The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

November 4, 2019
Ojibwe novelist and nonfiction author Treuer (Prudence) offers a counter-narrative to the “same old sad story of the ‘dead Indian’ ” in this forceful, full-scale history of the Native American experience. The book’s title references Dee Brown’s 1970 bestseller, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and its claim that, between 1860 and 1890, “the culture and civilization of the American Indian was destroyed.” Aiming to recast how Native Americans see themselves as well as how they’re viewed by others, Treuer briskly chronicles the first four centuries of contact between Europeans and American Indians before taking a deep dive into the “untold story of the past 128 years.” He documents Native American heroism in WWI; the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, which brought New Deal reforms to tribal communities; the post-WWII urban migration of Native Americans; the 1970s occupations of Alcatraz Island and the Bureau of Indian Affairs by members of the American Indian Movement; and the impact of legalized gambling on reservation life. Interwoven with these accounts are profiles of Treuer’s friends and family, and reportage from “Indian homelands” throughout the U.S. His character sketches, of Oglala Lakota chef and cookbook author Sean Sherman, for example, are impactful and finely drawn. This vivid rewriting of the history of Native America should be required reading.