John Fire Lame Deer was a Mineconju-Lakota Sioux born on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.

Making his home at the Pine Ridge Reservation and traveling around the country, Lame Deer became known both among the Lakota and to the American public at a time when Indigenous culture and spirituality were going through a period of rebirth and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s had yet to disintegrate.

The Black Hills is land that was legally owned by the Lakota until it was illegally seized by the United States government without compensation after the discovery of gold in the area.

The U.S. Supreme Court found that the federal government "decided to abandon the Nation's treaty obligation to preserve the integrity of the Sioux territory"[5] and used military force to seize the Black Hills.

Erdoes writes of Lame Deer's opinions of Elk, Bear, Buffalo, Coyote, and Badger medicine,[7] and the importance Lakota ceremonial traditions played in his later life and eventual understanding of the world.