Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Devastatingly sad, informative, and essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the final subjugation of the native American tribes in the Midwest, Southwest, and western states. There are numerous famous native Americans whose names I knew but whose stories I did not. It is emotionally difficult but important to read the historical facts of how the native Americans were cheated out of their traditional lands after numerous treaties promised them peace and safety. Today I am much better informed and far more ashamed at the actions of the government and the white people who did their best to wipe out the natives altogether. ( )

Book on CD narrated by Grover Gardner

Subtitle: An Indian History of the American West

Brown’s interest in the history of the American West took him to many resources that were previously ignored in crafting the official textbooks from which millions were taught American history. This work is one attempt to correct the information so many thought they knew. Instead of reading accounts of glory and conquest, we are given the perspective of the Native Americans, who mostly wanted to live in peace and harmony with the white men. But the “civilized” society of white men would not be denied, and the government waged a continued war against the Indians with the intent of wiping them out.

Brown relates the systemic plunder of Native lands region by region, tribe by tribe, battle by battle, broken treaty by broken treaty. The reader comes to know the chiefs and their efforts to lead their people to a peaceful solution. The many photographs included help to put faces to some of the names we’ve come to know – Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Cochise. It is a very personal account. And it is heartbreaking.

Grover Gardner does a very good job of narrating the audiobook. But I think this is best read in text so the reader has time to absorb the information. I did have a copy of the text and I read about a third of it, listening to the rest. ( )

Heartbreaking, mindset-shattering, eviscerating.

To get the positives out of the way first: Dee Brown's immense wealth of knowledge and research contributes to make Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee a detailed-yet-well-paced experience. Each chapter chronicles a particular battle, people, or plight, in rough chronological order. Without resorting to extensive flashbacks or appendices, Brown manages to create a sense of the West's treatment of Native Americans from colonisation to the particularly brutal 1800s, when genocide was effectively carried out.

Using transcripts, interviews and evidence from the time, Brown creates a moving portrait that shatters many myths which still resonate, and reminds us of the sins of such ground-level intolerance.

Admittedly, the book would've held more sway when first released, for a generation raised on WWII and '50s-era patriotism. Nowadays, we're more aware of the graphic nature of the treatment of the Native Americans, and so the book's heavy-handedness is particularly evident. Yet, it's easy to forget how marginalised this culture remains - in social understanding, in cultural portrayals, etc. With a pointedness approaching black humour, Brown opens each chapter with a detail of the more commonly-known 'great' events that occurred around the world concurrently with that particular act of one-sided warfare. The development of the telephone. The publication of all the great works of Romantic literature and art. The freaking Emancipation Proclamation! Yet here, in the very same country, an entire race - nay, many dozens of races - were being wiped out. It seems gauche to qualify levels of genocide, but this remains a particularly insidious one. Unlike the oligarchic genocide of the Nazis (where one feels as if removal of a few key figures would destabilise the structure), or the hereditary problems that plague, say, Israel and Palestine, this crime seems one of brutal, individual hatred. The most chilling massacres that Brown describes often occur simply because a few individuals decided - in a moment - they didn't care to be civil with these fellow human beings.

Bury My Heart is perhaps the pinnacle of pop history. In telling his tale exclusively from the other side, Brown weaves a manipulative, overly literary tale. Most of his characters are pure heroes, they speak entirely in riddles, and he pours on emotion like it was a John Williams soundtrack. At times, the academic and the writer in me cry out for some editing, perhaps some levity between the darkest moments, definitely the occasional examination of social and historical contexts that doesn't rely entirely on pandering to our heartstrings. Even when he does describe those white men who were sympathetic, or - as is always the case - seemed to find greater strength in "crossing over" to the Native side completely, Brown could give us more. It's fascinating to read of these men who married into tribes and basically lived with them, or of the young Native Americans who went to university and obtained degrees in the white man's world. But they only enter the narrative at the point when they become part of the bloodshed. What were their daily social patterns like? How did their friends and family respond to the change, and how did it affect the way they interacted in their respective new worlds? This would have been eminently more fascinating, but perhaps it's just outside the scope of Brown's aims.

Yet, this seems a cheap allegation to hurl at such a noble work. After all, where were the moments of levity during what was effectively a decades-long trench war? Where were the moments of tolerance? With each passing chapter, and each passing massacre, the book beats down any resistance you may have to the idea that there is goodness in the minds of men. It's not happy news, but if there's one area of history where that worldview needs to be accepted, it may just be here. ( )

Not a page turner, nor an easy read (fortunately I listened to the audiobook). A truthful telling of how we won the west that fills in all the holes left out of the narrative we were all taught in school. The book is unabashedly from the perspective of the Native Americans who we cheated, harassed, slaughtered, and destroyed as a people. This should be required reading by every high school student in America and especially by every congressman. ( )

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