'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee' (2007, HBO / Picturehouse, dir. Yves Simoneau, 123 min, PG-13) is more a politically correct docudrama than an expansive, tense indie western, which it could have been (like 3:10 to Yuma or Jesse James or even September Dawn -- the Mormons are mentioned). It is moody, if preachy. The issues are real, of course. What is the morality of the way the United States took over native American lands? Charles Eastman (Adam Beach) and schoolteacher Elaine Goodale (Elena Paquin) try to improve the living conditions of the Sioux, and the classroom scene is quite telling as to how teaching could be done in a one-room school. Aidan Quinn plays Senator Henry Dawes, and August Schellenberg is Sitting Bull. The government tries to placate the "assimilated" Sioux with rations and orders that they go to church. Even Dawes has to deal with the rationalizations that the modern world should give the Sioux a "better life." There is indeed an interesting speech about the Biblical command to "be fruitful and multiply," even when impoverished. Other viewers have suggested that the movie should have been made from the Sioux point of view, but you have to find the talent to pull that off (even write it). Is the community living in the Dakotas now cohesive enough to conceive of how to make a great movie about this (the IFP chapter and screenwriting groups in Minneapolis would certainly help them), or is it just a conflict of interest?
The original book is by Dee Brown (1970) with the subtitle 'An Indian History of the American West'. I remember meeting Russell Means at a convention of the Libertarian Party of Minnesota in 1998 held at Mystic Lake casino SW of Minneapolis on highway 160. He was selling this book and I bought a copy. It is large and I should have the copy somewhere in the condo. Means has three books he has authored himself, including an autobiography, but I don't seem to have read any of these.
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