America In Context

Several weeks ago, in my Badlands post, I briefly mentioned the Wounded Knee massacre site on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. I thought my recommendation this time around should go back to that.

I applaud anyone who wants to read more on Native American history. Over the decades since I was a kid, we’ve collectively become more sensitive to their plight. They are no longer depicted as the “savage enemy” in popular culture, but IMO we still don’t understand the full depth & breadth of the trauma these people went through.

For those wishing to embark on an independent study of the Native American, I can recommend no better starting point than Dee Brown’s classic “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”, the first widely read work of its kind: a history of Indians by an Indian.

I have to be totally honest here: Brown isn’t the best writer in the world. His prose isn’t graceful or eloquent, but it is written from the heart, and in a storytelling style that suits the voice of the Native American people. Unlike Europeans, tribal ancestors spoke (or even sang) their histories, passing tales & lessons down in a great, verbal tradition. Brown relates these sad tales of Indian oppression in a similar, conversational style that honors this tradition. Reading “Bury My Heart” is like listening to tales of old, spoken by wise, yet dispirited, elders to wide-eyed youth.

Pick it up & give it a read.