NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Discover a profound and inspiring story of Native American resilience and cultural preservation in this beautifully adapted book for young adults.
“Utterly vital in its historical prowess, essential in its portraits of lived experiences.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“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
Native American history has been traditionally presented as a dead past, a civilization that ended in 1890 with the massacre of more than one hundred fifty Sioux at Wounded Knee, the last major armed conflict between Indians and the US government.
In
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Ojibwe author and academic David Treuer shatters that myth. Through a brilliant blend of historical research, eye-opening interviews with a broad cross-section of tribal members, and moving personal reflection on growing up Indian, Treuer tells the true story of Native resilience and resistance to being written out of modern American history. The struggle of Native Americans to preserve their tribes, their languages and cultures, and their very existence is intense, complicated, and often heart-wrenching. From broken treaties to land seizures to forcing Indian children to live in state-run boarding schools, the history of treatment toward Native Americans is bloody.
But this groundbreaking book shows that despite all efforts to scrub the existence of Native Americans from the record of American history, the heartbeat of Native American life, identity, and self-rule beats steady and strong.
On sale: October 3, 2023
Age: 12 and up
Grade: Grade 7 & Up
Page count: 288 Pages
ISBN: 9780593327579
Reading level: Lexile: 1120L
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 Reviews, 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
