Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a 2007 American Western historical drama television film adapted from the 1970 book of the same name by Dee Brown. The film was written by Daniel Giat, directed by Yves Simoneau and produced by HBO Films. The book on which the film is based is a history of Native Americans in the American West in the 1860s and 1870s, focusing upon the transition from traditional ways of living to living on reservations and their treatment during that period. The title of the film and the book is taken from a line in the Stephen Vincent Benét poem "American Names." It was shot in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and premiered on HBO on May 27, 2007. Plot The plot, which is based on events covered by several chapters of Brown's book, other sources, and on real events, revolves around four main characters: Charles Eastman né Ohiyesa, a young, mixed-race Sioux doctor educated at Dartmouth and Boston University, who is held up as proof of the success of assimilation; Sitting Bull, the Sioux chief who refuses to submit to U.S. government policies designed to strip his people of their identity, their dignity and their sacred land, the gold-laden Black Hills of the Dakotas; U.S. Senator Henry L. Dawes, an architect of government policy for allotment of Indian lands to individual households to force adoption of subsistence farming; and Red Cloud, whose decision to make peace with the American government and go to a reservation disturbed Sitting Bull. While Eastman and his future wife Elaine Goodale, a reformer from New England and Superintendent of Indian Schools in the Dakotas, work to improve life for Native Americans on the reservation, Senator Dawes lobbies President Ulysses S. Grant for more humane treatment of the Native Americans. He opposes the adversarial stance of General William Tecumseh Sherman. The Dawes Commission (held from 1893 to 1914) develops a proposal to break up the Great Sioux Reservation to allow for American demands for land while preserving enough land for the Sioux to live on. The Commission's plan is held up by Sitting Bull's opposition. He has risen to leadership among the Sioux as one of the last chiefs to fight for their independence. Dawes, in turn, urges Eastman to help him convince the recalcitrant tribal leaders. After witnessing conditions on the Sioux reservation, Eastman refuses.