Bury my heart at Wounded Knee Book

Fair warning, there may be some political views in this review which should not be surprising being that this book is the history of a government slaughtering a native people because they were simply in the way.

This book is a comprehensive history of the Native American from the moment when the white man showed up on this continent. It kind of goes a little like this.

White guys: “Hey y’all. Love the feathers! Wow its cold and we’re hungry; you wouldn’t be so kind as to help us out.”

Native Americans: Awe, they are just like little children. “Of course we’ll help. We’ll teach you how to hunt and fish and plant crops.”

White guys: “Thanks! By the way we would like to purchase some land from you, not much, just enough for us to live. What do you say?”

Native Americans: Purchase land? What do they mean by that? Everyone knows no one owns a part of mother earth. They are sooo adorable. “Alright you can purchase some land” snicker “How do we go about this?”

White guys: “Well, we will give you some shiny things, trinkets and bobbles and you will sign a piece of paper that says this land ours and that you will stay off of it.”

Native Americans: These guys hilarious, but just to keep the peace…….”Okay, deal. Bobbles and we shall sign this piece of paper. But what happens if we enter “your land”?

White guys: “We will kill you.”

Native Americans: Oh man! They can’t be serious after all the help we gave them; we saved their lives for cripes sake. “uh…..alright, just this once.”

White guys: “Guess what, we have more friends coming and we need a little more land. Sorry, won’t happen again, but if you don’t hand it over we will kill you.”

Native Americans: WTF? “Hey, you lied to us! You said you wouldn’t do this again yet here you are. You’re not so cute anymore white guys.” Shit. “We’ll compromise THIS once, but don’t you let it happen again!”

This happened over and over again. The white man took land, slaughter Indians and the Indians would compromise to avoid war. Many Native American leaders really liked the whites and tried hard to be friends. But some asshat white guys would blow it and more death would happen. Finally some Native American leaders said “ENOUGH!” And went to war, but by then it was too late and they had their asses handed to them.

Thoughts while I read this…..

White guys = Republicans (ironicly still white guys)
Native Americans = Democrates.

Sometimes lessons are never learned