From the lungs of the young men
In a Deadwood saloon, South Dakota afternoon..."
- 'Deadwood, South Dakota',
Nanci Griffith
From South Carolina we are heading North by Northwest, back to the Dakotas. We've been to North Dakota already. At that point I commented that North Dakota is the least visited state in the U.S. South Dakota is different. South Dakota has plenty to attract us on our road-trip across the states. There is the Badlands National Park. There is Mount Rushmore, those graven images of four American presidents that starred in films like North by Northwest and Team America: World Police. And there is the heritage of cowboys and indians: formerly lawless boom towns like the notorious Deadwood and the native Americans like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull who were displaced as a result.
Even today the western half of the state is wild and wide and open prairie. Ranches have now taken the place of the open range however. Native Americans as an ethnic grouping are now outnumbered by those citizens of German, Norwegian and Irish origin. Even so, after Alaska and New Mexico South Dakota has the third largest proportion of inhabitants of Native American origin of any state.
I'm hoping - and expecting - to see a bit of this Native American heritage in my three films for Week 42. I am a bit short of time this week, so was hoping to get through these quickly. Imagine my joy when I realised that the first film up was three hours long...
- Dances with Wolves (1990)
- Badlands (1973)
- Thunderheart (1992)
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