The catalogue of crimes against humanity detailed by Brown is chilling, but I was shocked most by where the guilt for these crimes lies. It belies claims that the US is uniquely placed in the modern world to be the arbiter of global justice. What troubles me is how this flies in the face of the many claims I hear that the founding of the US differs from other nations. Far from what is often claimed, the country was not built on the Christian principles of freedom but rather on what every other country, including my own, was built on: oppression and greed. It tells the true story of what the US was built on. You knew from the start how each chapter would end, though you desperately hoped it wouldn't.ĭee Brown's book should be required reading for every US citizen and on the book list for anyone considering US citizenship. But it was a disturbing read, and the fact that each chapter follows virtually the same pattern made it that much harder to read.

'The 'land of the free' is no longer 'the home of the brave.'' 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 really won. Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition-published in both hardcover and paperback-Brown has contributed an incisive new preface. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. Now a special 30th-anniversary edition in both hardcover and paperback, the classic bestselling history The New York Times called 'Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking.Impossible to put down.'īury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Bury me at wounded knee book