Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

English language

Published Jan. 23, 2001

ISBN:: 978-0-8050-6669-2

(2 reviews)

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West is a 1970 non-fiction book by American writer Dee Brown that covers the history of Native Americans in the American West in the late nineteenth century. The book expresses details of the history of American expansionism from a point of view that is critical of its effects on the Native Americans. Brown describes Native Americans' displacement through forced relocations and years of warfare waged by the United States federal government. The government's dealings are portrayed as a continuing effort to destroy the culture, religion, and way of life of Native American peoples. Helen Hunt Jackson's 1881 book A Century of Dishonor is often considered a nineteenth-century precursor to Dee Brown's book.Before the publication of Bury My Heart..., Brown had become well-versed in the history of the American frontier. Having grown up in Arkansas, he developed a keen …

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West is a 1970 non-fiction book by American writer Dee Brown that covers the history of Native Americans in the American West in the late nineteenth century. The book expresses details of the history of American expansionism from a point of view that is critical of its effects on the Native Americans. Brown describes Native Americans' displacement through forced relocations and years of warfare waged by the United States federal government. The government's dealings are portrayed as a continuing effort to destroy the culture, religion, and way of life of Native American peoples. Helen Hunt Jackson's 1881 book A Century of Dishonor is often considered a nineteenth-century precursor to Dee Brown's book.Before the publication of Bury My Heart..., Brown had become well-versed in the history of the American frontier. Having grown up in Arkansas, he developed a keen interest in the American West, and during his graduate education at George Washington University and his career as a librarian for both the US Department of Agriculture and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, he wrote numerous books on the subject. Brown's works maintained a focus on the American West, but ranged anywhere from western fiction to histories to children's books. Many of Brown's books revolved around similar Native American topics, including his Showdown at Little Bighorn (1964) and The Fetterman Massacre (1974).Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was first published in 1970 to generally strong reviews. Published at a time of increasing American Indian activism, the book has never gone out of print and has been translated into 17 languages. The title is taken from the final phrase of a twentieth-century poem titled "American Names" by Stephen Vincent Benét. The full quotation, "I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass. Bury my heart at Wounded Knee", appears at the beginning of Brown's book. Although Benet's poem is not about the plight of Native Americans, Wounded Knee was the site of the last major attack by the US Army on Native Americans. It is also one of several potential locations for the site of Crazy Horse's burial.

8 editions

folini reviewed Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

Review of 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

After a few years sitting on my shelves, in the last couple of weeks, I started and finished the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. It’s an iconic and popular book, with thousands and thousands of online reviews, so it’s tough for me to add anything new to the conversation.
In this book review, I would state my impressions and thoughts without going over the content of the book.
First of all, let me say that this is a critical book. It tells a piece of American history that has mostly been hidden to the average American. We all know that history is usually told and shaped by the winners. Thanks to this book, we have access to a different version of history. This version is coming from the native Americans’ perspective, from the people who lost the war, although the author is not a Native …

After a few years sitting on my shelves, in the last couple of weeks, I started and finished the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. It’s an iconic and popular book, with thousands and thousands of online reviews, so it’s tough for me to add anything new to the conversation.
In this book review, I would state my impressions and thoughts without going over the content of the book.
First of all, let me say that this is a critical book. It tells a piece of American history that has mostly been hidden to the average American. We all know that history is usually told and shaped by the winners. Thanks to this book, we have access to a different version of history. This version is coming from the native Americans’ perspective, from the people who lost the war, although the author is not a Native American. It’s the story of a war Indians didn’t initiate, they didn’t want, and that took the lives of the majority of them.
Ths book goes through a long list of conflicts between mostly peaceful Indian tribes and the expanding American population. Sometimes the pressure comes from miners, other times from farmers, or the builders of the railway. Every single time, the political establishment and the military support the aggressions of the Indians and their killing or imprisonment. As we all know, the government of the United States forced the few surviving Native Americans into small reservations. Indian Reservations were established in areas so inhospitable and hard to cultivate that did not attract any interest from the colons or the gold miners. The list of Indian-American conflicts is also a list of treaties that Americans always violated to take advantage of the native people.
The greed for land, natural resources, and easy money was the main drive pushing colons and miners to the west. The immense and unprecedented land grab didn’t stop until the last piece of valuable land was under the control of the whites.
If there is a lesson we can learn from those tragic historical events and the genocide of the Native Americans is that the greed, the real engine of the capitalistic system, only stops when it runs out of resources to grab or steal and to convert into money.
I see this book and the tragic story of the Native Americans as a metaphor for the current struggle of those trying to save our planet form the exploitation by the capitalistic system. In the 1800 century, Americans colons and business people didn’t stop until they had full control of the natural resources and territories of Native Americans. Similarly, today’s capitalistic system will not stop until our planet resources are exhausted, even if this means to push global warming to a level that puts us, humans, in danger of extinction.

Alex

rated it

Sept. 6, 2017