Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #33: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007)

 

This is another revision of an earlier review I made. This time, however, my opinion of the movie was greatly changed on my rewatch. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a television movie from HBO, is based on Dee Brown’s famous history of the fall of the American Indians in the latter half of the 19th Century. Brown’s book is too widely focused to make a single movie, so HBO limited itself to the story of the Sioux, from their last great victory at Little Bighorn to 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, but accuracy does not always translate into a great movie.

The movie tries for a balanced account of events, though both of the primary protagonists are Sioux Indians. The first is Charles Eastman (Adam Beach). Eastman is the biggest inaccuracy of the movie. As in real life he has a Sioux father who converted to Christianity and changed his name to Jacob Eastman. For a while Charles, as Ohiyesa, lived with his mother’s people, but they were not part of the group under Sitting Bull, so Eastman’s presence at Little Bighorn is completely fictional. He was put in a mission school before having an American education program. Though the movie doesn't have him go to one of the controversial boarding schools, it still shows how Indian children were made to abandon their cultural heritage, down to adopting western names. The movie gets inaccurate with Eastman again, however, in giving him a close relationship with Henry Dawes which didn't exist, and also making him figure more in the other Sioux's lives earlier in the timeline.

What is true is that he was the first American Indian to master western medicine and became a doctor on the Great Sioux Reservation. At least in the movie 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 a romantic relationship with poet and future wife 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 forced the Sioux to become farmers and also sell off more of their already shrunken lands. Eastman was not present for most of the events in the movie and certainly did not have as many personal interactions with other major characters, but he is used to show the tensions the Sioux face between preserving some of their culture and adopting the whites’ ways.

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 he and his people are allowed to live in peace, but lack of food and medicine forces him to finally go to the reservation in South Dakota and surrender. Not allowed to serve as a leader by the US government, he makes a living as a celebrity, signing autographs and taking photos in return for money. 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 likable figure, but oddly enough the movie gives him an inaccurate ugly moment where he whips one of his own people for stealing a horse from other Indians in Canada. While the Sioux could be vicious to outsiders, they never treated their own people so harshly.

Sitting Bull (August Schellenberg in the left foreground) with some of his top warriors

Speaking of Canada, the movie shows the moment when Major James Walsh, a Royal Mountie, rode straight into Sitting Bull’s refugee camp and clearly laid out the terms that would allow them to live on British-held soil. The movie doesn’t delve too deep into Walsh and his relationship with the Sioux, but it is true that the Canadians were much fairer in their dealings with American Indians during this period.

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. He represents the progressives who, to paraphrase, tried to “save the man by killing the Indian.”

The film sometimes has transitions utilizing
19th-Century looking photographs. Here's
one with Aidan Quinn as Henry Dawes.

Of course, almost any major film with American Indians is required to feature Wes Studi in a role. Here he portrays Wovoka, the medicine man who taught the new ghost dance that would 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 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 a small part of Little Bighorn, when Arikara scouts attached to Custer’s 7^th Cavalry, stormed into the Sioux and Cheyenne camp. After this there’s a pretty good long shot that ends in the visual of Indians riding around the US troopers on Last Stand Hill. The Cedar Creek Valley Fight where the Sioux lose, however, if pretty bad because somehow twenty extras playing American troops are able to curb stomp a ton of Sioux warriors from a downhill position. 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 cod liver 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.

And here is a good time to discuss the main problem with this movie. Two hours is a good length for a movie, but a three hour two-parter or a fuller miniseries would have worked much better. Outside of Charles Eastman the movie is very accurate, but almost everything happens too fast. Thus it’s hard to get emotionally invested in most of the scenes without the proper pacing. It would also have been nice to see Sitting Bull tour with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, but we only get a brief mention during one of the chief’s antagonistic interactions with the infamous Indian Bureau agent James McLaughlin (J.K. Simmons). McLaughlin tries to assert dominance by telling Sitting Bull that he can’t go on any more such trips. Actually Sitting Bull was the one who made the decision and McLaughlin was disappointed because he thought it would properly Americanize the chief.

The casting of President Ulysses S. Grant and General William Tecumseh Sherman for one scene is a little off despite the talent used. Fred Thompson plays Grant and Colm Feore Sherman (pictured above)

The death of Sitting Bull and the bloodbath at Wounded Knee are accurately shown, but only as quick flashbacks via one of the wounded patients Eastman treats (this time Eastman’s interaction is historical. He saved most of the 38 wounded Sioux brought to him). For a movie with Wounded Knee in the title, I expect more, and Sitting Bull’s death is also way too quick considering he was one of the primary characters.

Overall Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a decent, tragic film which shows how the position of American Indians has declined (and still has not improved much when it comes to 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, but don’t expect anything too stellar.

Rating: 6/10