AN ICONIC IMAGE, LOST & FOUND

AN ICONIC IMAGE, LOST & FOUND

I took this picture of rapper Frank Waln near his home on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 2015. As the creator & co-executive producer of Rebel Music, I was honored when the acclaimed artist and activist Shepard Fairey—who designed all the series' graphics—used it for the iconic poster of the Native America episode. The episode defined the series, was featured in The Hollywood Reporter, and became one of MTV’s most successful on social media. I had lost the original image—along with most of the Rebel Music photography—but Shepard & his team retrieved it for me.

Visiting Rosebud to film Frank’s story was one of the most emotional trips of my life. This windswept land of grasslands & golden plateaus is home to the Rosebud Sioux, bordering Pine Ridge & the wild Badlands. Its Lakota name, Sicangu Oyate, means “Burnt Thigh Nation.”

Life inside the reservation stirred a spectrum of emotions. I felt joy meeting Frank’s loving family & hanging out with tribal youth in dazzling regalia. The Lakota Sioux’s reverence for nature & deep community spirit moved me, as did the squalor & generational sorrow that blew through the land like a haunted wind.

Poverty, alcoholism, & some of the highest rates of teenage suicide plague many reservations. I asked myself: Why does the most powerful nation in the world—built on the genocide of its Indigenous people—fail to repent, repair, & celebrate a people and culture vanishing before our eyes?