TATANKA: STORY OF THE BISON

Perched on a hill, this monumental artwork of artist Peggy Detmers brings to stage a hunting game composed of 17 bronze sculptures of horses and bison that detach from desert meadows. Three Amerindians smash the bison which, under threat, are falling down or about to slip down the cliff, a traditional hunting technique. The site also houses an interpretation center and a souvenir shop.

But as impressive as it is, the place has an unfinished taste for its owner, the famous actor and director Kevin Costner. This work of art should have come sublimate a much larger project. Kevin Costner bought this huge land in the 1990 s to build the Dunbar Ranch, a $ 100 million project to create a luxury hotel, a lake, a riding center, a casino, a 18-hole golf course and other lands. of sport. But the project was never possible. The Tatanka is in the middle of the Deadwood Meadows and Kevin Costner has had to separate from part of the property.

The hotel had to be named in reference to Lieutenant John Dunbar, a hero of the film Dance with wolves (1990) and the homonymous novel that inspired it, and embodied in the screen by Kevin Costner who himself realized this epic film. With its name and owner, the hotel would have been the extension of the famous film that was shot in the region.

Production has multiplied the shots in South Dakota, Wyoming and other regions of the Rocky Mountains. If the Black Hills are the backdrop, other scenes have been toured in Badllands National Park, Triple U Ranch near Fort Pierre (for bison hunting scenes, including the ranch with more than 3,500 heads), in Rapid City but also in Jackson and Jackson Hole in Wyoming. It is difficult, therefore, to ignore the influence of the film that won 7 Oscar, 3 Golden Globes and Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. In addition to its success on the front of the film scene, the film was above all a popular success in developing another vision of the Amerindian people and the history of the conquest of the West. Many actors were for the most part Lakotas or descendants of Lakota and had the opportunity to learn or re-learn their mother tongue for the purposes of the film. Kevin Costner became, in his own way, an ambassador of Amerindian culture and was, in particular, appointed honorary member of the Sioux people at an official ceremony where he was attached to an eagle pen in his hair and covered with a small-scale cover for the occasion.