Good Medicine and a Runaway Miracle: How a Horse Named Gradester Stole the Show at Sioux Falls’ Native American Day Parade

When a horse broke free at Sioux Falls’ Native American Day Parade, what followed was part rodeo, part legend—a wild chase that turned into a living metaphor for freedom, and courage.

The drumbeats had long since faded when chaos and comedy galloped hand in hand down Phillips Avenue. Sioux Falls’ 8th Annual Native American Day Parade—an event born from reverence, reclamation, and community—ended not with a whisper of ceremony, but with the thunder of hooves and laughter echoing against downtown brick.

A horse named Gradester had decided, quite suddenly, that he’d had enough of the parade route. He broke free, racing through traffic cones, ignoring stoplights, and sending onlookers scrambling for phones instead of safety.

For a moment, centuries of history—Lakota, Dakota, Nakota—were joined by an unlikely addition: slapstick.

The Flight of Gradester

At the end of the procession, handlers barely had time to react before the unbridled Gradester tore loose, his chestnut body cutting a streak of living motion through the city’s heart. One witness said it looked like “freedom wearing a saddle it didn’t need.”

That’s when Jaquin, a horse breaker and welder from Santee, Nebraska, leapt into action. Mounted on his horse Wokeya, he took off after Gradester, galloping through Phillips Avenue in what witnesses called “the fastest moment in parade history.”

The Sioux Falls Police Department, with typical Midwestern humor, summarized it later:

“Three of the four people or horses in this picture are really fast. The other is Officer Lieuwen.”

Officer Lieuwen, running on pure adrenaline and civic duty, joined the chase, sprinting through intersections as Jaquin pursued the runaway horse.

The pursuit ended several blocks later—near East 15th Street and South 1st Avenue—when Jaquin finally corralled Gradester. Lieuwen arrived moments later, panting and grinning, to help secure the rebellious animal.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Sioux Falls Police Department (Facebook, October 13, 2025).

The SFPD’s post captured the spirit of the moment:

“Officer Lieuwen did let Gradester off with a few warnings—Aggravated Eluding, Speeding, 3–4 stoplight violations, Wrong Way in Traffic, Intentional Damage to Property (for eating park grass), and Trespassing (for wandering into someone’s fenced yard).”

A Hero Without a Badge

Jaquin isn’t a police officer, though on this day he became an honorary one. The department joked that if Sioux Falls ever formed a mounted unit, “Jaquin would be the first one we’re calling to teach us all how to ride.”

But humor aside, what he did was serious work—risking injury to keep both animals and people safe. He is part of a long lineage of Native horsemen for whom horsemanship isn’t hobby or sport, but a spiritual language.

The Lakota phrase “Pezuta Waste Aupi”—this year’s parade theme—means “to bring good medicine.”

And that’s exactly what unfolded: not through solemn speeches, but through spontaneous action, laughter, and a reminder that healing often wears the strangest disguises.

Caught on Camera, Carried by Spirit

The entire chase was captured on video by Gabriel NightShield, a well-known South Dakota Native musician and enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. His footage shows Wokeya in hot pursuit, Jaquin hunched low in perfect sync with his mount, the crowd’s gasps blending with cheers.

It was as cinematic as it was human—an unscripted moment of beauty, danger, and humor all braided together.

NightShield later shared that he and one of our own writers—also raised near Rosebud—had laughed about how scenes like that were familiar out on the prairie. Horses and humans alike sometimes need to run. Sometimes, they just remind you that wildness never really leaves us; it just learns how to walk in a parade.

More Than a Parade

The Native American Day Parade has always been about visibility and vitality: the act of saying we are still here. In a state that replaced Columbus Day with Native American Day decades ago, the celebration carries extra resonance.

Drummers, dancers, veterans, and schoolchildren line Phillips Avenue each year to share culture, honor ancestors, and mend community ties. But this year, Gradester’s bolt down the avenue turned metaphor into motion.

Freedom, mischief, courage—it all played out in real time.

The crowd laughed, cheered, recorded, and remembered. And in the end, nobody was hurt, but everyone was changed just a little.

The Good Medicine of Laughter

Sometimes “good medicine” isn’t ceremony or speech—it’s the way a community comes together to laugh, to help, to chase after the untamed thing and bring it home.

The 2025 Sioux Falls Native American Day Parade ended in exactly the way life itself often does: unpredictable, imperfect, and full of meaning hiding beneath the humor.

Gradester ran free, Jaquin gave chase, Officer Lieuwen caught up, and for a moment, all of Sioux Falls remembered what being alive together looks like.

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