Film Review – on Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007) is a film based on the book by the same name written by Dee Brown. The film begins at the Battle of Little Bighorn (1876) and concludes during the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890). The film follows Charles Eastman, who is a Sioux man who is taken away from the reservation by his white father as a child and becomes a doctor later in life. In the film, he works closely with Henry L. Dawes to develop strategy for working with the Sioux and development of the Dawes allotment act. Throughout the movie, we see him shift away from agreement with the government agents that he works for and become more connected with the Sioux and their cause, and we also learn about his extremely traumatic experience at boarding school and how the process of assimilation worked (or didn’t work) with him. The final turning point for him is after Sitting Bull’s murder when he is tasked with caring for people fatally wounded in the skirmish, as well as witnessing the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre. He ends up leaving his position as the physician on the Pine Ridge Reservation and becoming an advocate for his community. My understanding of this depiction of Charles is that it is historically inaccurate in some ways – very notably, Charles Eastman was not Sioux, but Santee and was from Canada. He also was not directly involved in the development of the Dawes Act. That said, the depiction of him still shows a really interesting arc that I find to be sort of compelling – he is shown as an example of “perfect assimilation” throughout the film, but ends up returning to his community anyways. It also does a good job of addressing the trauma and manipulation/coercion that went into his assimilation, and though the movie obviously shows that his behavior/position was praised by his white peers, the film does a good job unpacking that and by the end of the movie there is a really good sense that what happened to him was wrong, and that in the end the “perfect assimilation” still proved to be ineffective (from the government/settler point of view).  

The film gives a mostly fair representation of Native people, with a couple of exceptions. The first thing that I noticed was in the scene with the Battle of Little Bighorn, after Charles is rescued by his uncle by his uncle killing his attacker, his uncle scalps the attacker and the depiction of it just seems unnecessary and a bit too much like the person enjoyed the killing, which I don’t think is an accurate or fair representation. Specifically, the depiction of Red Cloud and Sitting Bull made them both appear to be very strong, well spoken, and capable leaders I found the scene where Red Cloud declares that he never would have signed any treaties with the government if he had known that they would approach over and over again to take more land to be particularly impactful. I felt like as a whole, the Sioux were depicted as being very strong and determined, and I felt like the movie did an alright job toeing the line between showing the resistance of Native people in an empowering way and either showing them as overly violent or totally submissive. I did wish that there was more of a detailed depiction of more people from the community – I understand that it wasn’t the focus of the movie, but I think it could have been a valuable addition – a lot of the more personal stories or looks at people we got were in moments of extreme violence or of really sad moments (which was a lot of the film, to be fair). I think that while the film took some liberties with historical accuracy, it overall was an accurate enough depiction of the main events that the message of injustice comes across effectively, and I don’t think the depiction was so warped that it inhibited the ability to understand. I would give this film a 3.5 out of 5 stars – the deductions come primarily from the couple of scenes that I felt like gave an odd impression towards the Sioux in the film as discussed above, and honestly, because I felt like some of the more graphic scenes were so violent and explicit that it felt a bit off putting and excessive – although I think it would be worse to cleanse the violence and make it seem better than it actually was, so I am not certain I have a good answer or suggestion for how to make that weakness better. I think that the film is generally good and should be watched, but that a critical eye should still be used when absorbing the messaging of the film.