Common Sense Media Review
By Charles Cassady Jr.
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Historical drama about Native Americans has bloody violence.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 14+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Watch
What's the Story?
BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE looks at the conflicts that occurred with the Native Americans when the U.S. began to expand west in the 1860s and 1870s. The Little Big Horn massacre of General Custer (shown from a distance, in a striking, overhead shot) happens under Native American warriors led by Lakota Sioux Chief Sitting Bull (August Schellenberg). The victory is a last hurrah for the Native Americans trying to hold onto sacred Black Hills lands, in the wake of a series of peace treaties largely broken/rewritten by the Whites greedy for railroad and mining territory. A U.S. Senator, Henry Dawes (Aidan Quinn) favors a peaceful policy of relocating the Indians to "Reservations," government-sustained but barren lands, to be Christianized, farm-trained, and cajoled to legally sell the Black Hills. Even Sitting Bull, weary of battles and casualties, turns in his rifle and becomes a Reservation celebrity, signing autographs and posing for photos. Dawes' biggest "success story," Charles Eastman (Adam Beach), a college-educated Native American doctor who was a boyhood fighter at Little Big Horn, comes to work at the Reservation, but he's appalled by the poverty, indolence, deadly fever epidemics, and restlessness that finally lead to an outburst of bloody violence at a place called Wounded Knee.
Is It Any Good?
BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE is a vividly textured, high-quality cable movie from Law & Order creator Dick Wolf. There is resemblance between this Old West and that moody police-procedural where tense court hearings and suspect Q&As outnumber car chases. Here a dispiriting rundown of betrayal and broken treaties by Washington, D.C., turns into comprehensible drama, and if the results aren't action-packed, the thoughtful approach should still haunt older kids, especially those with the school-reading assignment When the Legends Die.
The most striking aspect, besides historical portraits of such prominent natives as Eastman, Sitting Bull, and Red Cloud, is how most whites aren't simplistic baddies, the usual revisionist-Western take. Instead Dawes and others actually believe they're doing the Indians a great favor by "civilizing" the tribes and behaving righteously in forcing the Lakota off their land and crushing their culture.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about this depiction of Native Americans. How is it different than the old cowboys-vs-Indians shoot-'em-ups? What other impressions of Native American do you get from movies?
Does watching this film make you feel any different about Washington D.C. and government policies today? What would you have done in President Grant's position?
Movie Details
- In theaters : May 27, 2007
- On DVD or streaming : September 11, 2007
- Cast : Aidan Quinn , Anna Paquin , August Schellenberg
- Director : Yves Simoneau
- Inclusion Information : Female Movie Actor(s) , Bisexual Movie Actor(s) , Indigenous Movie Actor(s)
- Studio : HBO
- Genre : Drama
- Run time : 132 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- Last updated : November 3, 2020
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