Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's classic, eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold over four million copies in multiple editions and has been translated into seventeen languages.

Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the series of battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them and their people demoralized and decimated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was won, and lost. It tells a story that should not be forgotten, and so must be retold from time to time.

Customer Reviews:
40 years later still a great book!
I had heard about this book for years and finally decided to buy it. I'm so glad I did. I was born in Mn and kinda of knew the story of the Santee Sioux in 1862. It was finally cleared up for me. This book should be REQUIRED reading for all student in all schools. I'm also sorry that My Black Brothers took up arms against the Native American. This is book that I'm glad I got for my library. Love the pictures in it.

a must read for all

dee brown's masterpiece & legacy.
grab some tissues & some outrage.
beautifully documented & reads like
a novel. this book should be required
reading in all US educational institutions,
students, teachers, profs, academia mavens.
period.

Filling in the blanks
I agree with the many reviewers who have already argued that Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee should be required reading for all Amercians. The battles and massacres it chronicles will always be part of our history, a history that doesn't fall off our record after so many years like a traffic ticket. I would also argue, however, that reading this monumental work would benefit people all over the globe, because brutality, hubris and deceit are not American traits but human ones. As Americans, it's imperative that we fill in the missing blanks in our history, especially in those periods of history so often glamorized and simplified for entertainment purposes. Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee does this more effectively for the so-called "Indian Wars" than any other single work. Six years before Alex Haley changed the way we looked at African-American history with Roots, Dee Brown offered us the words of those who fought, killed, died and survived in the Westward Expansion. His work has been criticized by some for telling this story from a particular point of view, as if the history books our parents read in high school were produced ex nihilo. All history is written with a point of view. That's one reason why it's important that we read a lot of it! Only Shot At A Good Tombstone

The devil is in the details
"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" offers a detailed and vivid telling of the Native Americans' plight at the hands of European settlers in the middle- to late-19th century. Like many historical works, this one can be challenging to read. Each of the chapters -- covering different tribes and historical events -- is thoroughly researched. Dee Brown clearly spent years researching his subject, and his diligence is evident throughout the text. It's a weighty topic, and the author pays due respect to it through his thoughtful and meticulous work.

I dove into "Bury My Heart" without much knowledge of the subject. This made the book as daunting to me as it was educational. As the chapters wind their way across decades and western states, there's a sad and sober tone of consistency in how the natives were treated. This is part of the education. Above all else, Brown is keen to emphasize that the treatment of Native Americans was in most cases calculated and pre-meditated, not the lawless behavior of rogue settlers.

The War and the Genocide Rages On
This is the Classic it was made to be by history. It is the story of conflict, greed, war crimes, torture embedded in the Euro-American DNA. It could well be India, Africa or the Middle East in illustrating the capacity for cruelty and the conspiracy between the Cross and the Crown to demonize humans as a pre-condition to Genocide/race colonization and Exceptionalism based on Divine and Human tenets of racial superiority. In his detailed documentations of "wars" which were actually massacres, Dee Brown overlooks a simple moral observation that has saturated books on Native Americans: that white men simply had no business here! All the history that sadly ensued begs that simple moral verity. A must read book that should be supplemented by any of Vine Deloria's works on how the "assimilate or exterminate" imperialism and crimes against humanity endure today in each of our Republic's fifty states.

Vine Deloria: God is Red; Custer Died for You Sins; We Talk, You Listen.

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