War Pony

Synopsis: Perilous life on a reservation for a boy and young man. (Streaming on Amazon Prime)

War Pony is set in South Dakota at the Pine Ridge Reservation*, where nearly 20,000 Oglala Sioux live. The movie crafts the story of two Lakota (Western Sioux) males. Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder) is a neglected kid and Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting) is a young guy trying to get ahead. Their reservation is the poorest among reservations, so they only have themselves to rely upon.

So, I suppose you already know, Native Americans got royally screwed by colonizing whites. Of course, the colonists said they had good reason to take over; Indians weren’t doing anything with the land. Sure, once in a while you might see someone with a bow and arrow out hunting squirrels or riding some pinto pony out West.

Natives made treaties with whites.  Whites broke the treaties. A little history on the American Indians whose progeny are the subject of War Pony…

In 1868, the Great Sioux Reservation was established by the Treaty of Fort Laramie in present-day South Dakota. But several years later, with non-natives  wanting Black Hills land for farming and gold exploration, the reservation was broken up and more than 7 million acres of land was taken for whites’ use.

The Plains Indians were close to starvation, as their main food source, bison, had been hunted to near-extinction. In the winter of 1890, during a U.S. Army attempt to disarm Indians, nearly 200 Indians were killed, including unarmed women and children. U.S. Government agents attested to the fact that white Nebraskans and Dakota settlers had not been harassed or attacked. Yes, but they had been doing the Ghost Dance.** To whites, this was a reportedly indecent and heathenish dance.

So, yeah, the ability to live a traditional way of life was over before 1900, resulting in high rates of poverty and malnutrition. Family and cultural bonds were broken, as children were removed from families and sent to boarding schools. The schools weren’t posh with nice dining halls and gymnasiums. No, the activities consisted of time spent being abused and exploited by staff. Speaking their own language, Lakota, was forbidden.  A few facts about current living conditions…

The Pine Ridge Reservation encompasses 11,000 square miles for its population of roughly 20,000 Sioux people. Alcoholism, poverty (it has the lowest per capita income in the US), unemployment (90%), drug addiction (especially meth), suicide, ill health and lack of housing plague the community.

War Pony was filmed on location and cast Native Americans.  Conditions on the reservation and the limited prospects for its inhabitants are illustrated by the characters Bill and Matho. Bill looks about twenty years old. He spends his days tooling around with friends in an old car, listening to rap. When he stops at a rez convenience store to get a slurpie-ish drink, he asks if the store is hiring. Nope. He runs into his latest baby mama, Echo (Jesse Schmockel), who is fed up with him.

Bill is an enterprising young man. He hustles for work, shunning one of the  moneymaking opportunities on the rez, selling drugs. He tries to borrow money to buy a standard poodle, insisting that breeding can make him rich.

Out driving one afternoon, Bill pulls over when he sees a middle-aged white guy stranded by his SUV. Bill charges him for a ride home. Turns out that White Guy is loaded. He’s some sort of factory-farmed turkey magnate. WG offers Bill a job at the facility where the birds’ flesh is turned into jerky.

WG invites Bill to his impressive spread, where his wife asks about his kids and girlfriends ( ex-Carly and their toddler and Echo and their baby). The woman giggles as she schools Bill on the fine art of wine-drinking; slowly. Out of his wife’s earshot, WG tells Bill that he may have more work for him. Soon Bill is chauffeuring WG’s possibly-trafficked native “dates.”

WG has too much time and money on his hands. Bill figures he can stay one step ahead of WG. Before you know it, Bill is swaggering over to Echo’s trailer, promising her nice clothes and a car. She should’ve asked for something practical upfront, like diapers or a payment on her cellphone.

Lucky for Bill, his pretty face and talk of puppy-selling money gets him precariously back in her good graces. Meanwhile, his ex, Carly, is calling from jail where she’s being held for traffic fines. Bill just chuckles when she calls, because, he explains, he’s broke. And, for the time being, his mom is babysitting the kid they share. Bye! 

One good thing about Bill, he uses charm, not violence, to get his way. Bill is certain his schemes can make him rich. But, unlike WG, he is short on capital and his car can barely get him around the reservation. Onto a kid who is unrelated to Bill…

Matho is a middle school-aged kid. He lives with his meth-dealing dad. His mom is gone. He likes to chill with other boys, swearing and exploring outdoors. He has a crush on a girl at school. He passes her notes in math class while the teacher goes over math problems for the upcoming quiz. Matho doesn’t seem interested in that, but he does like to read books about magic. The kid isn’t supervised much and his dad whacks him around when he steals some meth. You see, the kids need some money for beer and cigs, so they cut salt into the drugs before heading out on foot, looking for customers. Enterprising!

At times Matho finds himself kicked out of his dad’s place and ends up sleeping on an empty powwow field or in a boarded-up house. One night, he goes to an older woman’s house for shelter. O good! An auntie can help. Except that this lady is a drug dealer. She sets her little boarders to work. Matho gets so tired that he doesn’t have time for his magic book, let alone his homework. Which brings me to some comments that I’ve seen online…

After watching War Pony, one commenter lamented that there wasn’t one person who reached out to help the kid. Yeah, so, in spite of poverty on the rez, there actually are dedicated community activists and households where extended family members are taken in, so that meager resources can be extended and shared. I suppose the filmmakers would say that this isn’t the case for the character of Matho. I watched War Pony hoping that the screenwriters would have some caring person show up for the kid.

War Pony builds to showing a connection between Bill and Matho. But the film leans too heavily into stringing together anecdotes instead of building a strong narrative. I mean, yes, I see the quick clips of the old medicine man at a campfire and a massive bison standing in the middle of the road, staring straight ahead. I assume this is shorthand for meaningful ways lost. I wondered if the elder was from the past. And why the buffalo wasn’t grazing with friends.

On the plus side, War Pony brings up important issues of people who are basically forgotten in the American economy and whose culture is undervalued. And the movie does succeed in bringing the viewer from a place of, “Why are you making these bad choices?” to “I kinda get it.”

* Link to Red Cloud Heritage Center on the Pine Ridge Reservation

** In 1890 Sioux Indians were starving due to failed crops and scarce game on the Pine Ridge and Standing Rock reservations. The Ghost Dance was part of a new messianic religion that prophesized a resurrection of their ancestors and a defeat of the colonizers on their historic lands.  Settlers were afraid that Indians would soon mount raids against them. What followed was an ingress of US troops, the killing of Sitting Bull, and the massacre at Wounded Knee.

*** Check out the P.S. following the shortcut review, if you want to learn more about the Lakota at Pine Ridge. ***

Movie Loon’s Movie Review Shortcut:

Grade:   C+

Cut to the Chase:  A showcase for native actors, especially Ladanian Crazy Thunder as Matho. The movie subject, present-day Lakota people, is intriguing.

Humor Highlight:  Bill’s chill in the face of complications.

P.S. The Pine Ridge Reservation, like many rural areas, has limited job opportunities. Rapid City, at least an hour and a half drive, is the nearest population center. There is no public transportation. Aside from a couple of hundred jobs at the Prairie Winds Casino, there are few commercial enterprises at the reservation. Over the border in Nebraska, there is a grocery store and a Walmart. Another draw for limited funds is the “town” of Whiteclay, which is inhabited by beer & liquor stores and the clerks who work there. (Elected Native authorities prohibit the sale and possession of alcohol on the reservation, owing to high rates of alcoholism and fetal alcohol syndrome.)

Looking on to more hopeful info…

Pine Ridge Reservation has residents who teach the Lakota language. There are about 2,000 proficient speakers of the language– mostly tribal elders. Residents create traditional-style artworks and practice tribal traditions which include gathering for powwows.

In 2019, the tribal council awarded a contract to Buche Foods for a much-needed reservation grocery store that would employ about 40 people. In 2021, according to a visitor writing for American Dirt, the town of Pine Ridge’s few blocks contain “a hospital, a bank, a post office,  a few churches and schools…gas stations…Pizza Hut and Taco John’s.”

Besides Lakota, there are non-natives who commute onto the reservation for  high-skill jobs in education. Speaking of which… Oglala Lakota College, with a tuition of approx. $2,600/yr, has an enrollment of about 1,400 students. OLC offers associate and baccalaureate degrees, including vocational, nursing, education and business degrees.

Let’s conclude with two factoids: 1) Natives pay federal income taxes, but state income taxes don’t apply on tribal lands and 2) Natives do not receive payments from the US government based on their ethnicity. However, like all Americans, they can qualify for WIC and SNAP (food assistance) if they demonstrate need based on (low) income.