Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is based on Dee Brown’s famous history of the fall of the American Indians in the latter half of the 19th Century. It’s a television movie from HBO and focuses only on the sections dealing with the Sioux. The film starts with the last hurrah of the Sioux at Little Bighorn in 1876 and concludes with the fallout of the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, charting their decline from a proud warrior people on the western plains to dependents on a reservation. Overall it’s a pretty accurate film.
HBO tries to present a balanced account of events, though both of the primary protagonists are Sioux Indians. The first is Charles Eastman (Adam Beach, who has some internet meme fame as Slipknot, the man who can climb anything). Eastman was a Sioux youth whose father converted to Christianity. His father came to pick him up and send him to a school where he assumed Western values and his western name. He was the first American Indian to master western medicine and became a doctor on the Great Sioux Reservation. His character is torn between two worlds. He can’t help but sympathize with his own people but also has a friendship with Senator Henry Dawes (Aidan Quinn) and marriage with poet Elaine Goodale (Anna Paquin who played Rogue in the X-Men films). By the end of the movie he has grown disgusted with health conditions on the reservation as well as the misguided aspects of the Dawes Act, which will force them to become farmers and also sell off more of their already shrunken lands.
I’m more fascinated by Chief Sitting Bull (August Schellenberg), the last leader of the Sioux to resist white encroachment. He actually escapes with his people to Canada, where they’re allowed to live in peace, but lack of food and medicine forces him to finally go to the reservation and surrender. Not allowed to serve as a leader by the US government, he makes a living as a celebrity, accepting money to work at Buffalo Bill Cody’s western shows, sign autographs, and take photos. Those Sioux who want to actively resist the Dawes Act are frustrated that he prefers to live his own life peaceably. Eventually he takes a stand and the Sioux gravitate around him as a symbol of resistance. He’s a sympathetic and likeable figure.
The film boasts several other interesting characters. Henry Dawes is a senator who seeks to rescue the American Indian by turning him into a civilized farmer. He’s well-meaning, but out of touch with the character of the Sioux. His offers to give the Sioux private farms and millions of dollars for the rest of their land do not take into account that their children will no longer have territory to expand into when they leave their parents, and also ignores the fact that some might not be cut out for farming at all. Of course any film with American Indians is required to feature Wes Studi in a role. Here he portrays Wovoka, the medicine man who teaches the new ghost dance that will supposedly make the white man disappear. One character who’s gotten attention is Colonel Nelson Miles. He’s only in the first act where he avenges the death of Custer by defeating Sitting Bull. He stands out for a pre-battle scene where he points out that the Sioux aren’t quite the pure-hearted people that they imagine themselves to be and are in fact guilty of some of the very actions that they criticize the United States for.
The movie’s first act sees the end of the last war between the Sioux and the United States. This includes the only action scenes, which are short but good for television. We then get to the reservation. There’s a bit of necessary time-skipping but we see how conditions for the Sioux have degraded. The government is inefficient in bringing in medicine and other goods. Dr. Eastman finds himself doling out liver cod oil more than any other medicine because it contains alcohol. Attempts to implement the Dawes Act are stonewalled by Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and other prominent figures. Tensions finally climax with the death of Sitting Bull and the Wounded Knee Massacre. Surprisingly these momentous events are told through short flashbacks. An actual criticism is that there are odd moments where portraits of a character fade in and out (maybe these represent when time passes).
Overall Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a good, tragic film which shows how the position of American Indians has declined (and still has not improved much on the reservations). There is a bit of a hope spot at the end, but it’s not much. It's definitely sympathetic to the Sioux, but is able to show some balance in depicting events and characters. Also, unlike many HBO productions there isn’t a bunch of nudity (aside from the grisly stripped corpses of Custer’s men) and little to no profanity. If one is okay with the few gory bits this can safely be shown in school.
Rating: 8/10
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