Aidan Quinn will star in HBO's original movie Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which depicts the displacement of American Indians as the US expanded west during the latter half of the 19th century.
August Schellenberg also has been cast in the project based on Dee Brown's best-selling book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West.
Quinn will play Henry Dawes, a Massachusetts lawmaker who introduced legislation in 1887 that became known as the Dawes Act, which granted land allotments to each American Indian family. Those who received the land also were granted citizenship and full political rights.
In 1893, Dawes became chairman of the commission created to administer the tribal affairs of the Indian Territory, a position he held until his death in 1903.
Schellenberg will play Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa Lakota chief under whom the Lakota tribes united in their struggle for survival on the northern Plains. Sitting Bull remained defiant toward American military power and contemptuous of American promises to the end.
The movie will film in Canada.
Quinn most recently starred in NBC's short-lived drama The Book of Daniel. Schellenberg, recently seen in the feature The New World and the ABC miniseries DreamKeeper, will next be seen in CBS's upcoming miniseries Comanche Moon.
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