How Native Americans Were Assimilated into the American Society and Culture as Depicted in Yves Simoneau Film Bury My Heart at Wounded Knees

Film Analysis – Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

The film “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee” is about the assimilation of Native Americans into American culture and society. The film is a historical drama directed by Yves Simoneau. The film begins by showing the US army’s defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and moves to show their continued efforts afterwards to remove Sioux indians out of their own land. The film shows a boy named Ohíye S’a being taken by his father to be assimilated into American culture, given a new name as Charles Alexander Eastman and leaving his old life for this new one. Years pass and Charles is a grown man who has become a doctor, and he fights for the rights of his people using his unique position being from both sides of the conflict. Meanwhile, his old tribe is constantly harassed and attacked by US forces, making them attempt to flee to Canada to survive. Proving to be too difficult, the tribe eventually gives up and joins a Native American reservation, in which Charles comes to tend to the sick. All hope seemed to be lost until Wovoka begins teaching members of the reservation the ghost dance, which is a dance which they claim will give them back their land. This leads to the death of Sitting Bull and the massacre of around 200 natives.

The film has a fair amount of accuracies and inaccuracies within it. One accuracy the film got correct was the death of Sitting Bull, which happened similarly in the movie as it did in reality. Another accuracy was that Charles Eastman was at Wounded Knee and aided the wounded and collected the bodies of those who died in 1890. A major inaccuracy which caused a fair deal of controversy was how Sitting Bull was portrayed. In the movie, Sitting Bull did things such as whip two fellow indians, which is said to have never happened, and that he was instead a holy man who took care of others. Finally, another inaccuracy was how Henry Dawes was portrayed to care for the Native Americans, but in reality just wanted their forceful removal from their land.

I personally liked the film a decent amount, it certainly wasn’t my favorite which we have seen so far this year due to its slow pacing. I feel as if this movie was intended for a specific audience and I wasn’t part of that spectrum. The film does have historical value as it mainly was historically accurate aside from things such as how certain people acted. If I had to create a solution to the “indian problem” in the late 1880’s, I personally would have left them to their own land and instead tried to slowly combine both cultures with peace instead of force or violence. Canada is displayed in a way in the movie similar to how I would go about it, with kind hospitality and attempts to communicate.