Lakota Harden

_director

Written by Stephen Vittoria
(Los Angeles)

Lakota Harden was one of my favorite interviews during the entire process of making LONG DISTANCE REVOLUTIONARY – and she doesn’t appear in the film. Sometimes this happens… great moments end up in digital purgatory (used to be the editing room floor).

Lakota Harden is an orator, activist, community organizer, radio host, and poet. She has dedicated her life, as a daughter of seven generations of Lakota leaders, to liberation and justice. Lakota first became an accomplished speaker as a youth and representative of the early American Indian Movement's “We Will Remember” Survival School on the Pine Ridge reservation, which was established out of the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation. She has continued her activism over the years, working with the International Indian Treaty Council, Women of All Red Nations, and the Black Hills Alliance.

Lakota has been inspired by the life and revolutionary writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal. She remembers the first time she heard his voice and his words on her car radio and having to pull off to the side of the road. She cried… and this didn’t end up in the film. One of the great screenwriters of all time, William Goldman, has written about the unfortunate phenomenon of a great moment not making it into the final cut of the film. This is one of those instances. But the home video version of this film will include Lakota – as much as I can get in because she’s great, and powerful, and important to people who care about justice everywhere. Here’s a great example of Lakota… and it’s a rough cut… and it’s a rough cut edit… and as I watch this piece, I’m asking myself: How did this not end up in the film???