (global management emphasis) from University of Phoenix. [2]
Eagle Heart has worked in a variety of venues, including in New York City for the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. As a team leader for diversity and social justice, she helped lead the church in 2009 to rejecting the Doctrine of Discovery, which had justified European claims to the Americas. The Episcopal Church was the first major Christian denomination to do so. [2]
Eagle Heart has worked in NGOs to promote Native Americans and bring their indigenous stories to the mainstream. From 2015 to 2022 she served as CEO of Native Americans in Philanthropy. [3] This organization seeks to promote philanthropic efforts of Indigenous groups and activists.
Eagle Heart is a founding member of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. [1] This organization seeks to create a deeper understanding of the effects of the U.S. Indian Boarding School policy and generational trauma. The Coalition has supported the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, created in June 2021 by Deb Haaland, Secretary of the US Department of Interior, to investigate and document the Indian boarding schools in the United States, including former territories.
Since 2022 she has been CEO for Return to the Heart Foundation. It was initially founded in 2020 to get out the vote for that year's elections at local, state and federal levels. The group makes grants to a wide variety of indigenous businesses and non-profits to promote development.
Eagle Heart has worked on several film projects and has been based in Los Angeles for several years. She served as a co-producer of the animated short Crow: The Legend (2018). This VR interactive short movie presents a Native American folktale. [4] She received an Emmy for her role as a consulting producer. [5]
She also served as a producer for the documentary Lakota Nation vs. the United States (2022), working with actor Mark Ruffalo. This film explores the conflict between Indigenous peoples and European settlers, particularly related to control of the Black Hills, sacred land to the Oglala. [1] The film explores the conflict between settlers and Native Americans seeking to reclaim the Black Hills, including the perspectives of many Indigenous activists. [6] She has also been working on a docuseries, a horror film, and a drama film script. [1]
Eagle Heart and her twin sister Emma Eagle Heart-White, who is a psychotherapist, published a memoir titled Warrior Princesses Strike Back: How Lakota Twins Fight Oppression and Heal through Connectedness (paperback 2023). [1] They explore their lives as twins and their upbringing on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The work includes self-help methods for women of color, discussions of intergenerational and personal trauma, and insight into "decolonial therapy". [7]
Eagle Heart had her first child at age 18 and raised two sons Aaron and Brendan Cuny as a single mother while completing her university degrees. She has ensured her sons have grown up with Oglala Sioux traditions; both have participated since their youth in the Sun Dance at the reservation. [2]
Her partner is activist and politician Kevin Killer (Oglala Sioux). He has served in both houses of the South Dakota state legislature and as 44th President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe (2020-2022). [1]
The Lakota are a Native American people. Also known as the Teton Sioux, they are one of the three prominent subcultures of the Sioux people, with the Eastern Dakota (Santee) and Western Dakota (Wičhíyena). Their current lands are in North and South Dakota. They speak Lakȟótiyapi—the Lakota language, the westernmost of three closely related languages that belong to the Siouan language family.
The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples. Collectively, they are the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, or "Seven Council Fires". The term "Sioux", an exonym from a French transcription ("Nadouessioux") of the Ojibwe term "Nadowessi", can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or to any of the nation's many language dialects.
The American Indian Movement (AIM) is an American Indian grassroots movement which was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 1968, initially centered in urban areas in order to address systemic issues of poverty, discrimination, and police brutality against American Indians. AIM soon widened its focus from urban issues to many Indigenous Tribal issues that American Indian groups have faced due to settler colonialism in the Americas. These issues have included treaty rights, high rates of unemployment, the lack of American Indian subjects in education, and the preservation of Indigenous cultures.
The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, also called Pine Ridge Agency, is an Oglala Lakota Indian reservation located in the U.S. state of South Dakota, with a small portion of it extending into Nebraska. Originally included within the territory of the Great Sioux Reservation, Pine Ridge was created by the Act of March 2, 1889, 25 Stat. 888. in the southwest corner of South Dakota on the Nebraska border. It consists of 3,468.85 sq mi (8,984 km2) of land area and is one of the largest reservations in the United States.
Russell Charles Means was an Oglala Lakota activist for the rights of American Indians and all oppressed First Nation Americans, libertarian political activist, actor, musician and writer. He became a prominent member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) after joining the organization in 1968 and helped organize notable events that attracted national and international media coverage.
The Hunkpapa are a Native American group, one of the seven council fires of the Lakota tribe. The name Húŋkpapȟa is a Lakota word, meaning "Head of the Circle". By tradition, the Húŋkpapȟa set up their lodges at the entryway to the circle of the Great Council when the Sioux met in convocation. They speak Lakȟóta, one of the three dialects of the Sioux language.
The Sicangu are one of the seven oyates, nations or council fires, of Lakota people, an Indigenous people of the Northern Plains. Today, many Sicangu people are enrolled citizens of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of the Rosebud Indian Reservation and Lower Brule Sioux Tribe of the Lower Brule Reservation in South Dakota.
The Great Sioux Reservation initially set aside land west of the Missouri River in South Dakota and Nebraska for the use of the Sioux, who had dominated this territory. The reservation was established in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. It included all of present-day western South Dakota and modern Boyd County, Nebraska. This area was established by the United States as a reservation for the Teton Sioux, also known as the Lakota: the seven western bands of the "Seven Council Fires".
Cecilia Fire Thunder is a nurse, community health planner and tribal leader of the Oglala Sioux. On November 2, 2004, she was the first woman elected as president of the Tribe. She served until being impeached on June 29, 2006, several months short of the two-year term. The major controversy was over her effort to build a Planned Parenthood clinic on the reservation after the South Dakota legislature banned most abortions throughout the state. The tribal council impeached her for proceeding without gaining their consensus.
The Wounded Knee Occupation, also known as Second Wounded Knee, began on February 27, 1973, when approximately 200 Oglala Lakota and followers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized and occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, United States, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The protest followed the failure of an effort of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO) to use impeachment to remove tribal president Richard Wilson, whom they accused of corruption and abuse of opponents. Additionally, protesters criticized the United States government's failure to fulfill treaties with Native American people and demanded the reopening of treaty negotiations to hopefully arrive at fair and equitable treatment of Native Americans.
The Oglala are one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people who, along with the Dakota, make up the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ. A majority of the Oglala live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the eighth-largest Native American reservation in the United States.
Amos Bad Heart Bull, also known as Waŋblí Wapȟáha, was a noted Oglala Lakota artist in what is called Ledger Art. It is a style that adapts traditional Native American pictography to the new European medium of paper, and named for the accountants' ledger books, available from traders, used by the artists for their drawings and paintings. He was also the tribal historian of the Oglala, as his father Bad Heart Bull was before him.
Theresa B. "Huck" Two Bulls was an attorney, prosecutor and politician in the United States and the Oglala Sioux Tribe. In 2004 she was elected as Democratic member of the South Dakota Senate, representing the 27th district, the first American Indian woman to be elected to the state legislature. She served until 2008. That year Two Bulls was elected as president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation, the second woman to serve in this position. She served one term, which was two years.
Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee is a 1994 TNT film starring Irene Bedard, Tantoo Cardinal, Pato Hoffmann, Joseph Runningfox, Lawrence Bayne, and Michael Horse and August Schellenberg. The film is based on Mary Crow Dog's autobiography Lakota Woman, wherein she accounts her troubled youth, involvement with the American Indian Movement, and relationship with Lakota medicine man and activist Leonard Crow Dog. The film is notable for being the first American film to feature an indigenous Native American actress in the starring role. Lakota Woman is also the third overall and first sound film with an entirely indigenous cast after In the Land of the Head Hunters and Daughter of Dawn.
Leonard Crow Dog was a medicine man and spiritual leader who became well known during the Lakota takeover of the town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1973, known as the Wounded Knee Incident. Through his writings and teachings, he has sought to unify Indian people of all nations. As a practitioner of traditional herbal medicine and a leader of Sun Dance ceremonies, Crow Dog was also dedicated to keeping Lakota traditions alive.
Kevin Killer is a Native American activist and politician. He served as president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe (2020-2022). He served as a Democratic member of the South Dakota House of Representatives from 2009 to 2017 and the South Dakota Senate from 2017 to 2019, representing the 27th district. He lives in Pine Ridge, South Dakota.
Dawn Tobacco Frank (Lakota: Ta Oyate Wiyankapi Win) is an American biologist and academic administrator. She is president of the Oglala Lakota College.
Mináǧi kiŋ dowáŋ: A Zitkála-Šá Opera is a 2022 operatic film about the life and work of Yankton Dakota author and activist Zitkála-Šá. It is considered by some to be the first opera that uses Dakota language. The opera was composed by Lyz Jaakola, directed by Sequoia Hauck, and produced by Kelly Turpin of An Opera Theater (AOT). Jaysalynn Western Boy is one of four actors to play Zitkála-Šá. It premiered October 12, 2022 at Water Works Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The 44-year-old Oglala Sioux woman from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota is on a mission to revolutionise the way Indigenous narratives are portrayed in the mainstream.
Eye-opening and intense, this penetrating memoir will inspire.