Book Review: A deeper dive into American Indians’ turmoil

With this being a family reunion year, which usually takes place in Indian country—or what was Indian country in South Dakota—I wanted to know more. More about the Indians.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (Henry Holt and Company, 1970) by Dee Brown is hard to get through. I don’t know how many months it took me to listen to it. It was definitely a history lesson.

I feel fulfilled and drained at the same time after finishing it. The atrocities white people committed are unfathomable. The killing, the taking of land, the lies, the dehumanization of these people.

The fact Indians were not even considered full humans, well, why should I be surprised since we have a history of doing that to people who aren’t white.

It’s not like I didn’t know about much of what took place. It was having the chronology laid out this way, the repetitiveness of the horrors, well, it was more history in one place about our mistreatment of indigenous people of the United States than I had encountered before.

I felt like the least I could do was listen to the book to get a better understanding of the turmoil. To have greater compassion. To learn from my ancestors’ mistakes.