A review by bargainbinkazbrekker
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown

4.25

“ I did not know that how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying healed and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when i saw them with eyes still young. And I can see something see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there.” — Black Elk

My biggest issue with reading history books is that a lot of them present the facts and events in a very matter of fact way, like it is what it is and what happened happened. There’s never room really for nuance or emotion. Which I think is a detriment. History is nuanced and history is emotional. History is learning how people suffered, died, killed, created, learned, built, inspired, etc. History is human and humans are emotional complex creatures. And some historical events deserve to have their emotions felt. The systemic genocide of the Indigenous peoples of America is one that i feel people need and have to understand and feel the emotion— the pain— that these groups have suffered. The betrayal, lost hope, grief, suffering, anger, and loss they felt. People need to understand that these unique groups were forced to unite under the same circumstances if they were being forced from their homes, their cultures were being stripped from them, and their people murdered. 

Bury my Heart at wounded knee showcases the demise of many a different tribe. It shows the unfortunate cycle that they all ended up in and how the white man did everything they could to rid the land of its natives. 

it’s heartbreaking, it’s brutal, and it’s infuriatingly repetitive.