Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee | |
---|---|
Written by | Daniel Giat |
Directed by | Yves Simoneau |
Starring |
Aidan Quinn Adam Beach August Schellenberg Anna Paquin |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language(s) | English |
Production | |
Producer(s) | Tom Thayer Dick Wolf |
Cinematography | David Franco |
Running time | 132 minutes |
Release | |
Original network | HBO |
Original release | May 27, 2007 |
Website |
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.
The plot, which is based on events covered by several chapters of Brown's book as well as other sources, revolves around four main characters: Charles Eastman né Ohiyesa (Beach), a young, mixed-race Sioux doctor educated at Dartmouth and Boston University, who is held up as proof of the success of assimilation; Sitting Bull (Schellenberg), the Sioux chief who refuses to submit to U.S. government policies designed to strip his people of their identity, their dignity and their sacred land, the gold-laden Black Hills of the Dakotas; U.S. Senator Henry L. Dawes (Quinn), an architect of government policy for allotment of Indian lands to individual households to force adoption of subsistence farming; and Red Cloud (Tootoosis), whose decision to make peace with the American government and go to a reservation disturbed Sitting Bull.