Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (film)

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a 2007 television film adapted from the book of the same name by Dee Brown. The film was written by Daniel Giat, directed by Yves Simoneau and produced by HBO Films. The book on which the movie is based is a history of Native Americans in the American West in the 1860s and 1870s, focusing upon the transition from traditional ways of living to living on reservations and their treatment during that period. The title of the film and the book is taken from a line in the Stephen Vincent Benet poem American Names. It was shot in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

While Eastman and his future wife Elaine Goodale Paquin, a reformer from New England and Superintendent of Indian Schools in the Dakotas, work to improve life for Indians on the reservation, Senator Dawes lobbies President Ulysses S. Grant Thompson for more humane treatment of the Indians. He opposes the adversarial stance of General William Tecumseh Sherman Feore. The Dawes Commission held from 1893 to 1914 develops a proposal to break up the Great Sioux Reservation to allow for American demands for land while preserving enough land for the Sioux to live on. The Commissions plan is held up by Sitting Bulls opposition. He has risen to leadership among the Sioux as one of the last chiefs to fight for their independence. Dawes, in turn, urges Eastman to help him convince the recalcitrant tribal leaders. After witnessing conditions on the Sioux reservation, Eastman refuses.The prophet Wovoka Studi raised Western Indian hopes with his spiritual movement based on a revival of religious practice and the ritual Ghost Dance it was a messianic movement that promised an end of their suffering under the white man. The assassination of Sitting Bull and the massacre of nearly 200 Indian men, women and children by the 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee Creek on December 29, 1890 ended such hopes. ........

Source: Wikipedia