The plot, which is based on events covered by several chapters of Brown's book, other sources, and on real events, revolves around four main characters: Charles Eastman né Ohiyesa, a young, mixed-race Sioux doctor educated at Dartmouth and Boston University, who is held up as proof of the success of assimilation; Sitting Bull, the Sioux chief who refuses to submit to U.S. government policies designed to strip his people of their identity, their dignity and their sacred land, the gold-laden Black Hills of the Dakotas; U.S. Senator Henry L. Dawes, an architect of government policy for allotment of Indian lands to individual households to force adoption of subsistence farming; and Red Cloud, whose decision to make peace with the American government and go to a reservation disturbed Sitting Bull.

While Eastman and his future wife Elaine Goodale, a reformer from New England and Superintendent of Indian Schools in the Dakotas, work to improve life for Native Americans on the reservation, Senator Dawes lobbies President Ulysses S. Grant for more humane treatment of the Native Americans. He opposes the adversarial stance of General William Tecumseh Sherman. The Dawes Commission (held from 1893 to 1914)^[1] develops a proposal to break up the Great Sioux Reservation to allow for American demands for land while preserving enough land for the Sioux to live on. The Commission's plan is held up by Sitting Bull's opposition. He has risen to leadership among the Sioux as one of the last chiefs to fight for their independence. Dawes, in turn, urges Eastman to help him convince the recalcitrant tribal leaders. After witnessing conditions on the Sioux reservation, Eastman refuses.

The prophet Wovoka raised Western Native American hopes with his spiritual movement based on a revival of religious practice and the ritual Ghost Dance; it was a messianic movement that promised an end of their suffering under the white man. The assassination of Sitting Bull, and the massacre, by the 7th Cavalry, of nearly 200 Native American men, women and children at Wounded Knee Creek on December 29, 1890, ended such hopes.

Henry L. Dawes' wanted to increase the cultural assimilation of Native Americans into American society by his Dawes Act (1887) and his later efforts as head of the Dawes Commission. During the 47 years of implementing the Act, Native Americans lost about 90 million acres (360,000 km²) of treaty land, or about two-thirds of their 1887 land base. About 90,000 Native Americans were made landless. The implementation of the Dawes Act disrupted Native American tribes' traditional communal life, culture, and unity.^[2][3]

• Adam Beach as Charles Eastman
• Anna Paquin as Elaine Goodale
• Chevez Ezaneh as Ohiyesa / Young Charles
• August Schellenberg as Chief Sitting Bull
• Aidan Quinn as Henry L. Dawes
• Colm Feore as General William Tecumseh Sherman
• Fred Dalton Thompson as President Ulysses S. Grant
• Duane Howard as Uncle
• Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse as One Bull
• Brian Stollery as Bishop Whipple
• Shaun Johnston as Colonel Nelson A. Miles
• Gordon Tootoosis as Chief Red Cloud
• Billy Merasty as Chief Young Man Afraid of His Horses
• Morris Birdyellowhead as Chief American Horse
• Eddie Spears as Chasing Crane
• Sean Wei Mah as Bull Head
• Eric Schweig as Chief Gall
• Jimmy Herman as Yellow Bird
• Patrick St. Esprit as Major James Walsh
• J.K. Simmons as James McLaughlin
• Wes Studi as Wovoka / Jack Wilson
• Marty Atonini as Colonel James W. Forsyth
• Lee Tergesen as Daniel F. Royer

• Official website
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee at AllMovie
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee at Rotten Tomatoes
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee at IMDb