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

The long-held idea was that Native American life essentially ended with the U.S. Cavalry's 1890 massacre of more than 150 Sioux at Wounded Knee. Melding history with reportage and memoir, David Treuer uncovers a different narrative, in which the depredations of each era also spawned new modes of survival: The seizures of land gave rise to increasingly sophisticated legal and political maneuvering. The forced assimilation of children at government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity. Not despite but rather because of American Indians' intense struggles to preserve their tribes, their cultures, and their very existence, the true story is that of a resilient people's unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention.