Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
by Dee Brown
Westward expansion, told by the people it destroyed.
For you if
you grew up learning about cowboys and Indians and are ready to find out what that framing was designed to hide
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$24 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
The systematic destruction of the Native American nations of the American West between 1860 and 1890, told entirely through the testimony of the Native people who experienced it — the treaties that were broken, the land that was taken, the massacres at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee. Brown published this in 1970 and it broke open the sanitized narrative of westward expansion for a generation of American readers who had never been told what actually happened. Assembled almost entirely from Native voices and government documents that the government would have preferred to stay buried.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- North America
- Voice
- An outside perspective on North America
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
Killers of the Flower Moon(2023)
dir. Martin Scorsese
Murder for money, disguised as marriage.
In 1920s Oklahoma, oil wealth makes the Osage Nation targets of a systematic campaign of murder, exploitation, and legalized theft, carried out in part by white men who married into Osage families. Adapted from David Grann's book of the same name.
Why it’s here: Punk in centering Mollie Burkhart's interiority instead of turning her murder into a backdrop for a white antihero's guilt. Pedagogical in showing how legalized guardianship and "headrights" turned bureaucracy itself into a weapon against the Osage.
Same event, different angle
The same history — told by someone who saw it differently.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
Omeros
Derek Walcott
Homer's Odyssey, reborn in the Caribbean.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Mermaid of Black Conch
Monique Roffey
A mermaid caught by tourists. A fisherman sets her free.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Independence from Britain. Empire over everyone else.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Broken Spears
Miguel León-Portilla
The conquest of Mexico, told by the conquered.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST