In the weeks before the Battle of the Little Big Horn,

Sitting Bull, the revered Hankpapa Lakota spiritual leader,

experienced a powerful vision during a Sundance ceremony.

The ceremony is a long and sacred ritual of self-sacrifice, prayer and prophecy it's undertaken

by a number of native tribes on the American Great Plains.

Guided by holy men and spiritual mentors like sitting bull, the ceremony takes months in preparation.

A sacred cottonwood tree is selected

and felled and erected at the centre of a circular arena. This tree of life symbolises the

axis Mundi. The axis that connects the earth and the sky serves as the focal point. Participants dance around it, the traditionally

young men. They dance for days without food or water, an intense physical and spiritual

test. The dancing is accompanied by sacred music, drumming, representing the heart of the

universe and chanting. Throughout the ceremony, dancers

and the community offer prayers for healing and guidance and well-being and the hope of survival

for future generations. In June 1876, near the Rosebud River in present-day Montana,

Lakota and Northern Cheyenne were gathered in a large encampment,

and they performed the Sundance to seek spiritual strength and guidance.

As they do so, a US force advances against them,

part of a campaign of expansion which will cross sacred indigenous lands.

Sitting Bull, in his 40s, known for his spiritual power, he dances for two days without rest,

enduring pain and exhaustion to reach a trance-like state.

According to multiple accounts, passed down through Lakota oral history,

Sitting Bull cut over a hundred pieces of small

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