Standing Bear, Luther, 1868?-1939

Luther Standing Bear (Óta Kté or "Plenty Kill," also known as Matȟó Nážiŋ or "Standing Bear") was a Sičháŋǧu Lakota activist, actor, author, and educator, and Oglála Lakota Chief. Standing Bear was born in December 1868 on the Spotted Tail Agency, Rosebud, Dakota Territory, and raised in the Sioux tradition. His father, George Standing Bear, was a hereditary Lakota Chief, a title Standing Bear briefly assumed in 1905. In 1879 Standing Bear was one of the first students enrolled at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, where he chose the forename Luther. Notwithstanding the harm to Indigenous children caused by forced assimilation in government-run boarding schools, Standing Bear served as an interpreter and recruited students from the Pine Ridge Reservation on behalf of Carlisle school founder Richard Henry Pratt.

Standing Bear was discharged from the Carlisle school in 1885, and he subsequently worked at several day schools on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations. In 1902 he joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and toured in Britain for a year. Standing Bear then pursued a career in acting, and between 1916 and 1935, he was in thirteen movies and became a member of the Screen Actors Guild. In 1926, along with other Indigenous actors in Hollywood, he created the "War Paint Club." Ten years later, Standing Bear joined Jim Thorpe in creating the Indian Actors Association to protect rights and characters of Native American actors from defamation or ridicule.

In addition to acting, Standing Bear also published a number of books aimed at educating the public about Native American culture and the federal government’s mistreatment of Indigenous people, including "My People the Sioux" (1928), "My Indian Boyhood" (1931), "Land of the Spotted Eagle" (1933), "What the Indian Means to America" (1933), and "Stories of the Sioux" (1934).

Luther Standing Bear died of the flu on February 20, 1939 while on the set of the film "Union Pacific" in Huntington Park, California.