Today, 150 years ago, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors defeated the 7th Cavalry on the banks of the Greasy Grass River, known as the Battle of Little Bighorn.
We want to bring you along with us via live streaming today, between 2 and 3 p.m. Mountain Time. Depending on if the Internet stays available here, we’ll attempt to broadcast aspects of the commemoration via our Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Stay tuned and join us.
Watch live on Facebook and our other social media. This was the scene as over a hundred riders entered camp, who today will help transport our awareness both back to 150 years ago, and into our future.
Yesterday, I stood on that ground with Tokata. We watched more than a hundred horses arrive — riders from across Lakota and allied nations, flags flying, knowing who we are and what we can do, carrying in their hearts that same sovereignty that nobody can take from us. It stopped me cold. The same spirit that defended freedom in 1876 is alive right now.
The Lakota People’s Law Project is here this week not just to remember. We’re here because the struggle those warriors began has never ended. Democratic rights, treaty rights, citizenship rights are still under attack. Indigenous sovereignty is still treated as optional. The U.S. Constitution is supposed to protect us all equally under the law, but it only holds when we hold it accountable and challenge authoritarians, and all inequality.
That’s our work. Legal defense, voting rights, land protection. Defending the constitutional and tribal sovereignty that tyrants in every era have tried to bury.
The warriors of 1876 understood something we must not forget: freedom is not given. It is defended, generation after generation, by people willing to stand.
You are part of that line. Stay tuned.
Wopila tanka — thank you for standing with us
Chase Iron Eyes
Executive Director
Lakota People’s Law Project
Sacred Defense Fund
Water is Life 