Vanessa Short Bull | |
---|---|
Born | |
Beauty pageant titleholder | |
Title | Miss South Dakota USA 2000, Miss South Dakota 2002 |
Hair color | Brown |
Eye color | Brown |
Major competition(s) | Miss South Dakota USA 2000 (winner) Miss South Dakota 2002 (winner) |
Vanessa Short Bull (born December 30, 1978) is an American beauty pageant titleholder who served as both Miss South Dakota USA (2000) and Miss South Dakota (2002).
Vanessa Short Bull was born in Pine Ridge, South Dakota to Thomas (former state senator and current president of Oglala Lakota College) and Darlene Short Bull. Short Bull is an Oglala Sioux Native American, a descendant of Ghost Dance leader Arnold Short Bull. [1]
Her family is from the Pine Ridge Reservation, although she hasn't been living there since she was 6 and currently resides in Rapid City, South Dakota. She took ten years of ballet classes at New York City's Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. [2]
Short Bull was the first Native American to have the title of Miss South Dakota, winning the title in 2002. [3]
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.
Pine Ridge is a census-designated place (CDP) and the most populous community in Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 3,138 at the 2020 census. It is the tribal headquarters of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Badlands National Park is an American national park in southwestern South Dakota. The park protects 242,756 acres of sharply eroded buttes and pinnacles, along with the largest undisturbed mixed grass prairie in the United States. The National Park Service manages the park, with the South Unit being co-managed with the Oglala Lakota tribe.
Red Cloud was a leader of the Oglala Lakota from 1865 to 1909. He was one of the most capable Native American opponents whom the United States Army faced in the western territories. He led the Lakota to defeat the United States during Red Cloud's War, establishing the Lakota as the only nation to defeat the United States on American soil. The largest action of the war was the 1866 Fetterman Fight, with 81 US soldiers killed; it was the worst military defeat suffered by the US Army on the Great Plains until the Battle of the Little Bighorn 10 years later.
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 Miss South Dakota USA competition is the pageant that selects the representative for the state of South Dakota in the Miss USA pageant. It is currently directed by Future Productions based in Savage, Minnesota since 2002.
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.
Adrian C. Louis was an American author. Hailing from Nevada, Louis was a member of Lovelock Paiute tribe who lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He has taught at Oglala Lakota College.
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.
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.
Alice Blue Legs was a Lakota Sioux craftworker, notable for her quillwork. She received a 1985 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and was a featured artist for the documentary film Lakota Quillwork—Art and Legend. Her work was seen in the epic film Dances with Wolves and exhibited in museums such as The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, the Heard Museum, the Sioux Indian Museum. Examples of her work are in the permanent collection of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board at the Washington, D. C. headquarters of the United States Department of the Interior and the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.
The Wounded Knee 4-Directions Toby Eagle Bull Memorial Skatepark, also known as the Toby Eagle Bull Memorial Wounded Knee Four Directions Skate Park & the WK4-Directions TEB Memorial Skatepark, is a concrete skatepark located in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, United States, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Completed in 2011 by the local community with help from skateboarding organizations, the skatepark features a spectrum of skate obstacles and is dedicated to a young Lakota skater who died in a car accident: Toby Eagle Bull. The WK4D TOB Memorial Skatepark is located in the Youth Opportunity, or "YO," park, adjacent to the Oglala Lakota Nation powwow grounds, a picnic area, a playground, a basketball court as well as a baseball field.
Tamara "Tammy" Eagle Bull is a Native American architect, and president and co-founder of Encompass Architects in Lincoln, Nebraska. She is the first Native American woman in the United States to become a licensed architect.
Lakota Tech High School is a public high school in unincorporated Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota, near the Pine Ridge census-designated place and with a Pine Ridge postal address. It is in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It is a part of the Oglala Lakota County School District.
Sarah Eagle Heart 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.
Emma Cornelia Sickels (1854–1920) was an American teacher. She had a complex relationship with Indigenous peoples through her work with the United States government. White society regarded her as a hero for collecting information and mediating peace between the US and the Lakota people in 1890. During this time, she incorrectly blamed Native Americans for the Wounded Knee Massacre. In 1893, she was publicly fired from the Anthropology and Ethnology Department at the Chicago World's Fair for protesting how her boss was falsely showcasing Native American life to display Indigenous people as uncivilized.