The story of Sitting Bull comes alive in exhibit

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After Hunkpapa Lakota chief Sitting Bull led his people to victory in the Battle of Little Big Horn against American troops led by George Custer in 1876, they left the United States and settled near the Moose Jaw River. There, at the camp in the area also known as the Turn of the River of Turns, the Sioux began a new life.

Dana Claxton spent the first 11 years of her life in Moose Jaw and is one of the descendants of the Sioux that came to Saskatchewan. Her great-great maternal grandparents and great-grandmother were among the people who accompanied Sitting Bull on the long trek from South Dakota.

An artist who specializes in filmmaking, photography and performing arts and the founding director of the Indigenous Media Arts Group in Vancouver, Claxton has created a multimedia exhibit that tells the story of her ancestors. The exhibit will be featured at the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery from Sept. 9 to Oct. 24.

"For me, it was about honouring that history of Sitting Bull, but also of the Moose Jaw Sioux ... I'm a media artist, I've made documentaries, I've worked with television ... so I wanted to make art about it, but not something that was documentary, that is very much about hard facts, or trying to get the hard facts, although there's a lot of factual stuff in this. But it was really more of a celebration of the ideas and images and that actual site," Claxton said. "It's about acknowledgement, I think, and celebration."

She plans to take the exhibit across Canada and hopes it will tour the United States and possibly Europe. The show, appropriately titled "Sitting Bull and the Moose Jaw Sioux," will consist of a four-channel installation that will project two separate images on the wall. The images will show interview footage with descendants of the Moose Jaw Sioux and some of the people that grew up on the Wood Mountain reserve.

"It's images of descendants of the Moose Jaw Sioux as well as really distorted images of the Battle of Little Big Horn, sort of deconstructed images of historical footage," Claxton said. "There's one fellow, his name is Johnny Lecaine and he's a beautiful storyteller ... he tells us these incredible stories that he heard as a child from all of these old-timers. He used to actually sit with men who fought at the Battle of Little Big Horn."

Heather Smith is a curator at the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery. After Claxton contacted her, Smith said she was all too happy to help bring Claxton's idea to life.

"It was exciting. She had this Moose Jaw connection and that she wanted to make a piece based on part of this history." Smith said. "Quite a lot of contemporary art deals with historical subject matter, or with memory, personal history ... so it made a lot of sense to show an exhibit that is historical subject matter that's interpreted by a contemporary artist. I really like that combo. That was kind of my first thought, really, was that (this) would make a great exhibit for this place," said Smith.

After receiving the funding she needed for the show, Claxton spent the past year traveling to Moose Jaw, Fort Walsh and Vancouver gathering archival material and conducting interviews. The project has helped Claxton learn more about the camp and the relationship between the Sioux and the settlers.

"I never really knew the extent of (the camp) ... it was permanent and people came back all the time ... I never knew of the great relationships between the Lakota and the pioneers. So that was one thing. And then I never knew that the Turn, the actual site, is still there, almost untouched ... and there's old warriors from the Battle of Little Big Horn who are buried around there," said Claxton.

From the age of six, Claxton said she dreamed of moving to New York to make films. A self-professed "natural born artist." Claxton said her move to the Big Apple in the late '80s marked a time of great creativity.

"I had a great time in New York ... it brought togther my creative interest, my intellectual and political interests, but also my spiritual practice. Everything sort of came together there for me," she said.

Since Claxton's return to Canada, she has lived in Vancouver where she continues her work in experimental media art. She also teaches contemporary First Nations art history and humanities courses at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.