The Obliteration of the Indian Americans in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Essay Example

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee ‘Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee’ is a fully documented movie version adopted from a book by Dee Brown of the obliteration of the Indian Americans in the late 1900s, culminating at the Wounded Knee Battle that really inspired me. The movie brings to light torture and atrocity story not well known in the American history. The plot, based on events covered in 19 chapters of Dee Browns book and other sources, rotates around four leading characters: Charles Eastman (Adam Beach), a young-looking, mixed-raced Sioux doctor and graduate at Boston and Dartmouth University, who is detained as proof of the assimilation success; Sitting Bull (August Schellenberg), a Sioux chief who rejects to submit to white government policies designed to rip his people off their identity, dignity and sacred land, Dakotas gold-laden Black Hills; Senator H.

Dawes (Aidan Quinn), government policy architect for Indian lands allotment to individual families to force implementation of subsistence farming; and the Red Cloud, whose resolution to make peace with American government and then go to a reservation troubled Sitting Bull (Miller, Vandome and John 3). When I commenced watching this movie I assumed I had a good handle on what happen to the Native American Indians. The Indians roams their ancestral lands peacefully and basically, with great admiration for the nation and its citizens.

Then the white man approaches, stumbling all over himself with the aim of reaching the gold fields in California or the rich the high plains farmland. The Indians were no more than an annoyance, a bothersome barrier that should be relocated to one side if patent destiny is to be attained. Lands are and reservations stolen, the land that white man has already plundered or passed up, are assigned. Those who do not go to the set reservation are hunted down cruelly. Sometimes even those who agree to come in are pounced on (Sand Creek for instance) and massacres happens with cover-ups that make many people not believe the story.

The Indian are massacred at Washita, Sand Creek, and Wounded Knee with petite or no public tumult, but when he reacts by killing a couple of settlers, imitating the white Americans through mutilation, the public atrocity is deep and the military is ordered a blank "kill" plaid (Miller, Vandome and John 34). With every minute the shocking treatment is recurrent, leaving the viewer with only two alternatives of responses - vomiting or weeping. It is exceedingly hard to watch this movie, not for the reason that the it looks out fashioned or the language is awkward, (which is not the incident) but for the reason that each act, will surely leave every but the most cold-hearted with a reflective sense of woe, shame, and disgust.

The movie deals with the entire major and the minor actions that entailed almost all Native American communities and the scenario remains always the same. The work of this non-fiction, tries to tell the story about American West from the lookout of the indigenous populace, The American Indian. This in itself sorts Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee a significant movie as it is one of limited movies supportive of the Indian foundation. This is done by the use of adoption of first-hand, autobiographies, and records accounts of what really transpired in America and to Native American Indians.

Works Cited Miller, Frederic P., Agnes F. Vandome and McBrewster John. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Film). New York: VDM Publishing, 2010.