Four Keeps: Horse

This short experimental film, titled Four Keeps: Horse, is based on the Apsaalooke Native American cosmology in which the cardinal points are represented by the four earthly elements. The horse, an animal sacred to the Crow, represents air and speaks of powerful blessings for the people. Stories of how the Crow acquired the horse are varied. In this film, tribal elder Sonny Reed Jr. shares a version where the horse was given to the people from the river, an entity also sacred and itself an instrument of healing and renewal. This film depicts the measure of poetic identity the Crow people sustain from their relationship with the horse while it simultaneously infers the hardships the community has suffered with their horses as companions and witnesses.