Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Published in 1970 Dee Brown’s classic, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, chronicles the atrocities against Native Americans committed by the U.S. government from the mid-to-late 19th century as our country pursued its westward expansion. I learned a lot from reading this book and consider it to be an essential read for students of American History, but it is not for the faint of heart.  On the other hand, the film is a little bit easier to stomach.

This film adaptation focuses on the lives of two influential Native Americans, Sitting-Bull, Chief of the Hunkpapa Lakota and Charles Eastman of the Santee Dakota, who was educated to be a physician and later became a well- known author and lecturer on American Indian Affairs.  It covers the period between General Custer’s defeat at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876 to the Massacre of the Lakota at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota in 1890.

Although the film doesn’t include all of the many conflicts and massacres that are detailed in the book, it does a good job of depicting the huge loss of life and cultural destruction inflicted on Native Americans in the name of Manifest Destiny.