A school sees a lice check. Lakota people sense centuries of repression.

It's early summer and a Lakota woman stares into the trees, deep past the leaves and their shadows, her dark eyes misting up.

Norma LeRoy tries to understand why a school secretary cut her two little girls' hair without her consent in the spring of 2020. The secretary was checking for lice, LeRoy was told - lice the mother said they never found.

LeRoy feels like few in this remote region of Cherry County understand what they took. It's why the 36-year-old Rosebud Sioux has to turn away from her kids, toward the trees, to shield them from her tears.

To her people, hair is sacred. Cutting it out...