Alan Michelson

Single-channel video, wool trade blanket
84 x 68 inches
1:05 minutes (looped)

A projection onto a red trade blanket of rare footage of the Native veterans of the Battle of the Greasy Grass (also called Custer's Last Stand) in a 1926 parade marking the 50th anniversary of the victory. The graphic quality of the mounted warriors and their counterclockwise movement on the blanket reference the Lakota winter count, an annual pictographic calendar painted onto a hide or cloth. The title of the work is taken from the winter count entry for 1876, the year of the battle.