BMI and Nuwu Art + Activism Studios invite you to a special presentation of the film Lakota Nation vs. United States at The Beverly Theater with Layli Long Soldier, Oglala Lakota poet and activist.

This free event will begin with a reading by Layli Long Soldier, introduced by Fawn Douglas. After the film, there will be a conversation with Layli Long Soldier, BMI executive director Colette LaBouff, and chief judge for the Las Vegas Paiute Tribal Court Kostan R. Lathouris.

Co-directed by Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli, Lakota Nation vs. United States is a searing testament to the strength of the Oyate and a visually stunning rejoinder to the distorted image of a people long-shaped by Hollywood. The documentary uses a treasure trove of rich archival material, electrifying, on-the-ground footage and intimate interviews with veteran activists and young leaders such as NDN Collective founder Krystal Two Bulls and activist Candi Brings Plenty. Lakota Nation vs. United States is a lyrical and provocative testament to a land and a people who have survived removal, exploitation and genocide–and whose best days are yet to come.

About Layli Long Soldier

Long Soldier holds a B.F.A. from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an M.F.A. from Bard College. Her poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New York Times, The American Poet, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review, BOMB and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an NACF National Artist Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award. She has also received the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Award, the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award, a 2021 Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the 2021 Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize in the UK. She is the author of Chromosomory (Q Avenue Press, 2010) and WHEREAS (Graywolf Press, 2017). She is a mentor in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

About Kostan R. Lathouris

Lathouris, an enrolled tribal member and elected Tribal Council Member of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, received his juris doctor from the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2015 and his bachelor of arts in political science, as a University Honors Scholar, from UNLV in 2009. His law practice, Lathouris Law PLLC, focuses on representing Tribal governments in asserting and defending their sovereign rights. He is also the Chair of the Nevada Indian Commission and the Chief Judge for the Las Vegas Paiute Tribal Court.

About Colette LaBouff

LaBouff is executive director of Black Mountain Institute. She served as executive director of Taos Center for the Arts in Taos, New Mexico, from 2018-2022. The author of Mean (University of Chicago Press, 2008), a book of prose poems, and “Holdings,” a text-object (Container Press, 2019), she was poetry curator at Zocalo Public Square between 2009-2020.

Parking and Getting There

The Beverly Theater is located next to The Writer’s Block at 515 S 6th St, Las Vegas, NV 89101. Street parking is available off Bonneville between 6th and 10th. Visit The Beverly Theater website for additional information.