The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee
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Average rating4.5
FINALIST FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Named a best book of 2019 by The New York Times, TIME, The Washington Post, NPR, Hudson Booksellers, The New York Public Library, The Dallas Morning News, and Library Journal. "Chapter after chapter, it's like one shattered myth after another." - NPR "An informed, moving and kaleidoscopic portrait... Treuer's powerful book suggests the need for soul-searching about the meanings of American history and the stories we tell ourselves about this nation's past.." - New York Times Book Review, front page A sweeping history—and counter-narrative—of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present. The received idea of Native American history—as promulgated by books like Dee Brown's mega-bestselling 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—has been that American Indian history essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Not only did one hundred fifty Sioux die at the hands of the U. S. Cavalry, the sense was, but Native civilization did as well. Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching Native life past and present for his nonfiction and novels, David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative. Because they did not disappear—and not despite but rather because of their intense struggles to preserve their language, their traditions, their families, and their very existence—the story of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention. In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes' distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival. The devastating seizures of land gave rise to increasingly sophisticated legal and political maneuvering that put the lie to the myth that Indians don't know or care about property. The forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity. Conscription in the US military and the pull of urban life brought Indians into the mainstream and modern times, even as it steered the emerging shape of self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is the essential, intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative era.
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Wonderful. I think all U.S. history taught in high school include An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States and this book - maybe bookending the year? Treuer powerfully interweaves historical documents, speeches, policy, etc. with personal narrative in his central argument: the story of Indigenous Americans has never ended, but persisted, with all the complexity that any human history has. His interviewees were generous in sharing their stories, and Treuer is also generous in sharing his own positionality. At the end, I did find myself wondering what this book would look like if published after 2020, but I think that's all part of Treuer's point: Native peoples will continue to change and adapt with the times as will we all.
3.5, rounding up as a nudge for you to read it but with a caveat: it's dry. Less so when he focuses on individual stories, he comes alive then, but the historical background parts can be a slog to read through. Read it anyway: for the perspective, for the insight, and even for the history. There's much here to learn, including perhaps new inspiring ways to think about Native cultures and their future.
Don't expect romanticized outlook or Native Wisdom woo woo: Treuer is remarkably objective not only about the destruction wrought by whites but also by Natives upon themselves, through inter- and intra-tribal conflicts, corruption, and greed. All the parties throughout history, it turns out, have been human. And don't expect a sob story either: Treuer consistently points out instances of astounding resilience and adaptability, individual and collective, from 1493 through today.
I don't know what I'll do with all this knowledge—forget most of it, to be honest. There's so much. But some of it will stay with me, and I intend to keep reading and learning from Native sources, and over time more and more will be part of me. And maybe it'll change how I act and who I am.
Summary: A reframing of Native American History and reminding the world that Native American history did not end in 1890.
I have intentionally focused my reading on Black American history, but I know that narrow focus limits my understanding of racial history in the US. The story of slavery and segregation of Black Americans is essential, but not the whole story. I have minimal background in Native American history. There were some good sections in Color of Christ, and Richard Twiss' book Rescuing the Gospel from the Cowboys helps frame issues within Native American Christianity. And Kaitlin Curtice's memoir Native is well worth reading. But The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee was the first attempt I have made at understanding a larger history.
David Truer is an English professor and fiction writer with a background in Anthropology, not a historian. And the framing of the book is a mix of personal stories to give context to history. Those personal stories of both David Truer and his family, as well as many others from various tribes (and a few from people outside of tribes), give the reader insight into the history and contemporary issues. Of course, no single book can do everything, but from my non-expert position, the breadth of issues and history in a single book is impressive.
There is insight into how US policy has created many of the problems (similar to the framing of Color of Law with housing segregation). Native American tribal government and authority structures are diverse. Still, Truer looks at both the successes and problems of how different groups have structured and how US policy has helped and interfered.
The more recent problems of how DNA has impacted Native American identity is not wholly a new problem, and the history of the Red Power movement and how identity has been constructed and how it may go forward raises some issues that get very complicated quickly.
Truer has a perspective. He is not writing detached, analytical history; he is writing from the perspective of an activist. But he is also clear-eyed and knows that simple framing tools have to be complicated to move forward.
I don't want to assume that a single book and perspective is all I need. But I think this was helpful as an introduction, and I know I need to keep reading to become open to more blind spots and my lack of understanding of important history.
