Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Plot synopsis:
In the first chapter, Brown presents a brief history of the discovery and settlement of America, from 1492 to the Indian turmoil that began in 1860. He stresses the initially gentle and peaceable behavior of Indians toward Europeans, especially given their apparent lack of resistance to early colonial efforts at Europeanization. It was not until the further influx of European settlers, gradual encroachment, and eventual seizure of American lands by the "white man" that the Native people were shown to exhibit forms of major resistance.
Brown completes his initial overview by briefly describing incidents up to 1860 that involve American encroachment and Indian removal, beginning with the defeat of the Wampanoags and Narragansetts, Iroquois, and Cherokee Nations, as well as the establishment of the West as the "permanent Indian frontier" and the ultimate breaches of the frontier as a means to achieve Manifest Destiny.
In each of the following chapters, Brown provides an in-depth description of a significant post-1860 event in American Western expansion or Native American eradication, focusing in turn on the specific tribe or tribes involved in the event. In his narrative, Brown primarily discusses such tribes as the Navajo Nation, Santee Dakota, Hunkpapa Lakota, Oglala Lakota, Cheyenne, and Apache people. He touches more lightly upon the subjects of the Arapaho, Modoc, Kiowa, Comanche, Nez Perce, Ponca, Ute, and Minneconjou Lakota tribes.
=== Navajo ===
Brown discusses the plights of Manuelito and the Navajo people in New Mexico, who make treaties and other efforts to maintain peace with Euro-Americans despite their encroachment upon Navajo land, stealing livestock and burning entire villages as punishment for perceived misbehavior. The second, third and fourth generation European immigrants occupy land in Navajo country not only to build their own forts, the first of which was Fort Defiance, but also claim rights to the surrounding prized Navajo lands as pasture for their livestock. Various disputes occur between the Navajo and the Euro-Americans, culminating in a horse race between Manuelito and a US Army lieutenant who wins as a result of dishonesty and trickery. The consequence is a massacre of Navajo bystanders.
The US Army General James Carleton orders the Navajos to relocate to a reservation at Bosque Redondo, where the Apaches had recently been moved, but is met with resistance. Employing a scorched-earth campaign, Kit Carson and Carleton force a large majority of resistant Navajos and Apaches to surrender and flee to the reservation. Manuelito and a few other Navajo leaders refuse to surrender but finally agree to relocate to the Bosque in 1866 "for the sake of the women and children", signing a peace treaty on June 1, 1868.
=== Sioux ===
==== Santee Dakota ====
The narrative of the Sioux begins with Brown's discussion of the Santee Dakota tribe. Following a poor harvest and lack of promised support from the US government in the early 1860s, members of the tribe became angry at white people. After the murder of several white men and women by young Dakota, the frustrated Santee tribe, led by Chief Little Crow, attacked Fort Ridgely and a nearby town. When the Santees refuse to surrender their white hostages to Colonel Sibley, they are forced into battle again at Yellow Medicine River. The Santees lose and over three dozen Santee warriors are executed in December 1862. Santee chiefs, including Chief Little Crow, were killed during the following six months, and the remaining Santees are removed to a Missouri River and Crow Creek reservation.
==== Oglala Lakota ====
Brown's discussion of the Oglala Lakota begins with the US Army's 1865 invasion of the Powder River country in Montana. The army is confronted with opposition from the local Lakota and Cheyenne tribes. This and other skirmishes result in heated conflict between the US Army and the Oglala Lakotas led by Chiefs Red Cloud and Roman Nose, forcing the US Army to retreat for the winter. The high death toll among US troops fostered great confidence in the Native Americans who began a journey to the Black Hills.
By the US Army's request, the Sioux chiefs and approximately 2000 other warriors arrived at Fort Laramie in May 1866 for treaty talks. The tribes quickly learned of the army's intent to build roads and railroads through Sioux land. As construction progresses, the Sioux plan an attack on the white men and harass white traffic through the Powder River country. Red Cloud unknowingly leads approximately 3,000 Lakota into an ambush, later called the Fetterman Massacre, at Peno Creek where 81 white men and 200 Lakotas are killed. Conflict continues between the US Army and the Lakota for years despite peace commissioners being sent to Powder River to address differences. In 1868 the US Army retreats upon the signing of the peace treaty with Red Cloud.
In 1869 Red Cloud is invited to Washington D.C. to speak with Donehogawa, a member of the Iroquois tribe who is serving as the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the US government. Chief Red Cloud and his tribe members express their discontent with the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie which defined their reservation land as bordered by the Missouri River rather than the Powder River. Commissioner Donehogawa corrected this mistake by declaring the Powder River country as reserved for Lakota hunting grounds. Donehogawa's agency was later accused of being like a "savage Indian" and the agency was unable to purchase supplies for the reservations. Donehogawa was subsequently forced to resign his commission.
In 1874, when rumors of gold in the Black Hills were delivered by Custer and his men to the white settlers on the plains, miners and panhandlers flooded the Black Hills, angering the Lakota and Dakota living there. A peace council in 1875 tried to arrange for the US government to either purchase the mineral rights or outright ownership of the Black Hills, but both proposals were rejected by the Sioux. In 1876, a series of battles occur between the Sioux and US troops which initially ends when the Sioux defeat General Custer and his troops at the The Battle of Little Bighorn on June 29. The humiliated US Army sends a peace council to sign a treaty that forces the Sioux out of the Black Hills to the Missouri River. The troops follow this treaty with numerous attacks on Lakota villages.
==== Hunkpapa and Minneconjou Lakota ====
Following the removal of the Lakota from the Black Hills to the Missouri River Reservation, Sitting Bull, in exile in Canada and participating in unsuccessful peace talks, returns to American soil and surrenders at Fort Buford. He is removed to the Hunkpapa reservation at Standing Rock; he subsequently joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. The Lakota were ultimately forced to sign a treaty in 1890 that further divided and limited their reservation.
Sitting Bull is later arrested in an attempt by US authorities to suppress Sitting Bull's endorsement of the Ghost Dance which they considered a religious disturbance. The two Native American policemen sent to arrest Sitting Bull killed him. Following the death of Sitting Bull, a conflict arose that resulted in the Hunkpapas and Minneconjous tribes fleeing Standing Rock. Deciding against further resistance, the tribes join Red Cloud at Pine Ridge where they encounter Major Whitside in late December 1890. The tribes are subsequently directed to Wounded Knee, where a member of the Minneconjou tribe called Black Coyote refuses to surrender his rifle. The US Army reacts with violence which results in the deaths of 150-350 Native Americans and 25-31 US Army soldiers. The Lakota that survived the assault fled to Pine Ridge, and returned to Wounded Knee the next day only to bury their families and comrades.
=== Cheyenne and Arapaho ===
The 1858 Pikes Peak gold rush in Colorado creates a swarm of white settlers onto Cheyenne and Arapaho lands and instigates treaty talks that result in removal of Cheyenne and Arapaho territory to any area between Sand Creek and the Arkansas River. When the Civil War brings the US Army into Cheyenne and Arapaho territory, the resulting conflict endorses the murder of "hostile Indians". The Cheyenne tribe responds with numerous strikes on the army outposts.
In early 1866, the Southern Cheyenne Dog Soldiers are asked to sign the treaty that would relocate them to the south with Black Kettle and his tribe. When they refuse, Roman Nose organizes an attack which is thwarted by the coming of winter. In the following year a peace council is held between the General Hancock's army and the Cheyenne which ends when Hancock's army burns the Cheyenne camp to force their cooperation. After a series of retaliatory assaults, a treaty is signed by the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Comanche tribes which relocates them to the reservation south of Arkansas River. Roman Nose doesn't sign the treaty. Instead he leads his Dog Soldiers on more war parties and is eventually killed. Generals Custer and Sheridan burn Black Kettle's village and the remaining band of Dog Soldiers are killed.
After the surrender and removal, the Northern Cheyenne tribe led by Little Wolf and Dull Knife are unable to sustain themselves on the poor land at Fort Reno, and they form a hunting party to hunt buffalo north of their reservation. Their hunt was unsuccessful, and the tribe continues to suffer severe losses due to health problems from malnutrition and a measles epidemic. Chiefs Little Wolf and Dull Knife decide to move north but this leads to more violent encounters with the US Army. The tribes are reduced to nearly 10% of their earlier population. Dull Knife and his tribe try to join Red Cloud, and they defy orders to return to their southern, buffalo-depleted reservation. Battles ensue, and Dull Knife's tribe is pursued north until the majority of the tribe are killed. The survivors take refuge at Red Cloud's reservation.
=== Apache ===
The friendly relations between the Apaches and Euro-Americans, that were once signified by the Apaches allowing white travelers to pass through their land unmolested, began to diminish when Apache Chief Cochise was imprisoned for allegedly stealing cattle and kidnapping a white boy from a settler's farm. When Cochise escaped, he and his warriors killed three white men, and the army responded by hanging male members of Cochise's family. Cochise spent the next two years leading attacks on the Euro-Americans. In 1865, after Cochise refuses a treaty designed to relocate his Chiricahua tribe to a reservation, the Apaches successfully avoid contact with white men for a number of years. But in 1871, a group of settlers, Mexicans, and warriors from competing tribes massacre an Apache village, and Cochise and his followers retreat into the mountains. They stay there until the chief agrees to move the Apache to a reservation in the Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona. He dies soon thereafter in 1874.
The Apache nation is divided after Cochise's death, and they soon become infamous for raiding white villages. The Chiricahua Apaches, avoiding attempts to relocate to a reservation, flee into Mexico. Victorio and his Warm Springs Apaches are removed to the San Carlos agency in southeastern Arizona in 1877. The entire tribe is eventually killed, to stop their raids on white settlers. Geronimo and his tribe leave their reservation only to return heavily armed and determined to free their fellow Apaches. This results in the stationing of Apache guerillas in Mexico. Negotiations with Geronimo and the guerillas continue over the next few years as alleged stories of the guerillas’ brutalities and atrocities circulate. In 1886, Geronimo flees once again before being incarcerated and transported to a reservation in Florida with the remaining Chiricahua Apaches.
=== Modoc ===
Captain Jack, the Chief of the Modoc tribe located in Northern California, is described as a Native American friendly to the "white people" who settled in his country. As larger numbers of settlers trespass onto Modoc land and small disputes arise between the Modocs and white settlers, the US government coerces a treaty, over Captain Jack's reluctance, that will relocate the Modocs to a reservation in Oregon and shared with the Klamaths. Conflicts between the two tribes quickly begin, and the Modocs return south to California. Their return is halted by a skirmish between the tribe and an army battalion in 1872, and the Modocs divert to the California lava beds. Another group of Modocs, led by Hooker Jim, murdered 12 white settlers and forced Captain Jack to lead his tribe into a battle against the US Army. A peace commission led by General Canby, conducts peace talks with Captain Jack who eventually, under pressure from Hooker Jim's Modocs, agrees to kill Canby should the original Modoc land not be returned to the tribe. As feared, Canby refuses to return the land to the Modocs, and he is killed by Captain Jack. Hooker Jim betrays Captain Jack to the army, and he is hanged on October 3, 1873.
=== Kiowa and Comanche ===
After the Battle of Washita in 1868, General Sheridan ordered all tribes involved to surrender at Fort Cobb; the Kiowa tribe refused. The Kiowa chiefs are arrested and both the Kiowa and Comanche people are forced onto the Fort Cobb reservation. The Kiowas and Comanches, led by Satanta and Big Tree, decide to attack the white men, and they kill 7 teamsters. This results in the arrest and imprisonment of both chiefs. Lone Wolf, another Kiowa Chief, arranges for the release of White Bear and Big Tree so they can attend the peace talks at Fort Sill. In early 1874, while on parole, White Bear and Big Tree lead the Kiowa and Comanche tribes on an attack against white settlers in order to preserve the buffalo. When both tribes flee their reservations, they are hunted down by the US Army. Upon their surrender in early 1875, they are exiled in Florida.
=== Nez Percé ===
Despite maintaining peaceful relations with whites, the Nez Perces are forced to sign a treaty in 1863 which removes them to a small reservation in Idaho. Chief Joseph and his tribe designated this agreement as the "thief treaty". Being highly offended by the treaty terms, and the sudden influx of gold miners and cattle farmers onto Nez Perce land, the tribe refused to move to the Lapwai Reservation, choosing instead to fight the US Army at White Bird Canyon in June 1877. After winning that battle, the tribe fled to Montana, trying to join Sitting Bull in Canada, but then they lost the battle at the Bear Paw Mountains in August and were forced to surrender. Some members of the tribe managed to find refuge in Canada, but those that surrendered were split between the Lapwai reservation and the Colville reservation in Washington.
=== Ponca ===
Despite having previously signed treaties guaranteeing their ownership of the land on the Niobrara River, the Ponca land was taken from via a subsequent US treaty and given to the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota tribes just before they were added to a list of tribes to be exiled to Indian Territory following Custer's defeat. Ponca Chief Standing Bear was arrested along with other chiefs for refusing to leave voluntarily. The Ponca tribe was forced onto the Quapaw reservation, where over one quarter of their population died. Standing Bear returned to the Niobrara and takes his case to a white man's court in 1879 arguing that he is a person protected by the US Constitution. Standing Bear won his case but is informed by General Sherman that the case is specific to him and does not maintain validity for the other Poncas, who were forced to remain in Indian Territory.
=== Utes ===
The Utes are a Colorado tribe whose land was gradually overrun by mineral and gold miners. Chief Ouray signed a treaty in 1863 allowing settlers to mine Ute land and relinquishing all mineral rights. He signed another treaty in 1868 that allotted 16 million acres of forests and meadows in the Rockies as a personal reservation that prohibited white trespass. When disputes arose, Nathan Meeker attempted to assimilate the Utes into Euro-American culture, but William Vickers opposed the idea and started "The Utes Must Go!" campaign in 1879. Vickers called on the US cavalry to prevent an uprising by the Utes. The Utes responded by killing all the white men at the White River Indian agency. In 1881, as a result of outrage over the White River Massacre, the Utes were removed to a marginal reservation in Utah.

Tags: murder, flashback

Review:
And now, in Wounded Knee, it is the white man who destroys what is left of Native American life; a terribly stark (and bloody) reality.The other notables are Adam Beach (FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS) as Charles Eastman, and Aidan Quinn as Senator Henry Dawes.
This surprised me greatly since it was Grant's administration that doomed Native Americans by rounding them up and placing them on reservations.Despite my misgivings about the script, cinematography and acting, this is a vital story that needs to be told, and it isn't something that is normally taught in grade school or higher.
Europeans (us) conquered this land and its people, and pushed them into holding pens where they, to this day, await justice for our multiple treaty violations and massacres of their men, women and children (I will say that the scenes depicting large-caliber rifle bullets ripping through young kids was filmed well and was equally hard to watch).So the story gives this film a higher rating than anything within it, which is unfortunate, as this terrible moment in American history needs to be remembered just as much as Germany needs to remember its holocaust..
The movie does a good job showing a more sympathetic side to some of the Americans who actually cared for the Indian's and their interests.
If you haven't read the book, or knew nothing of the history of this story, you would be completely lost.The cast was great, and the acting was good.
I had high hopes that the story telling would be straight forward, of a relatively well-documented event, based on the well known book.The title is misleading; it is not Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, it is a small excerpt combined with some other story I was not familiar with.
The ending of the movie is really mangled, combining color with black and white for dramatic effect, but it just doesn't work, especially when it never even shows the event depicted in the title.Watch it for good acting, good music, great camera work, but don't expect to be educated, or entertained.
This film seems to have rubbed both history buffs and fans of the book the wrong way, but I thought it was a compelling, evocative film nevertheless.Starting off where most movies end, at a CGI created overhead shot of The Little Big Horn (!), this instead focuses on the final years of the Unions war against the Indian nations, culminating in the massacre at Wounded Knee.There's a really great role for Adam Beach, as a young Souix doctor, who's father turned his back on the native ways and sent him to live amongst whites at a young age, stripping him of his identity.August Schellenberg is excellent here as Sitting Bull, who's determination and pride stokes the anger of the powers that be, including Aiden Quinn, a sympathetic but patronizing Senator who has taken it upon himself to lead the Indians on a path to "civilization".Anyone who watched the myriad Cavalry pictures and Little Big Horn epics should see this and find out how the whole sad story ends..
The movie, however, is a disappointment.I first read Dee Brown's book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, when I was 10 years old and found out that I was part Cherokee.
While the story of Charles Eastman is worth telling, it is not part of the book and is sloppily woven into the storyline of the Sioux resistance at the Battle of the Little Bighorn to the massacre at Wounded Knee.
That the Wounded Knee massacre should be told in flashbacks rather than as direct action is appalling.So much has been left out of this movie that it does nothing more than commit a great injustice to both the book and the people whose stories are being told.
Must another Hollywood movie strip Indian people of yet another aspect of their culture, namely their stories, their history, and their heroes?
Having just spent the past 18 months studying Native American philosophy and having just returned from a week at Cherokee, learning the language and culture up close, I can say this film does help express the complex and heart-rending story of the relationship between the invaders and the conquered in our years 1870-1890.For those who have been critical of the film (on this site), I should note from a White Woman's point of view, this is about all that Whites can absorb of the "full" story and emotions as a first contact.
The movie focuses specifically on a Sioux (Adam Beach) who takes the name Charles Eastman and studies medicine, but upon seeing what the white people's westward expansion does to his people tries to get Sen. Henry Dawes (Aidan Quinn) to listen.I recommend it just because it shows what happened to the Indians.
It was there where Gen. George Armstrong Custer and over 250 men under his command was slaughtered to the last man, the only survivor of Custer's troop being a calvary horse called Comanche, by the fired up Sioux Indians.Wanting revenge for what turned out to be the worst defeat that the US Calvary suffered in the Indian Wars the "Great White Father" President Ulysses S.
Confronting Chief Sitting Bull, August Schellenberg, and his some three thousand warriors at Ceder Valley Creek Gen. Bear-Coat had no trouble dispersing the Sioux onslaught mowing down hundreds of Sitting Bull's men with volleys of rifle and cannon fire.Dispersed and on the brink of starvation Sitting Bull's rival Chief Red Cloud, Gordon Tootoosis, was forced to sign away his peoples rights to where they became wards of the state living off the kindness and charity of the hated White Man. Sitting Bull wanting none of this took his followers to Canada where after suffering through a number of harsh Canadian Winters, far worse then any of the winters in the Dakota Territories, later came back hat in hand accepting the unthinkable: living under the White Man's both rule and law.
It was the deception and manipulation by the US Government in trying to force Sitting Bull and his people to sign away their ancestral lands that eventually lead to the wild and hysterical events that lead to Wounded Knee.
The story of "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" is told to us through the personal observations of Charles Eastman, Adam Beach, formerly known by his Sioux Indian name of Ohiyesa.
With Eastman's good friend Massachusetts Senator Henry Drew, Alden Quinn,trying to get his people to come to some agreement with the US Government in becoming farmers instead of nomads, which the Sioux were for countless centuries, tensions soon reached a breaking point.It was when out of sheer desperation the Sioux adopted the ancient Indian Ghost Dance, which was only ceremonial and nothing else, that the US Army was dispatched to put an end to what the Federal Government back in Washington D.C perceived to be another potential Little Big Horn.
With tempers flaring on both sides after Chief Sitting Bull was murdered by the reservations Sioux police it was only a matter of time for the lid, that both Eastman and Senator Drew tried to keep on, blew off and the results was the massacre at Wounded Knee.
Technically and legally even now, some 118 years after the Wounded Knee massacre, the historic Black Hills are in the hands of the Sioux tribes still living there.P.S Charles Eastman aka Ohiyesa was to write dozens of books and articles about his people the Sioux Indians as well as practice medicine at the Pine Ridge, as well as other, Indian reservation until he passed away on January 8, 1939 at the age of 80.
Eastman among his many accomplishments in the service of his people was also the co-founder of the American Boy Scouts that improved and enriched the lives of American youths white black yellow and Native American Indian alike..
If they were trying to present the whole story through the eyes of the doctor, I would have understood a back-handed recounting since he wasn't at the creek, but the movie switched narratives multiple times, so the directing and editing and even storytelling decisions don't build any tension at all.
This story covers the period from the battle at Little Big Horn to the massacre at Wounded Knee.It's your typical heart-tugging depiction of mistreatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government and its people.
Indians have even been killed to clear the way for profits.So as you watch this movie in outrage and cry for the poor Native Americans and curse those who did nothing, take a look in the mirror..
Released to HBO in 2007, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" is a historical Western based on several chapters of Dee Brown's book of the same name and details the last days of the Sioux Nation, culminating in the infamous massacre at Wounded Knee.
His messianic movement inspired the Natives, promising an end of their suffering under white rule.Every movie based on history mixes fact with fiction as filmmakers try to overcome the challenge of morphing complex real-life events into palatable cinema.
So let's get the falsities out of the way: Charles Eastman never lived in the Native village near the Battle of the Little Bighorn as young brave Ohiyesa; Sitting Bull surrendered at Ft. Buford, not Standing Rock; lastly, Charles Eastman was not Dawes' associate in developing the Dawes Act.With that out of the way, what I like about this movie is how balanced it is as it shows both sides of the story.
The Europeans were simply a confederation of several white "tribes" from across the great sea and were merely doing the same thing that Sitting Bull's tribe did – acquiring land from conquered peoples.Speaking of Sitting Bull, he's one of the most interesting and enigmatic Native characters seen in cinema.
The irony is that, while Wovoka's vision inspires the Lakota and it replaces their suffering with hope & happiness, it only ends in death.Two great sequences occur in the final act: The accurately-depicted haunting death of Sitting Bull, which took place on December 15, 1890, at Standing Rock Reservation; and the titular massacre at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine River Reservation two weeks later.
The firing then became indiscriminate and the massacre entailed.While "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" is a television production, its quality is as good or better than many theatrical pictures.
I have no idea whether this is historically accurate, or, if I were a member of (Canada's) First Nations, to embrace or be offended by this portrayal of the time period, which, though the story of one Americanized Indian, is (given the title) really about the plight of America's first peoples and obviously told from a 21st Century perspective.
I've studied the events that lead up to the Wounded knee massacre, and I have to say you have to give a hand to this film.
Dee Brown's book was also a horror story, and the major horror was that it was real.So knowing absolutely nothing about the movie, I borrowed it, thinking that it would be essentially a documentary.
'Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee' tells the story of this period, and the truth is grim and fascinating; but unfortunately, this is heavy-handed stuff, whose sympathies are always apparent, and marred by wooden acting and lumbering dialogue.
Neither the uncorrupted pseudo-flower children of "Little Big Man" or "Dances With Wolves" nor the murderous savages of a hundred earlier cowboy and Indian flicks, the Lakota-Sioux are shown here to be victims, to be sure, but in the past they have victimized others and they victimize each other at times as the movie unfolds.The White characters also are shown as very varied in character--some stern but fair, others frankly hostile, most well meaning if ultimately unhelpful.
This well intentioned movie did not capture the spirit of Dee Brown's book, alas.Focusing the story largely around the admirable Lakota doctor, Charles Eastman and his White wife tries to give an emotional center to Brown's sprawling narrative but the characters of Sitting Bull and Red Cloud come off as little more than an elaboration of the famous "Noble Redman meets Litter" commercial of the 70's.
All the heart and soul of Brown's book is lost in this movie.And I know Adam Beach is a popular actor if you're casting a movie that calls for young, good looking Native American guys, but he only has two facial expressions: happy or snarly, and that's it.
Showing the reality of Sitting Bull as a leader, as a man, as a captive was eloquent and very real to me.Aidan Quinn was excellent in portraying a Christian man who honestly felt he was doing the right thing, but operating without a full understanding of what was being taken for the people he thought he was helping.
Adam Beach did a great job of playing a young man disillusioned by the world he was forced into and saddened by what was happening to his people.Some of the best moments of the film seemed simple outwardly, but were in fact so powerful that I cried.
However given the medium, it's a compelling film that highlights the plight of the Native American Indian in the dying days of the Old West, and with it, the death knell of a proud warrior people.I recently visited the James Fenimore Cooper Museum in Cooperstown, New York, and at the time, actual Sioux drawings were on exhibit depicting the Battle at Little Big Horn.
Not to mention the hopelessness of Custer's cause.The film can be absolutely depressing at times with it's depiction of outright slaughter, and perhaps even more so once the Sioux tribes are relegated to reservation life.
Movie opens with a recreation of soldiers taking pictures of "Big Foot in Death," one of the disturbing actual pictures in the book, taken on the Wounded Knee battlefield in 1890.When I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee over a decade ago, I would never have believed that White America would have the gall to turn it into a film  and if it was made into a movie, it would be diluted as a trail of tears The latter has come to pass.Screenwriter Daniel Giat and director Yves Simoneau deliver a film as watery as any American beer.
The movie opens with General Custer's gruesome defeat at Little Big Horn in 1876 by combined Lakota and Northern Cheyenne Native Americans  but we don't see the heads that were just a part of the reason why the slaughter was inevitable and well-deserved.
The movie ends with the grisly massacre of Lakota Sioux men, women and children at Wounded Knee in 1890.
Almost as if the "Indians" got their just desserts for killing them nice soldier boys.I rest my case.(By the way, "Indians" is the White Eyes' name for the Native American races.
When the Natives in this movie call themselves Indians so offhandedly, we realize the film-makers did all their research on Wikipedia.) It was not bad enough to kill off the Native Americans 150 years ago, now a movie is made about that inhuman era  not to honor the Natives, but to MAKE MONEY for HBO; to pretend a spirituality, tolerance and political correctness modern Americans have not the depth to comprehend.Before we continue, let us establish that Dee Brown's 1970 book is a disturbing, thought-provoking, well-researched masterpiece; a towering indictment of frontier America of the 1800s; a history lesson from the people who lived it, not the ones who re-wrote it.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a book that scarred the self-aggrandizing perspective of a nation; recounting Native Americans' extermination at the hands of the White Eyes and their broken promises, cowardly massacres and bloody betrayals; every single treaty between the two factions dishonored by the scoundrels who claimed birthright to a country that they knew was not theirs.Though this gutless filmic re-imagining of Brown's book tries hard to be compelling, it is merely a thin marketing gimmick for whatever Native American fever was doing the rounds in Hollywood at the time.The actors do what they can with the clichéd characters they're assigned: Aidan Quinn as the Good White Man, empowered to carve up land and herd the Native Americans out; the majestic Wes Studi, an old-school agitator; August Schellenberg perfectly cast as Sitting Bull, "the greatest living Indian"; Eric Schweig doing his Steven Segal impersonation; the magnificent Adam Beach (Flags of Our Fathers), one step closer to some kind of acting award; Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse (evocative name, no?
Grant.At first, the White Eyes' grasping at real estate looks like provincialism and ignorance of different cultures ("I still believe that setting the Indians on the course to civilization best serves him") but the Illegal Aliens (i.e. American settlers) knew full well that they wanted the LAND under the PRETENSE of doing a good deed for the Natives  doublespeaking it as mendaciously as that Great World Terrorist of the 2000s, George W.
Our only hope is that viewers of this vapid HBO movie will be encouraged to read Brown's book and perform true-hearted research into the buried heritage that the White Eyes are still working so hard to pretend to forget..
Ohíye S'a; or Charles Eastman, who the film makers chose to tell the story through, unlike in the book, was a Santee Dakota.
The film portrays the struggles between the American Indians and the white people.
It was a sad movie to watch, since the native Indians continuously suffered from many things, and there was no true freedom for them.
It was sad to watch Charles being caught up by both sides; the American Indians and the white people.
The film also shows how people are from the opposing sides, and how they feel and act about the situation around the American Indians.