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The Dawes Commission agenda was to break up the Great Sioux Reservation into individual parcels of land to be awarded to each Indian and still allow a right of way for the railroad to traverse on their former lands. Senator Dawes would be aided by Charles Eastman(Adam Beach), a young Sioux doctor educated At Dartmouth. Featured are the struggles of three principal players as Senator Dawes(Aidan Quinn)lobbies President Grant(Fred Thompson)into treating the Indians kinder. A true epic that begins with the aftermath of the Sioux massacre of General Custer and his men at Little Big Horn. President Grant came and went too quickly for me to recognize Fred Thompson under the beard, a trait he might also suffer as a Presidential contender unless he gets that fire in the belly.Īn HBO Films event inspired by Dee Brown's bestseller. Nice performances all around by Aidan Quinn as Senator Dawes, Adam Beach as the conflicted Ohiyesa/Charles Eastman, and August Schellenberg as Sitting Bull. Fortunately, he was able to reaffirm his own dignity with the 'one last time' confrontation against Senator Dawes (Aidan Quinn), a legacy that remains standing to this day. I'm actually glad that the film didn't explore Sitting Bull's Wild West Show days with Buffalo Bill. We get to see how the 'Every Man a Chief' designation, though sounding completely egalitarian, works to strip away a proud chief's identity and status within his nation. The film can be absolutely depressing at times with it's depiction of outright slaughter, and perhaps even more so once the Sioux tribes are relegated to reservation life. Not to mention the hopelessness of Custer's cause. It was like seeing a painting come to life with a soaring eagle's eye, perhaps devoid of detail, but breathtaking in it's panoramic perspective on the immensity of the battle.
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Watching the aerial view of the attack on screen suddenly put into perspective the circular rendition of an artist's rendering on a full size tee-pee. I recently visited the James Fenimore Cooper Museum in Cooperstown, New York, and at the time, actual Sioux drawings were on exhibit depicting the Battle at Little Big Horn. However given the medium, it's a compelling film that highlights the plight of the Native American Indian in the dying days of the Old West, and with it, the death knell of a proud warrior people. If I had my druthers, I guess I'd side with those reviewers who feel a more complete story could have been told using a mini-series format. As for the film, I came across it quite by accident at my local library, not being an HBO subscriber. Perhaps that was only in the early going, but I wasn't able to complete it both times. I'll have to admit that I tried reading Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" on two separate occasions, the last time quite recently, and I found it to be VERY dry.