"When Dee Brown wrote his book “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” he could not have known that it would become a classic.

This year, an illustrated 40th anniversary edition was published in hardback. It is a beautiful book and the photos add so much to the stories that made the book great. There are photos of a young Black Elk, Sitting Bull, Hollow Horn Bear, Short Bull and Kicking Bear.

The 543 page book is truly a collector’s treasure.

The history of Wounded Knee is not such an ancient one to the Lakota people of 2009. Many Lakota living today had grandparents at Wounded Knee and some of them died there. My grandmother and grandfather lived at Kyle, just skip and a hop from the massacre site at Wounded Knee. My grandmother was just a teenager then, but she vividly remembered that day of Dec. 29, 1890.

Just six days after the massacre, L. Frank Baum, an editor at the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, wrote an editorial calling for the genocide of the Sioux people. He later wrote the children’s book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”"

Get the Story:
Tim Giago: ‘Bury My Heart’ Turns 40 (McClatchy-Tribune Information Services 12/17)

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