Who Will Bury the Dead? The Death of Christianity in Lakota Country

Filmmaker Mark St. Pierre’s shocking documentary centers on the forced conversion of Lakota and Dakota Native Americans to "white man’s Christianity," only to see their Christian parishes and supports vanish from reservations a few generations later. Under President Ulysses S. Grant, these tribes were imprisoned, brutalized, and murdered, with families broken up, and children sent to boarding schools where they were forbidden to speak their original language. In subsequent years, spiritual traditions (e.g., ghost dances) were banned, and Native Americans were made to convert to the Episcopalian faith or perish. This long history is recounted here by descendants—Native American clergy and secular people alike—of those generations who earlier lost everything but adapted to white ways in order to survive. But it is a series of revelations late in the film that prove most astonishing. After inflicting so much pain on the Lakota and Dakota to turn them into Christians, their churches, priests, and pastors have disappeared. What was the point of all that cultural genocide, some of the interviewees ask, if the church was ultimately going to abandon the people? A deeply disturbing documentary, this is highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)