The Sager family owns a ranch in Porcupine, South Dakota, in the middle of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, located in Shannon County, the poorest county in America. Unemployment (around 80 percent), disease and lack of education produce a discouraging statistical profile that resembles data from Third World countries. Shannon County, the historic and current site of "Cowboy versus Indian" tension, contains the sites of the Wounded Knee Massacre and the AIM occupation of Porcupine Butte, all just a horse ride from Vern Sager's home. In recent years, the "big city" of Gordon, Nebraska (population 2,175), has lured most of Porcupine's youth away from ranch life with the promise of jobs, mini-marts and paved streets. Jon Alpert has been following Sager's life for more than two decades, hoping to show the raw reality of a rugged lifestyle romanticized by generations of film and television producers. The camera catches Sager up at three AM on a February morning when the temperature is 20 below zero, as he tries to keep the new calves from freezing to death. "Somehow, they all want to have their babies on the coldest day of the year," he says. Alpert follows Sager as he toils under the August heat, a merciless drought squeezing the life out of his crops and cattle, and battles with the commodity brokers who fix the prices and somehow every year walk off with most of the cowboy's "profits." It is a hard, hard life and if Sager weren't such a hard worker, he'd have been forced into town a long time ago. A generation ago, 90 percent of the Sager clan earned their living off the land. Only five percent farm or ranch today. All of Sager's kids have moved to town except for Mark, a former rodeo champion who fell in love with a Native American woman and married her (and her four kids), transforming the Sagers into a "Cowboy/Indian" family. THE LAST COWBOY documents the Sager family's battle to maintain its dawn to dark "Git Along Little Dogies," cowboy way of life. It captures the inner landscape of the last cowboy's character, courage, strength and stubbornness, and the outer landscape of his South Dakota home. THE LAST COWBOY interactive companion website features detailed information on the film and an interview with the filmmaker, Jon Alpert, as well as links and resources pertaining to the film's subject matter. The site also features a Talkback section for viewers to share their ideas and opinions, preview clips of the film and more. << Order the Movie >>
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