Bury My ♥...

Goodness gracious... where to start.  A few years ago my parents gave me their copy of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, in high hopes of me reading it.  Given I am a painfully slow reader on top of semi-unmotivated when it comes to joy-reading, I never did get around to reading it.  Honestly, I didn't even know what it was about.  When Jessica McCallum Mentioned that we would be watching the movie version of the book, I was slightly upset with myself that I hadn't read a book that was so pivotal to out history as Americans.  The movie was, as to be expected, a dramatized, Hollywood version of the original book, however it still stuck with you just as much.  Dee Brown, the author, did a remarkable job telling such a powerful story of a massacre between the Sioux Indians and the white, European descendants.  NATIVE Americans to me should be, and should have always been the ones calling the shots of who gets what land given they were here a whole lot longer than any of these colonizers.  I also feel though that it is hard to give people that kind of power; no matter who they are.  Unlike the stereotypical Western book of guns, cowboys and Indians, this book took a whole new stance.  Told from a Native American point of view, this genuine story holds nothing back in terms of the truth.  The part that stuck with me the most I would say is the very climax of it all: where the actual massacre took place.  For a while, what happened at Wounded Knee was considered a battle, but as time went on, people decided to call it what it was: a massacre.  350 men, women and children were murdered without a second thought.  Rounded up, de-armed, and helpless, a shot from either the Sioux or the officers (still not determined, possibly never to be found out), started off this shooting.  In just minutes almost all of the Native Americans brought to Wounded Knee had been killed or greatly injured, where only 25 soldiers were killed.  It sickens me to think of human beings being capable of that kind of misused power, and not a regret about it.  The fact that the soldiers did not look upon the Native Americans as actual people makes me confused, sad, and in a way hopeless for what people can be trained to become.

Bodies being piled into a deep grave after the massacre at Wounded Knee.  

http://people.tribe.net/djapollo2k/blog/ce04b017-46f7-4552-9036-2364914eee2d