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I just finished watching the HBO Films presentation "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee", loosely based on the 1971 book by Dee Brown.
Here's what I thought...
First, two hours and fifteen minutes is not nearly long enough to cover this topic. The movie ends up glancing over too many of the key issues that lead from Little Big Horn to Wounded Knee, and does a serious injutice to both sides as a result.
Second, while the movie rightfully condemns the actions of the US Government in betraying, subjugating, then killing the Sioux, it doesn't look hard enough at the malfeasance and mismanagement of Indian affairs on the plains that led to the situation. Nothing is said at all of the outright corruption of the Bureau of Indian Affairs-- most Indian Agents were nothing more than ex-carpetbaggers and scalawags that had failed in the South during Reconstruction and went west to ply their trade their. The result was ultimately, Wounded Knee.
Third, the movie isn't really about the Sioux. It's about Charles Eastman (Oniyesha of the Sioux) and Senator Dawes. It's really about the self-righteous Senator from Massachusetts who steals the identity of Oniyesha and turns him into Charles Eastman. The massacre at Wounded Knee was much worse -- much more evil, much more stupid, and much more violent -- than the movie really shows. In fact, the movie treats it more as an afterthought.
The producers even go so far as to leave out a significant contriubtion Charles Eastman actually made to this country, something that not many know, but that every Eagle Scout should. Long after the massacre at Wounded Knee, Charles Eastman partnered with Earnest Thompson Seaton and Daniel Carter Beard to found the Boy Scouts of America. The movie's producers instead, leave you with this impression of a failed man, struggling with his own vision of self-betrayal, that he turned his back on his people-- that by "becoming white", he helped lead to the massacre.
But there is a different Charles Eastman, and by leaving those details out of the postscript, the producers have done an injurious slander to Mr. Eastman. It is a shame...
The problem with this movie is that it suffers from the same point of view as did Dances With Wolves, viewing Native American tribes as some sort of Rousseau-like "noble savage" instead of the complex societies and cultures they were. In the movie, the character that plays General Nelson Miles even made the point-- the Indians warred amongst themselves even before the white man reached North America.
The fact is that the wars against the Indians that started before the settling of Jamestown mark a dark and ugly part of our history-- as dark and ugly as slavery. But the plains wars of the late 1800s, which were fought over land, silver, gold, wealth, and railroads went beyond the pale. The goal of the government was not assimilation (Senator Dawes notwithstanding)-- but annihlation. We pay that price for that act even today, as the plains Indian tribes (what is left of them) represent the poorest and most destitute demographic group in this country today.
What great thing was done in freeing the black man from chattel slavery, was morally undone in the genocide of the Indian Wars in that late 1800s. The Native American deserved no less than to be treated with the same dignity and respect that we commanded through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments for the freed slaves. Unfortunately, the same racism that led to Jim Crow led to Wounded Knee.
So overall, I found the movie disappointing, missing opportunities to educate and inform without being preachy or overindulgent.