To Save the Man

In the vein of Never Let Me Go and Killers of the Flower Moon, one of America’s greatest storytellers sheds light on an American tragedy: the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the ‘cultural genocide’ experienced by the Native American children at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School . . .

In September of 1890, the academic year begins at the Carlisle school — a military-style boarding school for Indians run by Captain Richard Henry Pratt. Pratt’s motto, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” is enforced in the classroom as well as the dorm rooms: speak English, forget your own language and customs, learn to be white.

While the students navigate survival, they hear rumors of a sweeping tribal lands reservations in the west—the “ghost dance,” whereby desperate Native Americans engaged in frenzied dancing and chanting hoping it will cause the buffalo will return, the Indian dead to rise, and the white people to disappear. Local whites panic, and the government sends in troops to keep the reservations under control. 

When legendary medicine man Sitting Bull is killed by native police working for the government troops, each Carlisle resident is faced with the question: Whose side are you on?  And what will you risk to gain your freedom?