32: The Outlaws of Propaganda - Annie Oakley & Sitting Bull
In 1884, a Hunkpapa Lakota chief who had defeated the United States Army sat in a Minnesota audience and watched a five-foot-tall Ohio woman shoot a playing card out of the air from thirty feet away. He sent sixty-five dollars to her hotel room just to have his photograph taken with her. When they met, he gave her a Lakota name — Watanya Cicilla, Little Sure Shot — and eventually adopted her as his daughter, gifting her the moccasins he wore at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
This episode tells the full, unvarnished stories of Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull — two of the most mythologized and most misrepresented figures in American history — and the unlikely friendship that connected them across every boundary the world had built between them.
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What we cover:
Annie Oakley was born Phoebe Ann Moses in 1860, the sixth of nine children in a destitute Ohio family. After her father’s death, she was placed as an indentured servant with a family she would later call only “the wolves.” She taught herself to shoot at age eight to feed her family, paid off her mother’s mortgage at fifteen through hunting, then defeated professional sharpshooter Frank Butler in a bet — and eventually became the highest-paid performer in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, earning more than any act except Buffalo Bill himself. She trained over 15,000 women to shoot, twice offered to lead a regiment of female sharpshooters in wartime (rejected both times), won 54 of 56 libel lawsuits against William Randolph Hearst after a fabricated cocaine story, and quietly built one of the most subversive careers in American history — all while making herself impossible to dismiss.
Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake — Sitting Bull — was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who spent his entire life defending his people’s sovereignty against the full force of the United States government. He refused to sign treaties surrendering the Black Hills after gold was discovered there in 1874 and the government violated the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. He organized the coalition that defeated Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. He led his people into exile in Canada rather than surrender. He was held as a prisoner of war, then confined to Standing Rock Reservation — and even then, used every public appearance to speak the truth about his people’s dispossession and direct his earnings toward his community. He was killed on December 15, 1890, shot outside his own home by Indian agency police, for defending his people’s right to practice the Ghost Dance. Two weeks later, approximately 300 Lakota men, women, and children were massacred at Wounded Knee.
This episode holds both stories with honesty — including the structural contradictions of the Wild West Show itself, what “subtle subversion” costs, and what it means that Oakley publicly called Sitting Bull’s fight just at a time when the US press was calling him a savage.
We close with five lessons for today’s fight against tyranny: on holding non-negotiable lines, using whatever tools you have, cross-cultural solidarity as strategy rather than charity, protecting your spiritual sustenance, and building coalitions without waiting for perfect allies.
Episode Sources & Further Reading
* Kasper, Shirl. Annie Oakley. University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
* Riley, Glenda. The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley. University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.
* Stillman, Deanne. Blood Brothers. Simon & Schuster, 2018.
* Annie Oakley Center Foundation / Garst Museum [https://www.annieoakleycenter.com/]
* PBS American Experience — The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/american-oz-lakota-ghost-dance-massacre-wounded-knee/]
* National Geographic — What Really Happened at Wounded Knee [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/what-really-happened-at-wounded-knee-the-site-of-a-historic-massacre]
* History.com — How Sitting Bull’s Spirituality Fueled the Lakota Resistance [https://www.history.com/articles/sitting-bull-spiritual-leader-little-bighorn]
* Smithsonian Magazine — How Annie Oakley Preserved Her Ladylike Reputation [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-annie-oakley-princess-of-the-west-preserved-her-ladylike-reputation-55701906/]
Take Action — Support Indigenous Land & Water Defense
The resistance Sitting Bull embodied is not over. Here is where to put your money and your energy right now.
Legal Defense & Litigation
🔹 Native American Rights Fund (NARF) [https://narf.org/donate/] — The country’s premier Indigenous legal organization, currently fighting for tribal water rights, treaty enforcement, and Bears Ears National Monument protection. NARF has been litigating the Bears Ears case since Trump slashed the monument by 85% in 2017 and continues that work today.
🔹 Water Protector Legal Collective [https://www.waterprotectorlegal.org/donate] — Born out of the #NoDAPL resistance at Standing Rock, WPLC is an Indigenous-led nonprofit law firm providing frontline legal defense for water protectors and impact litigation on treaty rights, pipeline approvals, and civil rights violations. They have defended over 800 criminal cases for Standing Rock water protectors and are still fighting.
Indigenous Power Building & Sovereignty
🔹 NDN Collective [https://ndncollective.org/donate/] — The largest Indigenous-led fund in history, founded in the wake of Standing Rock. NDN runs the LANDBACK Campaign, funds frontline Indigenous organizers across Turtle Island, and — in their own words — fights “the rise of authoritarianism” as a direct threat to tribal sovereignty. They’ve distributed over $32 million to more than 600 Indigenous-led organizations.
🔹 Utah Diné Bikéyah [https://utahdinebikeyah.org/donate/] — A Utah-based Indigenous nonprofit that led the decades-long campaign to protect Bears Ears National Monument and continues advocating for Indigenous-led stewardship of ancestral lands in the Southwest.
Public Lands Defense
🔹 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition [https://bearsearscoalition.org/] — The five-nation coalition (Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and Pueblo of Zuni) that originated the Bears Ears proposal and continues fighting for tribal co-management of the monument. Supporting them directly supports Indigenous-led land stewardship.
🔹 The Wilderness Society [https://wilderness.org/donate/] — One of the lead legal and advocacy organizations fighting to protect public lands from extraction, privatization, and monument reductions. Currently active on Bears Ears, ANWR, and federal lands policy under the current administration.
🔹 Earthjustice [https://earthjustice.org/about/donate] — The nation’s largest nonprofit environmental law firm. They litigated alongside tribal nations at Standing Rock, continue fighting pipeline approvals that cross tribal lands and waterways, and are currently challenging federal rollbacks of Clean Water Act protections that disproportionately impact Indigenous communities.
Mni Wiconi. Water is life. The ripples of every rebel reach further than they know.
Keywords: Annie Oakley history, Sitting Bull resistance, decolonized history podcast, Indigenous sovereignty, Wild West Show history, Battle of Little Bighorn, Ghost Dance religion, Wounded Knee massacre, women’s rights history, feminist history podcast, public lands protection, Bears Ears National Monument, Standing Rock, water protectors, LANDBACK movement, ripples of rebels podcast
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