Film festival at Art House in Billings marks 150th anniversary of Little Bighorn

The 150th Anniversary of the Little Bighorn Film Festival will run June 25 to June 27 at the Northern Hotel and Art House Cinema and Pub in Billings. The three-day event will bring together Native films, artists, speakers and community members to reflect on the Battle of the Little Bighorn, fought in June 1876 near present-day Crow Agency through Native American perspectives. It includes a special focus on the Allied Tribes — Cheyenne, Lakota and Arapaho — who won the battle. 

The festival is sponsored by Native organizations, such as Native American Development Corporation and Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma, as well as media groups and community supporters. Its program includes an opening night red carpet event on Thursday, documentaries, narrative films, short films, featured speakers, visual art and a lifetime achievement recognition for the late Native actor Steve Reevis.

For co-organizer Russell Brooks, the festival is intended to be more than a film series. It is a public remembrance of an event that remains central to Native history in Montana and across the Great Plains.

“This is a celebration of the resilience and the survival of the Allied Tribes in the face of aggression and subsequent colonization that the tribes have endured over the last 150 years,” Brooks said. “We really want to celebrate the fact that we're still here, and also to really celebrate the proud history and the beauty of our Cheyenne, Lakota and Arapaho people.”

The Battle of the Little Bighorn is widely known as the battle where Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors defeated Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry. But for many Native communities, the battle is part of a broader history of defending homelands, fighting for sovereignty and surviving the violence and displacement that followed. 

“I think one of the most important things to remember is that the historical narrative has been skewed for so long — it has been very focused on a lot of myths around Custer.” Brooks said. “Native people are finally at a place where they reclaim the narrative around events such as this. Stories reflect not just on trauma, but focus on the resilience and the survival of the tribes and other people. Not just native people, but people collectively, can heal together and ground ourselves and be able to move forward so that we can really imagine what the next 150 years will look like.”

The festival opens Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m. at the Northern Hotel with a red carpet event and a program of featured speakers. Youth representatives and tribal leaders will give presentations on native American family histories that “won’t be found in the history books,” described by Brooks. 

Scotty Clifford, an Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne singer and recording artist, is scheduled to perform during the second hour of the opening night celebration. Native American actors Michael Spears and Ajuawak Kapashesit will also join as speakers.

Friday and Saturday screenings will continue at Art House with films connected to Native history, identity, memory and contemporary life. The schedule includes long films such as “Lakota Nation vs. United States,” “Last of the Dogmen,” “Winter in the Blood,” “War Party,” and short films “The Comedian,” “Nightcap,” “The Boom” and “Walking Between Two Worlds,” among others.

Brooks highlighted several films and programs that reflect the festival’s mix of remembrance and Native storytelling.

The film programming begins with a three-part series on the repatriation of Sand Creek Massacre victims, which follows members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma working to return remains from the Smithsonian in Washington to Oklahoma. Brooks said the piece helps explain the history Cheyenne and Arapaho people carried into later conflicts, including Little Bighorn.

Other highlighted films include “Bring Them Home,” a feature documentary about the restoration of buffalo to Blackfeet tribal lands after 100 years of absence, “Cheyenne Creation Story,” a short film by local Cheyenne student filmmaker Nellie Whiteman that is presented in the Cheyenne language with English subtitles and “Lost Warriors,” which tells the little-known history of Cheyenne and Arapaho prisoners held at Fort Marion in Florida.

The festival will honor the late Steve Reevis, a Blackfeet actor from Browning who appeared in “The Last of the Dogmen” and got his start in “War Party.” Brooks called Reevis “an unsung hero of Native cinema.”

“It’s really only been in the last 20 or 30 years that the playing field has been leveled, where stories with great Native representation and more accuracy have emerged,” Brooks said. “There’s been increased Native representation through film, and it’s such a powerful medium to tell stories.”

The festival also highlights the work of Brent Learned, a Cheyenne and Arapaho artist from Oklahoma City whose artwork is used for promotional materials of the event. Learned is known for work rooted in Native history, music, cultural memory and the Southern Plains. 

“We wanted to use this film festival as a vehicle to highlight the powerful history that is not as well known to the public, so that the public could come and take part in that and educate themselves on that.” Brooks said. “All people are welcome. We’re very inclusive and welcoming to people who want to come and participate.”