Kim Kobersmith
The Daily Yonder
Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.
Lynne Colombe grew up at the intersection of agriculture and Lakota culture on the Sicangu Lakota (Rosebud Sioux) Reservation. A creative change-maker, she has worked as a journalist, editor, photographer, educator, and administrator. Documentary filmmaking is emerging as her focus, work that she is exploring as a member of the 2024-26 Rural Regeneration Fellowship with Springboard for the Arts. This fellowship cohort specifically supports artists from across the Upper Midwest whose work is connected to land, environment, and food systems. Below, Colombe shares about the importance of telling Lakota stories from the inside and the challenges of being a female artist.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
DY: When and how did you become a documentary filmmaker?
LC: A major catalyst coming out of the pandemic was to utilize social media to give a better visual of rural communities for other people. I became a filmmaker in the summer of 2021. I was held back by thinking that I didn’t have access to state-of-the-art film equipment. But I finally just convinced myself to get out there with the camera that I have and one really good iPhone and start shooting.
DY: Much of your work focuses on Native culture and history. Why is it important that Lakota people tell Lakota stories?
LC: Outside documentarians mostly show the poverty of the reservation, and these Non-Native filmmakers are often allowed to be the “spokespeople” of Indigenous people. We are articulate enough to tell our own story, and intelligent enough to talk about solutions. There are major problems on the reservation – murdered Indigenous women, missing children, alcohol and drug abuse – but I want to tell contemporary stories in a sensitive way that shows the humanity of people and doesn’t exploit them. As a Lakota woman, I claim the freedom to create my own dialogue, script, and storyboard.
DY: Your completed short film, “My Relatives Called Me Home,” tells the story of the 2021 repatriation of the remains of nine children from the graveyard at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania to their ancestral lands in South Dakota. How did your own family history weave into this broader community narrative?
LC: As I began my research into the Carlisle children, I learned that my own great-grandfather, William Colombe, was a student at Carlisle along with his twin sister, Minnie. I never knew my maternal grandmother, Arlene Bordeaux, but in many ways, she was a person who did not survive boarding school. The actual loss of having that woman in your life to talk to, to confide in, to help you, to show you things, to teach you Lakota, to help you when your mother needs help – she was never there. Sometimes in “Indian Country,” the word “trauma” is so heavily embedded with other things, that I didn’t want this concept of “sadness,” or “carrying forward of pain,” to be a part of my identity. But as I journeyed into the documentary work, the connection to my own relatives became impossible to deny.
DY: You are in the process of filming a full-length documentary film entitled, “Descendants of the Star People: Lakota Voices, Virtues and Values,” with the hopes of completing interviews with elders this summer. How are you, personally, thinking about dignity and respect in your process?
LC: As a Native American community insider, I am having some grace in telling the story. I am interviewing the elders before a nice backdrop rather than in their homes. In this way, I can focus on the story and not the person’s social conditions. Following up with the film’s subjects is important so they can participate in the story. I plan to cut a rough edit of their contributions, then video the elders watching themselves as part of the film and use their comments to edit what I want the storyline to be. The film will cover some complex and serious social issues that affect everybody, and they should have a say in the final dialogue.
DY: You established “A Room Without a View Productions” to create your films. Can you explain the name and how it references “A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf?
LC: You can’t do creative work as a woman without financial support from somewhere. I had the privilege of a rent-free home at the time, but I couldn’t look outside because it had boarded up windows. It felt symbolic about how Native people are adaptive, that regardless of the challenges of being a rural woman living on the reservation, I am trying to create a view that is authentic.
DY: The fellowship comes with a $10,000 unrestricted grant. How does receiving that kind of support affirm and empower you as a rural change-maker?
LC: The investment in our cohort really validated us as artists. My first fellowship was with the Department of Public Transformation, also based in Minnesota, and it came with a stipend, too. They are a real blessing and brought creative freedom to my life.
DY: What other creative projects are percolating for you right now?
LC: My father is 80 years old and is a big part of rodeo and horse culture. As an enrolled tribal member, he has his own ranching operation with 75 wild horses. This summer, he plans to pare down to a small herd of horses and go back to raising cattle. For him, it is moving from what he loves to something that makes money. I will be able to be on the ranch this summer and film a short documentary about this transition. I am also developing an historical novel, set in the 1840s-1900s, that I will begin writing soon.
This article was originally published by The Daily Yonder on July 11, 2025