Michael: Most history books about Native Americans get the ending wrong. They close the book in 1890 at a place called Wounded Knee. But what if that wasn't an ending at all? What if it was, in a strange and brutal way, a beginning? Kevin: That’s a provocative way to put it. An ending that’s actually a beginning. It sounds like a paradox. Usually, when we talk about Wounded Knee, it’s the final, tragic chapter. The full stop. Michael: Exactly. And that's the narrative that has dominated for over a century. But today, we’re diving into a book that argues that full stop was really just a pause, and the story that came after is one of the most incredible, untold stories of survival and reinvention in American history. We're talking about David Treuer's The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present. Kevin: Ah, okay. I’ve heard this book made some serious waves. It was a finalist for the National Book Award, and people talk about it as a major corrective to the way we think about this history. Michael: It absolutely is. And Treuer's perspective is so unique and powerful. He's an Ojibwe academic who grew up on the Leech Lake Reservation, but his father was also a Jewish Holocaust survivor. So he comes to this story with a profound, personal, and familial understanding of what it means to survive cultural annihilation. Kevin: Wow, a Holocaust survivor and an Ojibwe mother. That's a heavy-duty perspective on history. That’s not just an academic exercise for him; it’s in his bones. So where does he start? How do you even begin to rewrite a story that’s so ingrained in the American consciousness? Michael: He starts by taking on the giant. He goes right after the book that, for millions of people, is the definitive story of Native Americans: Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Kevin: Right, that book is a cultural landmark. I think a lot of people, myself included, read that in high school and it was this huge, heartbreaking eye-opener to the injustices Native Americans faced. It’s an incredibly powerful and sad book. Michael: It is. And Treuer gives it its due. He acknowledges that it was a monumental work that spoke truth to power at a time when few were listening. It sold millions of copies and was translated into dozens of languages. It fundamentally changed the conversation. But he makes a crucial, and I think brilliant, critique. Kevin: Okay, I'm listening. What's the critique? Michael: Treuer argues that by ending the story in 1890 with the Wounded Knee Massacre, Dee Brown, perhaps unintentionally, cemented the idea of the "dead Indian." The book’s final, mournful note leaves the reader with a sense of finality. The last free people have been crushed, their culture is gone, and all that’s left, as Brown writes in his introduction, is the "poverty, the hopelessness, and the squalor of a modern Indian reservation." Kevin: Huh. So the very book that created so much sympathy also kind of relegated Native Americans to the past. It makes them a tragedy to be mourned, not a living people to be engaged with. Michael: Precisely. Treuer talks about this from a deeply personal place. He describes growing up on the reservation and feeling like his own life, his own community's existence, was just a "squalid postscript" to a more glorious, but finished, story. He felt like a ruin, a relic. And his book is a powerful argument that this narrative of demise is not only wrong, but it’s a burden that Native people themselves have had to carry. Kevin: That’s a really powerful idea. That the story we tell about a people can become a cage for them. So how does he break out of that cage? What does the story look like if you don't stop the film in 1890? Michael: He starts by looking at the 128 years after the massacre. He says the story of Indian life in the 20th and 21st centuries is not one of death, but of life. It's a story of adaptation, of legal battles, of political sophistication, of cultural reinvention, and of sheer, stubborn survival. The heartbeat never stopped; it just changed its rhythm. Kevin: I like that. The heartbeat never stopped. But let's be real, the period after 1890 was horrific. The government's policy was basically to erase Native culture entirely. How do you find a story of life in the middle of what was, for all intents and purposes, a cultural genocide? Michael: You look at the unintended consequences. You look at how the very tools of oppression were, in a strange and painful way, turned into tools of survival. And that really brings us to the brutal paradox of the assimilation era.

Kevin: Assimilation. That word just sounds so sterile and bureaucratic for what it actually was. What are we talking about here, specifically? Michael: We're talking about a two-pronged attack on tribal existence. First, the land. The government decided that communal land ownership was "savage" and that to be "civilized," Indians needed to become selfish, individual property owners. This led to the General Allotment Act of 1887, also known as the Dawes Act. Kevin: I’ve heard of the Dawes Act, but I don't think I ever fully grasped what it did. How did it work? Michael: Imagine a large, collectively owned family farm that has sustained a community for generations. The government comes in and says, "This is inefficient. We're breaking it up." They give each family member a small, individual plot of land—often the worst, least farmable land. Then, all the "surplus" land—the best parts of the farm—is declared "extra" and sold off to outsiders for pennies on the dollar. Kevin: Oh man. So it's a land grab disguised as a self-help program. Michael: It was a catastrophe. Between 1887 and 1934, when the policy was finally ended, tribal landholdings in the United States plummeted from 138 million acres to just 48 million. Ninety million acres, an area roughly the size of Montana, vanished from Native hands. It was one of the largest land transfers in history. Kevin: That's staggering. But that was just one prong of the attack, you said. What was the other? Michael: The other was aimed at the children. At the culture itself. This was the era of the Indian boarding schools. And the philosophy behind them was articulated with chilling clarity by a man named Captain Richard Henry Pratt, the founder of the most famous one, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Kevin: I'm almost afraid to ask. What was his philosophy? Michael: His motto, which he proudly declared in a speech, was: "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." Kevin: Wow. To say that out loud. "Kill the Indian, and save the man." That's not a hidden agenda; that's the mission statement. It’s monstrous. Michael: It was. Children were forcibly taken from their families, sometimes at gunpoint. They were shipped hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles away. When they arrived, their traditional clothes were burned, their long hair was cut—which for many tribes was a profound sign of mourning and shame—and they were forbidden from speaking their own languages. Treuer tells the story of Luther Standing Bear, a Lakota boy who was one of the first students at Carlisle. He describes the sheer terror and confusion of that process, the feeling of being stripped of everything that made him who he was. Kevin: It’s hard to even imagine the trauma of that. For a child to go through that, and for a parent to have their child taken. But here's the part that I read about that just blows my mind. Treuer argues that these schools, these horrific institutions designed to erase every trace of tribal identity, somehow ended up creating a new, unified Indian identity. How is that even possible? Michael: It’s the ultimate paradox. Before the boarding schools, a Lakota person thought of themselves as Lakota, a Navajo as Navajo, an Ojibwe as Ojibwe. They were distinct nations, often with histories of conflict with one another. But in these schools, you had children from dozens of different tribes, all thrown together. They couldn't speak their own languages, so they had to learn English. And in English, they discovered they had one thing in common: they were all "Indian" in the eyes of their captors. Kevin: So their shared oppression became their shared identity. Michael: Exactly. They started sharing stories, traditions, and strategies for survival. They built friendships and alliances that crossed old tribal lines. For the first time, a pan-Indian consciousness began to form. These schools, designed to be factories of assimilation, accidentally became incubators for a new kind of resistance. The students who survived and graduated went on to become the first generation of national Native activists and leaders. Kevin: That is an incredible, and incredibly tragic, irony. The weapon used against them was reforged. It didn't work as intended. It backfired spectacularly over the long run. Michael: A very, very long run. And that spirit of reinvention, of taking the tools of the modern world and using them for their own purposes, is what defines the story of Native America in the 20th century and brings us right up to today.

Kevin: So this new identity, forged in trauma, becomes a political force. That brings us to the present. What does this 'heartbeat' sound like today? Because for many non-Native people, the image is either stuck in the 19th century, or it's just... casinos. Michael: And Treuer tackles that head-on. The modern era is defined by one word above all: sovereignty. Not just as a legal concept, but as a lived reality. He tells this amazing story about the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma. For years, the Indian Health Service hospital on their land was, like many federal services, inefficient and slow. The waiting room was always packed. Kevin: I think I can picture it. The classic bureaucratic nightmare. Michael: Totally. So the tribal chairman, Bill Anoatubby, proposed that the tribe use its own funds to take over the hospital under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. At first, his own people were against it. They were afraid the tribe would fail. But he persisted, and they did it. Kevin: And what happened? Michael: Within months, the wait times disappeared. The service was better. Why? Because, as Treuer quotes one tribal member, the federal officials were never accountable to the community. But a tribal leader? They can get unelected if they don't serve their people well. It was about accountability. It was about self-governance. Kevin: That’s a perfect example of sovereignty in action. It’s not an abstract idea; it’s about better healthcare. It’s about being responsible to your own community. But what about the casinos? That's the elephant in the room for a lot of people. Michael: It is, and the book doesn't shy away from the complexities. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 opened the door for tribal casinos, and it has been a game-changer. Yes, it has brought its own set of problems, like internal tribal conflicts over money, which Treuer details. But for many tribes, it's the first time they've had a significant, independent economic engine. Kevin: And what are they doing with that money? Michael: This is the crucial point. They're using it to fund their sovereignty. They're building schools, paving roads, and funding those better hospitals. And, in another beautiful paradox, they're using the profits of capitalism to fund cultural preservation. They're building museums, funding language immersion programs for their children, and supporting traditional arts. Kevin: So the casino, a symbol of modern American capitalism, is being used to keep ancient languages alive. That's fascinating. It’s not a simple story of selling out. Michael: It's not. It's a story of pragmatism and survival. It’s about finding a way to be, as Treuer’s mother taught him, "Indian and modern simultaneously." He profiles these incredible contemporary figures, like Chelsey Luger, a wellness advocate who connects physical fitness to ancestral knowledge. She argues that you can't have culture without wellness. You can't go to a ceremony if you're sick or drunk. For her, running isn't just exercise; it's a way of reclaiming the physical strength of her ancestors. Kevin: I love that reframing. It’s not about going back to the past. It’s about bringing the wisdom of the past forward into the present. It’s not a contradiction to be a professor and a medicine man, as one administrator told Treuer. Michael: That's the core of it. The book is filled with these stories of people who are living, breathing, and creating in the present tense. They are not relics. They are not a tragedy. They are the ongoing, vibrant, and often complicated heartbeat of Wounded Knee.

Kevin: So when you pull it all together, the story Treuer is telling is so much more complex and, honestly, more interesting than the simple tragedy we're used to. It's not a story of victims. It's a story of fighters, thinkers, and innovators. Michael: Absolutely. It’s a journey from a narrative of supposed death at Wounded Knee, through a brutal purgatory of assimilation policies, to a modern era of reinvention. The 'heartbeat' of the title isn't just a metaphor for not dying; it's the sound of active, ongoing creation. It’s the sound of a people defining their own future on their own terms. Kevin: It really makes you rethink what survival even means. It’s not just about enduring. It’s about taking the worst things that have been thrown at you—the land theft, the forced education, the poverty—and finding ways to build something new and strong from the pieces. It makes me wonder what other 'endings' in history we've gotten wrong. Michael: That’s the question the book leaves you with. And Treuer's ultimate point is that this story—this messy, painful, but incredibly resilient story—is not just Indian history. It's American history. You can't understand this country without it. He quotes the philosopher Walter Benjamin, who said history isn't about recognizing the past 'the way it really was,' but about seizing 'a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.' For Treuer, this is a moment of danger, where the story of Native life is at risk of being forgotten or romanticized into extinction. Kevin: And his book is an attempt to seize that memory and fan the spark of hope. I think that's a powerful mission. We'd love to hear from our listeners: what part of this history surprised you the most? Was it the paradox of the boarding schools, or the modern stories of sovereignty? Find us on our socials and join the conversation. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.