What do You think about Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History Of The American West (2001)?
This book is devastating, relentless, and depressing. It should be required reading for all U.S. citizens. High school history classes really should teach kids just exactly how our country expanded west. As an American of European descent, I am thoroughly disgusted. Invasion and destroying other people's cultures is bad enough, but we did even worse than take the Indians' land and systematically destroy so many of their cultures. Read on.And yes, it is"cultures", plural. Most white people never bothered to understand how many different tribes and languages there were.To be fair, the book does mention a few white people who tried to do the right thing, including President Ulysses Grant, who hired the first Indian to workas Commissioner of Indian Affairs. It's similar to the way some white people were active in the Underground Railroad and in the Civil Rights movement.Too little, too late, but at least there were instances of compassion and respect.In the 21st century, we have certainly come a long way in terms of cultural sensitivity. But still, in my opinion the worst of it is that we acquired the land from its original inhabitants by lying and cheating and killing women, children, old people and even their horses! (Horses meant freedom and mobility and we just couldn't allow the tribes to have that, so the soldiers would shoot all the ponies.) We made treaties and then broke them as soon as it became inconvenient. There is nothing honorable about that. I'm proud to be American, but this aspect of our history is truly shameful. Isn't it wonderful that as Americans we have the right to speak out when something is wrong! People need to read this book, educate themselves, and not let this kind of atrocity happen again.
—Gaijinmama
"Look at me. I was raised on this land where the sun rises- now I come from where the sun sets. Whose voice was first sounded on this land? The voice of the red people who had but bows and arrows." Red Cloud"Every American should read this." Being from Scotland, I can't really say much else apart from the fact that it is very true: Every American should read this. Just like every Russian should read The Gulag Archipelago. These kind of books are important because it gives us a further understanding of the land we walk on. It isn't entertaining in any conventional way, rather it is a sad, depressing, unforgivably brutal, but nonetheless interesting work of history. But there is something else I would like to add since I'm Scottish, British and essentially European: Every European should read this.It's true. Not only should every American read this, but every European too. It's important literature. As far back as the 15th century, Europeans crossed the pond in search of this huge piece of land. Spanish, English, Scottish, Irish, German, Portuguese, French and many other Europeans colonized America and rather ignorantly ignored the indigenous tribes that lived there for thousands of years before and decided to slaughter them violently simply to get their own way. Native Americans lived simply. They were spiritual humans who hunted for their own food, ate the meat, used the fur for clothes and made utensils out of the bones. Every part of the animal was used for all the right reasons. They didn't live in houses; in fact they were simply astonished when they saw the white mans house. They believed in the Great Spirit, did regular sun dances and other religious activities, but the new Americans saw them as barbaric, primitive and uncivilised, and wanted to convert them to Christianity. In fact, Dee Brown mentions in the first chapter, during the very early days of colonization, when the Spanish kidnapped and shipped a few Native Americans over to Spain, forced them to convert to Christianity and egotistically rejoiced when the 'first' Native American was accepted into heaven.Despite my emotional rambling, this isn't an attack against whites. I sound like I'm attacking my own race. No, that is not the case, as in certain parts of the book there are genuinely good whites who try their best to live in peace along with the Native Americans, respect them and understand their inherent frustrations. Every now and then, amidst the horrors, the wars, the vicious genocidal exterminations, the injustice, there are some whites who give us a bit of hope and hopefully gave some of the Native Americans a little hope that not all whites are evil.Highly sympathetic towards the Native Americans, Dee Brown has created a painstakingly honest and heart wrenching account of the American Indians and the violent European colonization of America. Every chapter is essentially the same: Broken promises from the whites which lead to war and then disturbing massacres throughout the States. But don't let the repetition put you off, as each story is profoundly important and incredibly riveting.
—Sean Wilson
there's so much history, and so many names and dates and places, that i feel like i don't remember much in detail (i have no mind for that stuff), but the underlying story is the same in every case. misunderstanding and betrayal and chauvanism and savagery and death. over and over these indian civilizations were reduced to small bands of young men, forced into the hills and fighting hopeless guerrilla wars against the american army after all the others had been killed or pushed onto reservations. it's these last desperate holdouts that we remember: geronimo, sitting bull, crazy horse.when i drove across the country with my father we stopped at wounded knee, in south dakota, a village that was the site of one of the last great massacres of the indian wars. there was a misunderstanding involving a deaf indian after the others had handed in their guns and surrendered to the army. his gun somehow discharged while they were taking it away, and the army opened fire, killing something like 300 of the 350 villagers. the site now is operated, i think, by the BLM. there's a small, run-down museum there and a windswept cemetery. the place is totally deserted. it's so indescribably disrespectful that this place is run by the BLM and allowed to just rot. we have monuments and memorials and national historic sites all over this country, the least we could do is put a decent marker on this spot, something to honor these people. stuff like that, ceremony, usually doesn't matter much to me, but in this case the obvious absence of any official american interest in the site is so insulting. it feels almost deliberate. the place feels forgotten. my father was palpably distraught.in 1973 an american indian group camped at wounded knee for two and a half months under armed siege by the federal government. they were demanding that the government honor several broken treaties, in particular the one that gave the black hills of the dakotas to the sioux people. that ended with over a thousand arrests, and several shootings. there's something about that place that just breathes sadness.
—dead letter office
