P.M Overall, it was a good film. 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. Some main points were briefly mentioned about the different tribes that appeared in the film, but not enough to get a very good understanding about the conflict between the tribes. The film also shows how people are from the opposing sides, and how they feel and act about the situation around the American Indians.

paul2001sw-1 When the government of America's European settlers defeated the indigenous population, they didn't directly massacre or enslave them (at least, not in every case). The signed a treaty with the defeated Sioux that granted them land, and when they wanted some of this back, offered to pay for it. Senator Henry Dawes, architect of this deal, saw himself as a great friend on the Indians (as opposed to those who considered them sub-human); he was offering them civilisation. However, anthropologist Marvin Harris has suggested that the process of civilisation is not so much progress as a necessary adaptation to shortages of natural resources, especially land, and the truth of this is apparent when considering the Sioux; regardless of whether civilisation was truly in their interests, it was necessary to release their land to those who wished to exploit it. '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. In place of naturalism, almost every scene seems specially constructed to demonstrate a specific point of the history; and bizarrely, the story's natural climax is told, not as it happens, but in flashback, squandering the dramatic tension that should have been apparent. Yet in spite of its clumsiness, the film left me wanting to know more of the real history; in that at least it succeeds.

dunmore_ego The Wounded Knee Massacre (aka The Battle at Wounded Knee Creek) was the last major armed conflict of what Americans term the "Indian Wars" of the late nineteenth century. 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. Though it is supposedly a tribute to the indomitable spirit of the Native Americans, it is yet another White-Perspective slur-fest that dishonors that wild race with every bigoted frame. How could any movie on Earth convey the inhuman horrors of Custer's men playing soccer with the heads of Native American children? 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. The Native peoples refer to themselves either as Native Americans or their tribe name. 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? – he played the young Smiles A Lot in Dances With Wolves) is Sitting Bull's son; and playing the president better than he ever could in real life, Fred Thompson as Ulysses S. 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. Bush ("We're spreading democracy (so we're killing them for their energy resources)"). Of course, this proud, iron-skinned people, their faces etched like rocks of ages, knew better - and also knew inherent grand truths that their White Eyes scourges could never grasp: that the LAND belongs to no one, that we are all a PART OF the land. Unfortunately, there is something stronger than pride – genocide.Not all the stupidities in this movie are the film-makers' or the early settlers' fault, though. We easily criticize the film for all the Natives conveniently speaking English in current American vernacular and ooga-booga accent, which simply screams "Made For Television," but other silliness can be attributed to the Native Americans and their own bogus "spirituality": Wes Studi preaches that if they all do The Dance they will live forever.. uh, ooookay. And I know a modern Native friend who still fasts for a week and nails himself to a tree every Tree-Nailing Season and then swears he has "visions" – of COURSE you have visions! You're hallucinating from food deprivation and blood loss! 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.

nogdyshus First off, I haven't seen the production of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. But I read the book. Many years ago. But if this production is true to the book it will be a wake-up call for many. You'll come away knowing exactly what was done to the people of the First Nations. The false promises, outright lies, cruelty, deprivation forced on them. The grief of seeing your wife, husband, father, child...your entire family destroyed. To see land that had sustained your people for eons being taken over and divided up, destroyed, its animal life extinguished with no hope of recovery. And finally, to see the mountains those lands surrounded...mountains sacred to all the tribes and nations of your race...to see the faces of foreign leaders carved into those mountains. Those of you with an ability for true empathy might have an inkling of the despair and hopelessness felt by the people of the First Nations. The majority will feel bad for a short while and then continue with their lives as before. And for some, some will feel a burden on their soul the likes of which you will wish you had never known. You'll learn to live with it. I can promise you that. We whites have an amazing capacity for justifying what our race has done to others and living with its subsequent guilt. But how long can we do that? Injustices done in the past can't be erased. And the injustice to the First Peoples continues to this day. If racial memory is an actuality, how large a burden of guilt can we carry until our collective backs break from its weight?