August Schellenberg previously played Sitting Bull in both Witness to Yesterday (1973) and Crazy Horse (1996).
Sitting bull was killed on Dec. 15, 1890. The Wounded Knee Massacre happened on Dec. 29, 1890. Sitting Bull's surviving family had been at Wounded Knee for two weeks before arriving at the agency from the massacre.
The first project to make a film based on the Dee Brown's bestseller dates back to 1973 and the director was to be Martin Scorsese. Soon after the infamous Oscar rejection speech which featured Sacheen Littlefeather, Scorsese approached Marlon Brando about starring in it. They worked on a script for several months but it failed to materialize. But producer Julia Phillips claims that Scorsese withdrew because some Native Americans got drunk and tried to rape Sandra Weintraub, Scorsese's then-girlfriend.
Originally began development in 1995 as a two-part miniseries for ABC.
Several scenes were filmed at the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald and the Alberta Legislature building in Edmonton, Alberta.