Synopsis

"But under the long snows of despair the little spark of our ancient beliefs and pride kept glowing, just barely sometimes,
waiting for a warm wind to blow that spark into a flame again."

—Mary Crow Dog, Lakota, author of Lakota Woman, winner, American Book Award 1991

Black Elk, the great Oglala Lakota Holy Man, left a message for future generations after the massacre of his people at Wounded Knee in 1890. He said that the Sacred Hoop, which symbolizes a life in balance, was broken that day. But he also predicted that in seven generations, it would be mended. Today, 120 years later, a seventh generation of Native leaders has emerged to prove him right and participate in a different battle. They have taken the painful measure of the physical and social repercussions of their heartbreaking history and are trying to repair the damage that continues to echo into the present.

What’s in the Heart follows these extraordinary Indian healthcare professionals and community organizers into the sometimes desperate, sometimes hopeful, world of their people as they respond to the consequences of the past upon their lives. The Pine Ridge reservation stands in as a case study of historical trauma and intergenerational grief and its destruction in most, if not all, Indian communities. In the faces and voices of children and elders, we see and hear both the devastation of the past and hope for the future.

Leonard Little Finger remembers his grandfather who, at the age of 14, escaped the Wounded Knee massacre. Severely injured, with only the clothes he was wearing at the time of the attack, he fled the bloody scene that left not only his entire family, but 150 men, women, and children of his band, dead and over 50 wounded. In the bitter cold of a South Dakota winter, he escaped the Howitzer canons and the revengeful US Cavalry, and made his way to what is now called Oglala on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He told Leonard that in order to create a life for himself even in the face of severe hardship that he must learn to forgive if he is to once again meet his ancestors in the spirit world with a free heart. It is this sense of forgiveness that is core to true Lakota values.

In another raw and candid scene, Roberta Ecoffey speaks straight from the heart of the five suicides in her family – all nieces and nephews. In spite of these losses, she remains hopeful that underneath the rage and depression that so many Indian people feel, they still have it within themselves to care for one another. As the coordinator of the Pine Ridge Healthy Start Program, Roberta illustrates both her skill in working with at-risk pregnant women and the concept that it truly does take a village to raise a child. By opening her heart and her home to the children and women she serves, she has become a grandmother to many.

Other tribal members speak of personal struggles with alcoholism, diabetes, and the loss of their children and grandchildren to suicide and violence. Mothers speak of the loss of their babies and reveal a staggering infant mortality rate. And teens grapple with the shocking spate of recent suicides and gang activity among their friends.

Through these very personal stories, the sad truth emerges: Indians today suffer from the highest morbidity rates in the country caused by pandemics of diabetes, obesity, substance abuse, depression, and suicide. Using archival photos and live interviews, What’s in the Heart makes an unmistakable connection between the diseases and social problems faced by today’s Indians and the massacre at Wounded Knee, the removal of tribes to reservations, and the destruction of life-sustaining buffalo herds in exchange for government promises of care and respect. This film does not blink as it exposes the appalling health and social crisis in Indian Country today.

The film is supported by the professional and personal comments of Dr. Donald Warne, who speaks with a dignified ferocity about the resources and land that American Indians gave up when the government promised adequate and proper care and protection. As a healer who works both as a traditional medicine person and as a medical doctor, we see him advocating for healing approaches that are culturally relevant and successful as best practices. As a public health advocate he looks directly at the camera and requests that the men and women of the US Congress act honorably and live up to the promises made to his people.

Maria Brave Heart, Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico Medical School, Department of Behavioral Health, speaks eloquently about generational trauma and the health issues of people removed from their land and livelihood. She tells a story of collective trauma as she describes sitting on her living room floor looking at old photos of Indian people and being suddenly stricken with a wave of grief that was so huge, she knew that it could not come solely from her own family. She tells how this moment of understanding of collective grief opened her to her life’s work on historical trauma and its implications for all indigenous people.

But the film also moves beyond documenting the troubling issues faced by Indians today. In footage of teens and elders working together in an experiential outdoor education project, McClellan Hall, the Executive Director of the National Indian Youth Leadership Project, explains how the nationally acclaimed model program addresses alcohol and drug abuse and his hope for implementing the program on Pine Ridge. As NIYLP’s staff work with tribal members to establish the program, we see teens hiking, swimming, climbing ropes, and listening to elders tell stories. We also see young Lakota adults emerging as Project Venture staff members for the Pine Ridge program.

Ultimately, the people in What’s in the Heart remind us that there is much to be done to heal the wounds of the past. Their unforgettable faces show us the possibilities for the future of the seventh generation.

What’s In the Heart is produced and directed by Kitty Farmer and Watersong Productions, LLC in collaboration with Donald Warne, MD, MPH, Oglala Lakota, and the Medicine Wheel Foundation. For more information contact

Why I Want To Create The Film

As a young girl, I was traveling with my family on vacation in southern New Mexico, when we stopped along the road beside an elderly Mescalero Apache man wearing a full Plains Indian feather headdress.  He was offering himself as a photo-opportunity to tourists, gesturing out with his hand for payment. My parents, thinking they were doing a good thing, stopped, and my brother and I stood with him and had our photograph taken. I was far too young and far too uninformed to understand what was wrong with this picture.

I keep that photograph on my desk; but now I see it as a painful reminder of the ignorance that shaped my education and my cultural experience. Forty years later, I understand why American Indians have lower living standards, lower life expectancy and higher suicide rates than their Anglo European neighbors. That elderly gentleman in full headdress on the side of the road of my childhood was not there for my entertainment; he was trying to keep his family fed after every aspect of his and his tribe’s way of life had been severely changed since the time of the European colonization. I have since learned that American Indians lost not only most of their land but also many of their languages. Their children were removed from their family homes and sent to brutal and demoralizing boarding schools. In effect, American Indians were denied the most basic right to a dignified life.  Forty years later, very little has changed. American Indians have a life expectancy between twenty and twenty-five years less than the rest of us.

I have spent many years re-educating myself about this country’s history and the ways in which America has betrayed the original inhabitants of the land we call home. I have become painfully aware of the nearly 500 treaties that have consistently been broken as regards the taking of their land in exchange for health, education and housing. This promise was included in the United States Constitution, and we are not living up to this trust responsibility. 

We are in times of painfully ironic circumstances: We desperately need the wisdom of the indigenous philosophies that at one time the US government actually outlawed, if we are to survive as a species on this planet. Yet we have done everything imaginable to destroy the future of the very people who can help bring balance to our out-of-control consumption and destruction.

Polls say that between seventy-six and eight-one percent of Americans are deeply concerned about the direction our country is headed—and I am one of those people. We know there is something wrong but we do not understand exactly what; consequently we do not know how to fix it. Healing ourselves and our history means waking up to, and understanding, the ways in which our past has been whitewashed and propagandized. It means waking up to, and understanding, the ways in which our Native American heritage holds the promise of healing through its profound respect for the interrelationship between the natural and the human world. Until this is uncovered and understood, our country will be unable to self-correct its unrelenting course of destruction of human and environmental integrity.