I can't say that I knew much about Sitting Bull when we began
this research several years ago. His was the final name in our
first series of shows on the spiritual legacy of historical
figures. We've delved into the universally recognized names of
Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, and Rumi. And we've explored
significant theological figures of the 20th century, including
Reinhold Niebuhr, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Rabbi Abraham
Joshua Heschel too. This fall, we'll be launching a second
series, beginning with the scientist and theologian Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin. Producing these shows has been
extraordinarily rich at times and at others extraordinarily
hard. None of them has felt more complex or more daunting in the
end than Tatanka Iyotake. The word "elusive" also describes the
process of approaching the facts of this man's life and the
meaning of his legacy. That is in part because of the complexity
of this legacy and of the terrible history of the United States
government's treatment of native peoples, o