Wounded Knee

Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee begins just after the bloody battle at Little Big Horn. This film focuses on the lives of three characters: Charles Eastman, a young doctor who was once a member of the Sioux tribe and is used as an example to highlight the “success” of assimilation; Sitting Bull, the Lakota chief determined to keep the sacred Black hills in the hands of the Sioux; and Senator Henry Dawes, a large part in creating the government policy on Indian affairs. While Charles and the schoolteacher, Elaine Goodale work to the quality and balance of life on the reservation, Senator Dawes pushes for a more humane treatment. Hope seems to rise for the Indians however, this hope is ruined after the assassination of Sitting Bull and the massacre

As they began to decline as a tribe, they began to turn on each other and lose faith in those in charge. They were starving and sick, and many of them were growing upset that the fact that nothing was being done to fix the suffering and struggling. Members of the tribe began to lose respect for Sitting Bull, as he struggled to keep his people together. However, this looked like he was letting his people starve and die and tension began to grow. When the parents of a sick daughter begged Sitting Bull for permission to return home for better treatment, he refused. After catching the family trying to run away, Sitting Bull shot their horse and forced the family to stay, even as the daughter grew worse and eventually died. Tension grows as the Sioux are accused of hunting on the neighboring tribe’s grounds and stealing their horses. When Sitting Bull finds the culprits, and realizing that to prevent his entire tribe from being driven from the land, he decides that must punish the two thieves. In front of the officers and the entire tribe, he hangs the two men by their wrists and whips them. Although Sitting Bull obviously felt compelled to punish two men for the good of the whole tribe, soon the tribe begins to look at Sitting Bull with anger and hatred. Later, we see that the tribe has lost much respect for Sitting Bull and a group of boys call him a coward for "hiding under his blanket" during the Battle of Little Bighorn (George & Simoneau, 2007). The filmmakers also made it clear for the viewers with the message: "Every man a chief," to show us that there is no longer a respectable leader to follow and that everyone now must make their own decisions. The filmmakers clearly wanted to point out the tension that divided the Sioux and show that although Sitting Bull is still seen as an emblem of Native American resistance today, members of his own