(water trickling) (water trickling) (water trickling) - [Narrator] Even though they have never seen one, most Americans have romantic feelings about prairies.

(water trickling) (birds cawing) But these vast grasslands of our collective past now exist mostly in our minds.

(water trickling) (insects chirping) Nearly all of them are gone, replaced by countless legions of cloned row crops.

(birds chirping) (Insects and birds chirping) What Willa Cather and Lewis and Clark saw, no living person has ever seen.

(water trickling) There is at least one prairie left though, in Nebraska.

(birds chirping) But talking about it feels a bit transgressive (birds chirping) because it's kind of a secret.

(birds chirping) This place seems to want to be known, and it has a story to tell.

(birds chirping) And it has graciously chosen to tell it.

(birds chirping) We will have to be patient to hear it because prairies don't understand our haste and they don't speak very quickly.

(birds chirping) They also pick their own spokes creatures, and we don't really get a say.

(birds chirping) (birds chirping) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) - [Rex] I absolutely think of the Sandhills as a living entity.

I absolutely do.

It has a personality.

(clouds rumbling) It is powerful.

(gentle guitar music) It's all things to the extreme.

I just feel like I'm in the presence of God when I'm out there.

(gentle guitar music) - [Paul] You have to face yourself.

If you stand in the middle of the Sandhills.

You have to face yourself and be comfortable with yourself, otherwise it could drive you crazy.

- [Mary Ann] It's cosmic, it's grand, and I struggle with that a little bit because you feel so small.

(gentle guitar music) - [Lori] There's something really special about grasslands.

It's something about size and scale.

- [Becca] You go miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and don't see anything but grass and sky and clouds, and grass and sky and clouds.

(gentle guitar music) - [Chris] There are not very many places in the world where there's 12 million acres of habitat that's still contiguous.

- [Paul] The old saying in this business is, you know, you take care of the grass and the grass will take care of you.

(gentle guitar music) - I call it the Chasmu Makhoche, (gentle guitar music) land of the sand.

(upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (insects chirping) (insects chirping) (insects chirping) - [Stephen] The Sandhills prairie absolutely unique.

(insects chirping) It's the last great expanse (insects chirping) of mostly natural prairie in North America.

We have fragments of Tallgrass prairie.

We have pretty large fragments of Shortgrass and mixed grass prairie, especially in South and North Dakota.

(insects chirping) But this is really the largest expanse of continuous prairie.

(insects chirping) So this is Sand bluestem.

We always think of the Big bluestem as having this three-pronged seed head.

They used to call it turkey foot because of that.

Well, Sand bluestem has a smaller version of the same thing, and this will grow up to about six feet high.

And then over here we have something called Sand lovegrass.

(grass crunching) And I just love the way the light shines through this grass, especially in the fall when the grass turns red.

(insects chirping) So we're kneeling in a patch of Switchgrass.

Now, we know that 97% of what was classified as Tallgrass prairie has been plowed under or close to that.

Out here in the Sandhills, there's thousands of acres of Tallgrass prairie.

Wherever it's wet like here, wherever the aquifer is nearby, you get Tallgrass prairie.

And I think most people don't even know about it.

(insects chirping) (insects chirping) (insects chirping) (insects chirping) (wind blustering) (wind blustering) - [George] Get the other one on.

Ain't got all day.

(insects chirping) (people chattering) (truck door thuds) - [Susanne] The Nebraska Sandhills are one of the largest intact grasslands that we have.

(grass crunching) The sand, the rainfall patterns that we have here, you know, it's conducive to grazing, so it's not gonna be productive from a corn, soybean, you know, row crop perspective.

Really, the production of grass is what's important.

And so it's kept the landscape pretty intact.

(water splashing) (grass crunching) - [Susanne] Three, two of 'em.

She's just biting.

(wind blustering) So we're here to really take a intensive look at the biodiversity here in Hooker County.

- [George] Do you want it?

(people chattering) - [George] That's the spurs.

- [Susanne] Yeah, that's covered in it.

(group laughing) Did you get that?

I'll poke them to get one of those.

(turtle snaps) (people chattering) We came here with the idea we'd look at the aquatic systems.

So the headwaters of the Dismal River.

Looking for fish primarily.

Really trying to get a sense of the presence, what is here.

Found the Plains topminnow, which is a Great Plain species, you know, just found here in the Great Plains.

(wind blustering) (water splashing) - [George] Somebody else disappeared.

(wind blustering) All right, where is that fundulus?

We need to get through there to get it.

(water sloshing) Fundulus?

Oh, there we go, perfect.

That's what we wanted to show you guys.

There you go.

Fundulus sciadicus, Plains topminnow.

(insects chirping) You know, it survived until relatively recently in a lot of different streams, that when you move into the eastern third of the state, they're not there anymore.

These streams are all degraded now.

(insects chirping) And it has disappeared all from the Republican, vast portions of the Platte River, the Lower Elkhorn, and we're starting to see it move up the Loop River.

But yeah, it was here.

And so where it's left in good numbers is the Sandhills, the Sandhills of South Dakota, the Keya Paha Drainage, it's got a lot of sand in it.

Places like that is where it survived.

(birds chirping) - [Susanne] You know, does it matter that they've disappeared from this stream system?

If indeed they've disappeared or the diversity has gone down?

You know, maybe in the short term, no.

In the long term though, as the climate changes, as, you know, weather extremes, when you don't have a diverse system, they're less resilient.

It's our natural heritage.

I mean, there isn't any other place in the world where you have these grass-covered sand dunes.

(western music) ♪ O bury me not on the lone prairie ♪ ♪ These words came low and mournfully ♪ ♪ From the pallid lips of a youth who lay ♪ ♪ On his dying bed ♪ - [Chris] I don't think people know how to interact with prairies.

Grasslands are something you drive through to get to nature.

You go to the mountains, you go to the lakes, you go to the oceans, and you have to suffer that flat, boring grassland on the way.

It's almost as bad as driving through cornfields.

And so I think one of the main jobs of prairie conservationists is to help people find something in a prairie that they can identify with.

So bison would be one.

You know, they're a large animal.

They're really neat looking.

There's lots of them.

(camera snaps) There aren't very many places where you can find them.

But if you do find them, that is something that brings people to prairies in a way that's really hard to replicate.

(birds chirping) I'm drawn to things that are small, things that are more accessible.

Butterflies or bees or grasshoppers or leaf hoppers or spiders.

Most people don't pay any attention to them or don't pay very much attention to them.

They might see something and either brush it aside or step on it or walk past it.

(insects chirping) To me, those are some of the more fascinating things in the world.

(birds chirping) In the future, we're gonna have, you know, as we continue to have more and more wars and battles about water, the Sandhills is gonna be one of those places that's gonna be very sought after.

And it'll be really interesting as a society to see if we decide to protect the Sandhills as an intact landscape with its water, or if we decide that that water needs to go somewhere else to help support people.

You know, we have this, one of the few remaining large landscapes left in the world.

Is it valuable, is it worth it to have some places in the world that are still large, open, mostly natural areas?

(birds chirping) It can be hard to argue that from a practical standpoint, but if you ask the people that live there, it's not a hard choice.

- [Narrator] We could stop the film right here and add it to a long list of cinematic lamentations over the loss of wild nature.

But the Sandhills is not misanthropic and it does not think humans should be expelled from the earth because of our penchant for destruction.

It actually seems to appreciate our affection and sometimes it even loves us back.

(gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) ♪ There's no turning back ♪ - [Rex] So, right now we are in what's known in Lewellen as the Ranch House Building.

And interestingly enough, my Uncle Merle owned this building back in the '60s.

And back in the '60s, Lewellen was known as Sin City.

And this was a party town.

Two bars and live music every weekend.

Well, fast forward 40, 50 years, and now I have this building back and it is now a wood shop.

And I'm able to have all of my tools in my personal space here, and it's fabulous.

♪ Shine on ♪ (upbeat guitar music) The Sandhills are a beautiful and harsh place, and it's really such a blessing to be in and near them that you understand right away that your place in the universe, and it will humble you if you are not already humble, in so many ways.

And they're hard to make a living on, but they are definitely an influence on the way of life out here.

And there's a harshness to it and there's a beauty to it, and there's a fragility to it.

I mean, it's like the yin and the yang all in one with the Sandhills.

(upbeat guitar music) ♪ In this together ♪ - [Rex] There's a sense of old school here, of old traditions, an old way of treating people that really, really appeals to me.

(upbeat guitar music) For me, I live on Blue Creek, which comes out of the Sandhills.

And I do think of it a bit like the Shire from "The Hobbit' in that it's almost this magical alternate universe place away from the rest of the world.

And I actually love Nebraska's new tagline, "Nebraska, not for everybody," you know.

And it's definitely with the Sandhills.

The Sandhills is not for everybody.

♪ Out here shining ♪ ♪ Even when it looks like stormy weather ♪ ♪ That's always on my mind ♪ ♪ That we're all in this together ♪ - [Becca] I have met so many people that call the Sandhills, the Shire.

I have called the Sandhills the Shire.

I live in a place, we live in a place where our children can ride their bikes from sun up to sundown, completely unattended, completely safe.

If a neighbor sees them doing something they shouldn't do, you're gonna get a phone call.

Everyone looks out for each other.

You go to the grocery store, you're gonna talk to six people.

Everyone is very connected.

We can drop our kids off at the community pool unattended and feel really safe about it.

But we're in the middle of nowhere Nebraska.

And even going just a little bit further outside of the middle of nowhere in Nebraska, you're not gonna run into a lot of diversity of culture, of races, of languages.

You know, it's very insulated.

And out here because it's been so insulated and so isolated for so long, to come here from an outside, as an outsider, you have to learn the language of the ranchers.

You have to learn the language of the native plants.

You have to learn the native, like the cycle of all the seasons here.

And when we first moved here six years ago, it was September, which I now have come to think of as the month of the wasp and the sand bur because they're everywhere, right?

The wasps are getting their last forage on, and the sand burs have ripened and are now crazy and are everywhere.

But it's not always like that.

You know, in the spring and the early spring, everything is verdant and green.

If it's rained a lot.

And there's the moment at which the yucca plant like sends up its stalk and has those new pretty white bells.

And then later in the summer, like you just watch the progression and you see the evening primrose start to come.

And then there's the moment where the roses bloom.

And then as the season progress further, there's the moment when the sunflowers bloom.

And then as they start to fade, and you're cresting back towards fall, you start waiting for the rose hips to ripen on the rose bushes, and everything starts to die back and dry back.

But it's still this gorgeous amber undulating grass that's always there.

And there's such a rhythm.

(soft guitar music) This is a place where there is still seasons and where people still live seasonally.

That's one of my absolute favorite things about living in Mullen, Nebraska.

(cows mooing) The winters are long.

(engine humming) The winters are really long.

(soft guitar music) ♪ There she was standing on a mountain ♪ ♪ With the sun shining in her face ♪ ♪ And I called out to her ♪ ♪ Hoping she'd hear me ♪ - [Becca] But then about the end of February, beginning of March, then it's calving season.

♪ So far away ♪ And everything, the tone and tenor, everything changes.

(soft guitar music) The ranchers spend their entire, you know, I don't know how long, two months midwifing baby calves.

Like my massage books dry up because they never know when they're gonna sleep 'cause they spend all night long out in the fields, midwifing baby calves.

- [Mona] And that's the reason we lose a lot of them we lose the ears is 'cause they've been tagged.

- [Mary] Right.

- [Mona] And then it freezes.

- 'Cause that's open there.

- [Mary] It's open and wet.

- [Mona] Yep, and we left two out and they were all, because they had sucked.

And so usually if they suck, they're all right.

But one of 'em we got in and the next morning - because he looked so cold.

- [Mary] Yeah.

- [Mona] And I bet he had a chunk of ice around his ear where the ear tag was like, I couldn't even break it off.

So I put him in front of the space heater and felt sorry for him, but he survived the night.

- [Becca] And then it's branding season, and everybody comes together and they take turns going to everybody's different ranch to get the branding done.

Then branding ends.

And we have a lovely little summer season.

Those of us that aren't ranchers.

The ranchers have to hay.

It's haying season and they're staying out late and they're watching the weather like crazy people.

And they're waiting for just the right weather conditions to get the hay rolled up.

(soft guitar music) ♪ Put in the bones ♪ ♪ But I never find her ♪ ♪ What have I been dreaming ♪ ♪ Working hard ♪ - [Becca] I was not gonna come at first, but it has been the most transformational experience of my life, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

(soft guitar music) - [Interviewer] Do you think you've gone native in a way?

I mean, you call yourself on Instagram Becca of the Sandhills.

- Okay, let me tell you right now.

It is 100% impossible for anybody that moves here to ever go native.

You can live here for 30 years and be like a pillar of the community and completely engaged with every level of society of Mullen, and no one will ever forget that you are not from here.

(soft guitar music) - [Interviewer] When I was here in August, you talked about the old Sandhillers.

Who are they?

- Who are the old Sandhillers?

Oh my gosh, the Simonsons, the Vintons.

There's so many, I'm not gonna get everybody's names right, but you go to the cemetery and you, the Hilderhoffs and you know, the people who, they're all interconnected and there's tons of them.

And they have been here since, you know, the Homestead Act and beyond.

You know, since the Homestead Act.

There're new implants too.

I mean, before that there were native people here.

(solemn orchestral music) (solemn orchestral music) - [Narrator] The grasslands.

(solemn orchestral music) The treeless, wind-swept continent of grass (solemn orchestral music) stretching from the broad Texas Panhandle up through the mountain reaches of Montana to the Canadian border.

(solemn orchestral music) A country of high winds and sun.

(solemn orchestral music) High winds and sun.

(solemn orchestral music) Without rivers, without streams, with little rain.

(somber music) (somber music) (somber music) (somber music) (somber music) (somber music) (trailer rattling) (trailer rattling) (trailer rattling) (ATV engine humming) (ATV engine humming) (metal clanking) (ATV engine humming) (ATV engines humming) (ATV engine humming) (ATV engine humming) - [Farmer] Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!

(people chattering) (ATV engine humming) (cows mooing) (gate clanging) - [Paul] I've been ranching for quite a while, pretty much my whole life.

(cows mooing) But the Sandhills is mainly for a cow calf operation.

It's not really for farming the ground, just don't, it can't really support any type of farming.

The sand is too coarse.

(cows mooing) (cows mooing) I feel pretty connected with the Sandhills and in particular to this place and what I'm doing.

You're kind of your own boss and you know, you work, you work, you get as much done as you can, you know, and you gotta be very self-motivated to get things done.

You know, 'cause if you don't get 'em done, why, they're not gonna get done.

(cows mooing) (cows mooing) This is what they call the Vinton V/V Place.

(wind rustling) My great Aunt Marg and my great Uncle Jim was on this place.

And it's actually the original, it's the original Vinton place.

When the Vinton's first come into the country, this is where they settled.

In fact, the house I live in is the same house.

(chuckles) It's an old house.

(birds chirping) It's been a way of life for our family for a lot of years, you know.

And you know, you gotta take care of it too.

You can't abuse the ground or anything.

You take care of the grass, and the cattle do better.

And you know, the productivity of the ground will be better.

You know, and it benefits everything.

It benefits wildlife, you know, your whole ecosystem really.

(engine humming) (engine humming) (wind howling) (wind howling) (wind howling) - [Mary Ann] You can feel a little worried about out here, about being isolated.

But I grew up out here.

And for instance, you know, when you're a little kid, you're often bumping along in the pickup with an older brother.

Or in my case, when I was very young, with my dad.

It's fun for me to be back as a biologist, kind of doing something different on it.

This is a good example of an ecosystem that's doing pretty well biodiversity wise.

It doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, have a complete absence of humans, you know, to be functioning well.

(cows mooing) And a lot of that is because grazing emulates what would've occurred without humans here.

(scuffling) It's a neat landscape where the valleys are fairly wet and productive.

So those valleys are put up in hay during the growing season.

And all that forage is preserved to feed out to cattle in the wintertime.

Then the dunes, which aren't nearly as productive, are grazed more in the off-season.

So it's actually in some ways a fairly sustainable kind of ranching landscape.

(soft guitar music) (soft guitar music) (birds chirp) (soft guitar music) (soft guitar music) (soft guitar music) (soft guitar music) (soft guitar music) (tractor engine humming) (tractor engine humming) - [Grace] Haying is the process of sustainability.

So when the winter comes, you'll have something to feed your animals.

If you did not hay, your animals would probably starve in the wintertime 'cause they wouldn't have anything to eat.

(soft guitar music) (soft guitar music) - [Interviewer] How old were you the first time you drove this?

(wind rustling) - It wasn't this tractor, but I think the first time I probably, I remember, I was mowing and I was on this old blue Ford, and I was probably maybe fourth grade.

Well, my parents needed me to be out.

And you feel a little left out and almost some shame if you're not helping, which, I mean, it's nice to be able to help them, (upbeat guitar music) but once in a while, it's kind of fun just to do your own thing and not hay.

But, hey, Dad really needs the help.

(upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) - [Paul] I think if it dries out more, some of the meadows are so wet in the middle that maybe I might be able to get that baled later on.

I mean, it's dried out a lot here in the last two or three weeks, so.

(tractor engine humming) I don't know, if I put in a full day of moving bales, I could probably get about all them bales moved that you see.

Maybe a day and a half it would take to move all them.

(tractor engine humming) It's kind of frustrating moving bales because sometimes they don't, you try to hit 'em and spin 'em, so they'll go on.

But sometimes they don't spin right.

(tractor engine humming) Sometimes I run out of hay like the end of April, 1st of May.

(tractor engine humming) I always buy maybe a little extra hay to get through.

(tractor engine humming) (tractor engine humming) (tractor engine humming) - [Grace] I can't listen to music in here, but I'll sing random songs.

Beyonce or church hymns or some country songs, Shania Twain.

(upbeat guitar music) Sometimes I simply just look at nature, and I don't know, talk to Jesus about nature.

Like the moon and the sun are still in the sky.

It's so beautiful.

It's actually quite amazing.

Mind boggling really, to think of what we're doing here on this ranch.

(upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (threshers clicking) (threshers clicking) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (birds chirp) (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music) (wind blustering) (soft rock music) - [Lori] Can kind of see how the wax changes the texture of it.

(brush scratches) (squeaking) Okay.

This is known to aviators in the area, but the V/V brand, symbol is on the roof.

I loved the way the red buildings against the green and golds of the grasses played against each other.

(lively folk music) Right now, it's at a pretty literal stage, and it'll stay, it'll be more literal than something like this painting.

But I also want to, I want it to be recognizable as the V/V place.

And so that will require a little bit more literal representation than what I often do.

(soft folk music) I think the Sandhills is just so beautifully distinctive, but it seems a little bit fragile as a landscape.

I think the people who've been there and lived there and worked there understand its fragility, but how to work with that.

(somber music) And I think we have lost something.

I think... (somber music) And I don't know fully how to get, how to retrieve it or recover it.

I think we as a society have separated so much from a connection to the land, that we, that our sacred places are in our minds.

(birds chirping) But the idea that you're really connected to a place (somber music) makes it sacred.

(somber music) Failing to recognize that places can be sacred (somber music) can feel like an assault on our spirits.

(folk rock music) ♪ Shady grove, my little love ♪ ♪ Shady grove, I say ♪ ♪ Shady grove, my little love ♪ ♪ I'm bound to go away ♪ (folk rock music) (folk rock music) (folk rock music) ♪ Wish I had a glass of wine ♪ ♪ And bread and meat for two ♪ ♪ I'd put it down on a golden plate ♪ ♪ and give it all to you ♪ ♪ Shady grove ♪ - [Paul] You know, that barn, I think that was one of the original structures here.

♪ Shady grove I say ♪ - [Paul] You know, when I first come over here, hell, they were gonna burn it down because, and that was in the early '90s.

(wind rustling softly) Yeah, when we were little kids, we always come out, this is where we'd play a lot when we were just little shits.

(wind rustling softly) You know, this was a, this building right here was a pretty major part of the infrastructure on this place, I'm sure, back in the day, in the early 1900s.

(wind rustling softly) I know one thing, it's stood, (ground crunching) it's still standing and it's tested the time.

You know, some of the major winds or, you know, you know, I mean, you think early 1900s, 1905 or eight or whatever, when they put this thing in, it's still standing, you know?

Or you mean, that's a long time.

I mean, you get a few tornadoes or some high wind events, 100 mile an hour winds where you think you might lose it.

But it, I don't know why it's still standing.

Maybe it's 'cause there's too damn many holes in it the wind just goes right through it, and I don't know.

But... (wind rustling softly) (wind rustling softly) We just didn't get the rain a lot of other people got around here, but it seemed like starting first of August turned hot and dry, and it just seemed like you're trying to move cattle around, and they're grazing and, you know.

It just taken off and it wasn't growing back.

So some of the summer range pastures, I wish they'd looked a little better right now than what they do, but it just didn't come back, you know, in August.

It's just hot and no rain at all.

(wind rustling softly) You know, it's really starting to get kind of brown.

(wind rustling softly) This is gonna be a heck of a, if it stays this way, it'll be a... Might be.

Might have to watch out for fires for sure.

(somber music) (somber music) - [Mary Ann] I think you cannot live in this place (somber music) and feel very important.

(somber music) You know, the place is important.

(somber music) This place is gonna be here long after you're gone.

And it was here before you got here.

(somber music) So, to me, this place (somber music) kind of reminds you of how small you are and how cosmic the universe is.

(somber music) And I think if you're spiritual, you start thinking about what kinds of forces there are, you know, in the universe and your position relative to that.

I'm pretty small in this landscape or under these stars.

You know.

(somber music) (somber music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (water trickling) - [Narrator] The theologians say that cultures hide dangerous memories of stories too painful to speak.

(water trickling) But the Sandhills remembers them for us (water trickling) because it knows we are weak.

(grass crunching) (grass crunching) (crickets chirping) - [Rex] So the battlefield site is clear up the hill up there.

So I thought we'd go around on top of this ridge so we could see up the valley.

(crickets chirping) So this is a good panoramic view of the Blue Creek Valley here.

(somber music) So, again, this originates up in the Crescent Lake area of Garden County.

(somber music) And it's carved this valley over the eons.

It comes down through and dumps into the Platte River, which you could see along the bluffs down there.

(somber music) (somber music) (somber music) (somber music) (somber music) (somber music) So this is the site of the encampment of the Little Thunder Clan of the Oglala Sioux were in here and they were attacked.

There was a battle with the US military on this site where their camp was pretty much destroyed.

Many of them were killed and wounded.

Harney was given the order to make a statement (somber music) to the Lakota.

And so they come and they dropped a heavy hammer.

And they had no mercy.

And this is where it happened, right up in here.

The soldiers had new rifles.

They were the Sharp's rifle that had more distance than the rifles that they had before.

So they had calvary, they had infantry.

They were surrounded.

(somber music) Some of them escaped and went up through the Sandhills.

And so the stories that they tell are that, (somber music) especially one, it was a Little Thunder.

It was a child laid under his dead grandmother's body until the siege was over.

And then he took off, and he went up through the Sandhills and ended all the way up in South Dakota.

For those folks, it's still a very living painful moment in their not so distant history where their relatives were killed.

(somber music) (somber music) (somber music) - [Phil] A lot of the history that's been taught is one-sided.

General Harney back then was considered a Indian fighter.

He was good at whooping the Indians ass, so.

He was someplace across the country and on the other side of the ocean.

They called him back to come over here and look for these Indians and teach 'em a lesson.

So that's what happened in 1855, September 3rd.

- [Paul] Harney came to Ash Hollow.

They took out the...

They took out the spy glass, they saw the tops of the teepees five miles away, and they made their plan to attack first thing in the morning, and that's what happened.

And while he parlayed with Little Thunder, his men surrounded the camp.

He gave the signal.

(deep breath) And the massacre was on.

(somber music) (somber music) The battlefield was never cleaned up, (somber music) which is a crime for Lakota people.

(somber music) But they had to flee, they had to run away.

So the bodies laid there and then were used as target practice.

(somber music) (somber music) (native flute music) (native flute music) This whole area where the camp was, a little north of here, (native flute music) it was just scattered with belongings.

And now it's sitting in the basement of the Smithsonian.

(native flute music) And the 70 women and children were captured and marched back to Ash Hollow and then to Fort Laramie.

(wind rustling) The first time I came out here, almost 20 years ago, a man told me, he said, "I was abused here."

(wind rustling) He said that... (wind rustling) (wind rustling) He grew up out here as a kid.

And he said the Blue Water Creek would flood.

(wind rustling) And when it flood, they found pieces of human remains.

Jawbones, leg bones.

(wind rustling) And even found remnants of weapons, like pieces of guns and stuff.

He found them out when he was a kid.

(somber music) (somber music) - [Narrator] After the massacre, Harney's assistant gathered up the belongings of the defeated Little Thunders and shipped them east.

(somber music) Now in the Smithsonian Museum, these items are among the oldest surviving artifacts of Plains Indian culture.

(somber music) (somber music) (somber music) (somber music) - [Karen] And that's the story that needs to be told.

I believe that's the story that brought us all here in the Sandhills.

It's our belief.

It's my belief that these items, these personal belongings, they carry the spirit of their owner.

And when the massacre happened and these items were collected afterwards and shipped East, we don't know what happened to those... Those who owned, who carried, who used those belongings.

They feel like relatives.

They are my relatives.

They represent the spirit (deep breathing) of those who died there.

And that grief just went, it's hanging out there.

To me, it's hanging out there like a pall, a dark cloud over everything that we are.

That's what the historical trauma is to me.

It's that pain, that grief that was suspended.

The grief is both in the white people and the Native people.

- [Rex] Nobody wants to talk about that.

Nobody wants these guys.

And the truth is, what did we do to the Native Americans?

We made treaties and we broke them.

You know, we gave them one, the Black Hills was like this is the sacred spot of all times.

And then we go in and name the mountain Mount Harney after the guy that was responsible for the demise.

I mean, I don't know how you can.

There's just been a history of disrespect and neglect, and it continues.

And so I just think people don't care.

I don't know.

- [Paul] And that's what America just does, man.

Because they haven't come to grips with the root of racism in this country.

The root of genocide that they don't wanna look at it.

It's too painful.

And when you bring that up to like, you know, happy white folks in Nantucket, it bums out their breakfast, man.

They don't want to hear it.

A disruption in the natural order happened here.

That's what a massacre is.

Same thing with Wounded Knee.

The Lakota version of forgiveness, which is called Wokintuze, right?

It's totally different concept of forgiveness, where you are reawakening the spirits and you are correcting the disruption in the natural order.

(soft drums beating) Mni Tho Wakpala, right?

That's the Lakota word for Blue Water Creek, right?

(deep sigh) There's a whole different vibration when you use that language, right?

Mni Tho Wakpala, right?

(deep sighing) And the land of Wakinyan Cik'ala, that's Little Thunder, right?

(deep sighing) And when I first drove into this valley through Ash Hollow, I had an odd experience.

It was like this vague recollection of something that was in my psyche, my spirit like that.

I could feel it.

But that place over there, when I first got there, it was menacing and it felt awful.

It felt unresolved.

Even though a lot of prayer has been happening, you know.

It felt unresolved, it felt sick, it felt tragic.

And Karen would come and she'd cry, and Phil was shook up.

And it was scary to come here.

It was frightening.

Now, when I come here, what happens is I get to the top of that road over there, Highway 30, and I start dropping down into Ash Hollow.

And my DNA just fires up, man.

I can feel it, right?

Down by the big tree where we were this morning, lot of healings happen there.

(soft guitar music) This has been made beautiful again.

(soft guitar music) ♪ This prairie is a whispering silence ♪ (soft guitar music) ♪ This prairie's the drippings of grace ♪ (soft guitar music) ♪ And I know with the cold musk of the morning ♪ (soft guitar music) - [Karen] How are we going to stop this destruction?

(soft guitar music) I believe it's by reestablishing rediscovering, remembering this relationship between us and the earth.

As our grandmother, as our mother.

(somber music) (somber music) (somber music) (somber music) (somber music) (birds chirping) (birds chirping) - [Narrator] At the site of the massacre, a 300-year-old cottonwood tree keeps vigil, (birds chirping) bearing witness to these events and receiving prayers from the pilgrims who come to remember.

(birds chirping) - [Paul] There's markers in time here, right?

(birds chirping) Look at how beautiful and peaceful it is here.

Pre-contact, can you imagine?

This is like, this is just peace of heaven, right?

(grass crunching) Oh, for the buffalo too, eh?

For the buffalo and for the people.

The spring and the green grass all the way.

-Oh.

-Tree shade.

(wind rustling) (birds chirping) - [Paul] Our elder up in Pine Ridge, Basil Brave Heart, says things about these stories are no beginning and no end to the spiritual movement.

You could call it, in Lakota, you call it Taku Wakan Skan Skan, right?

Something sacred, holy, moving, right?

No beginning, no end.

(birds chirping) So this place now has a new memory, a new story, with Karen and Phil and I and other Little Thunders and Harneys.

(birds chirping) - [Phil] You know, you gotta know where you came from in order to know where you're going.

Part of my healing of courtesy to My Kola, and the ancestor Harney, I tried not to use the word massacre or "Harney did this and did that."

And the less, the less I bring it up about Harney, the more healing I'm gaining.

(wind rustling) And to help on his journey.

(birds warbling) (birds warbling) (birds warbling) (owl hooting) (birds warbling) (birds warbling) - [Stephen] Most of the Plains Indian religion's fundamental belief is that everything is sacred.

(birds warbling) Sort of what that means to me is if I have a soul, then this grass has a soul.

(birds warbling) That's a big jump from where we are.

And I think we've adopted some of our religions, I won't say all of them, to fit our sort of industrial mode of conquest and using the earth rather than revering the earth.

(birds warbling) What I've learned is if you do consider everything to be sacred, it really changes the way you walk across the landscape.

(birds warbling) Those cultures lived within nature.

We're living outside it now.

(birds warbling) And this is one of the places where I feel like you can step into nature and feel like this is what it should be like.

(birds chirping) I mean, we have the advantage here, we have all this water, and we have the sand, which makes it impossible to plow the land.

But there's no reason why all of the Great Plains couldn't be this natural if we would just change our land use practices and start to honor the land.

(birds chirping) I think the people who live out here have a much more practical view.

And I think that makes sense 'cause they're trying to make a living.

Those of us who are tourists can come out here and wax poetic and nostalgic about the landscape.

But we won't have to get up at four in the morning and you know, chase cows on horseback and so forth.

It's amazing though.

They don't realize how incredible this place is.

'Cause I've been studying swans the last two years and three years.

What a story.

They were thought to be extinct in 1900.

And now there are 63,000 trumpeter swans And you can stand by all these lakes and see the trumpeter swan families cruising across lakes where they lived for thousands of years.

And the ranchers will come by and say, you know what they always ask.

They say are, "Are you okay?"

And you know what that means.

"What the hell are you doing out here?"

(laughs) The middle of nowhere.

But they're very nice.

They come by and I say, "I'm watching the swans."

And I say, you know, "What you've done out here is just amazing.

(birds chirping) "To preserve this landscape "and these wetlands and these lakes."

And the answer I usually get is, "Well, I don't really know about that.

"But it's been a nice year for the grass."

You know, that's the kind of thing you hear.

(birds chirping) The earth is such a beautiful place that when you start to learn these things, it's hard almost to walk across a place like this without tearing up (uplifting guitar music) because it's so immensely beautiful.

And you start to realize that we're all akin, right?

We all think the same thoughts, we have the same desires, even the grasses.

And we start to feel that connection, I think makes our lives much more beautiful.

(uplifting guitar music) (birds chirping) (birds chirping) - [Paul] So what all kinds of different birds can you hear?

(birds chirping) - [Grace] Oh.

- Turtle doves for sure.

(gentle music) Turtle doves and (birds chirping) sounds like maybe meadowlark.

(gentle music) Cattle bawling.

(gentle music) I can hear a four wheeler over there at the golf course.

(gentle music) Originally, the golf course there was 18 greens, and it was about a mile south of the clubhouse there.

And there's a... And that's the way they originally designed it.

And then since then they've put another I don't know how many holes here, right along the river, down through there on the north side of the, or south side of the river.

(uplifting guitar music) (birds chirping) (uplifting guitar music) (birds chirping) - [Grace] Okay, I'm gonna open my hands and you can take a picture.

(wings flicking) (uplifting guitar music) (uplifting guitar music) (birds chirping) (uplifting guitar music) (uplifting guitar music) (uplifting guitar music) (uplifting guitar music) - [Paul] You can kind of see one from here.

- See that green way down there?

- Yeah.

Kelsey Phillips told me they were gonna build some houses.

- They are.

- Yeah.

- Hmm.

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