The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer

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.

Paperback

528 pages

FINALIST FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

About the author: David Treuer is an Ojibwe Indian from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. His adult book, the New York Times bestseller The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, was a finalist for both the 2019 National Book Award and the 2020 Carnegie Medal. He is also the author of four novels and two other books of nonfiction, as well as essays and stories that have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, and Slate, among others. Treuer divides his time between his home on the Leech Lake Reservation and Los Angeles, where he is a professor of English at the University of Southern California. He is also an editor at large at Pantheon Books, where his focus is on Native writers and emerging voices.   

Image description: The cover features a black background with the title printed in big on the cover with an American flag pattern underneath it. The subtitle and author's name are printed underneath that. There is also a label of the national book award finalist shown on the cover.