Each December, across the plains of North and South Dakota, Lakota (Sioux) riders mount their horses for a fifteen-day, 450-kilometer trek through bitter cold that can reach -20°C. The route is deliberate — it traces the final journey of Chief Big Foot’s people, nearly 300 of them, most of them women and children, who were killed at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890.
Life on the Lakota reservations today remains a story of imposed hardship. Dependent on the US government and confined to land that offers little, their living conditions stand in stark contrast to the wealth surrounding them. Unemployment, addiction, violence — these shape daily existence. Men on the reservations live, on average, to just 45. In 2025, some households still have no running water.
The outside world tends to see only this. But to stop there is to miss almost everything. The Lakota carry with them a spiritual life that colonization could not erase, a collective strength built over generations, and a refusal — quiet but absolute — to disappear.
Simon Vansteenwinckel spent two weeks riding alongside the Omaka Tokatakiya, or Future Generations Ride, a ceremony in motion where elders guide the young away from reservation life and back toward something older: horsemanship, history, identity. The riders have a name for what it is — not a ride, but a prayer on horseback.
His book Aux Ombres, out with Lamaindonne, won both the La Cense Prize and the Nadar Gens d’images Prize in 2025.