The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee (Young Readers Adaptation)

Prologue

This book tells the story of what Indians in the United States have been up to in the 130 years since the infamous massacre at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota: what we ve done, what s happened to us, and what our lives have been like. It is adamantly, unashamedly, about Indian life rather than Indian death. That we even have lives ­that Indians have been living in, have been shaped by, and in turn have shaped the modern world ­is news to most people. The usual story told about us ­or rather, about the Indian ­is one of decline and death. Our story begins in unchecked freedom and communion with the earth and ends in confinement and perpetual suffering on reservations. Wounded Knee has come to stand in for much of that history.
But what were the actual circumstances of this event that has taken on so much symbolic weight?
In the 1860s, the U.S. government had been trying to solve the Indian problem on the Great Plains with a three-­pronged approach: negotiation, starvation, and warfare. Open war on its own had not been going too well. The Plains Indians had won decisive victories and forced the government to the treaty table. In 1868 the Lakota secured a large homeland on the Great Sioux Reservation in southwestern South Dakota and northern Nebraska.
Then gold was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The Lakota tried to enforce the terms of the 1868 treaty and throw out the gold-­seekers who rushed in. Their attempts led, directly, to the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were wiped out on June 25, 1876. During the final hours of the battle, the Lakota and Cheyenne dismounted, put away their guns, and killed the remaining cavalry with their war clubs and tomahawks in a ritual slaughter. Some Dakota women, armed with buffalo jawbones, were given the honor of dispatching the soldiers with a sharp blow behind the ear.
After that defeat, the U.S. government switched tactics. Instead of

David Treuer is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. The author of four previous novels, most recently Prudence, and two books of nonfiction, he has also written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Slate, and The Washington Post, among others. He has a PhD in anthropology and teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California.

"Utterly vital in its historical prowess, essential in its portraits of lived experiences."--Kirkus (starred review)

"Ojibwe author Treuer unblinkingly depicts 'Indian life rather than Indian death' in this young readers adaptation. . . Using approachable language and eye-opening firsthand accounts, Treuer unfailingly puts Indigenous people at the center of their own history to prove that 'Indian cultures are not dead and our civilizations have not been destroyed.' --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

[T]his one is special, for it offers an examination of an essential subject: life in Indigenous America. The Ojibwe author seamlessly addresses his material in a hybrid fashion that s part history, part reportage, and part memoir, and Keenan ensures all is accessible to a younger audience [F]ascinating. . . excellent. . . The history related here is necessary for all Americans to understand, and Treuer s personalized accounting ensures that readers will learn it with both their minds and hearts. --Booklist (starred review)

"A well-researched approach to North American history that features personal narratives from Indigenous-Americans."--School Library Journal