Wounded Knee's ghosts ride again

[133724]

Dee Brown's bestseller, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, is due to air in the US tonight as a feature-length movie and is reigniting a debate over some of the most tragic and bloody episodes in American history.

The release of the film comes at a time when Native Americans are undergoing a period of turmoil and change, with some tribes growing rich on gambling while others remain in desperate poverty. 'It is a very divided community. Gambling money has been both good and bad as some tribes have become very rich,' said Professor Dawn Riggs, an expert in Native American history at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Back in 1970, when Brown's book was published, Native Americans were all but forgotten and powerless on their reservations, reduced in popular culture to stock images of whooping warriors in cowboy films or friendly farmers in Thanksgiving Day ceremonies.

Brown's book changed all that. Chapter by chapter, it chronicled the experience of individual tribes at the hands of white men. And though the characters and locations changed, the story was always the same: white treachery, the loss of Native American lands and the extermination of a culture. It has now sold more than 5 million copies. 'It had an enormous impact. It changed everything,' said Riggs.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2089028,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12