Books by David Treur
“It is a really interesting response to a very famous book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, which has been so popular for decades in the United States. I think the reason Brown’s book became popular is that it was among the first narratives to emphasize the horrors of American expansion. It tells of devastating violence against Native people. But the thesis of the book, the way it lays out its narration, is one in which native people are destroyed after the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Native culture dies in Brown’s book. It’s a vanishing Indian narrative. And it’s terribly popular. It’s still printed. So Treur put the word ‘heartbeat’ in the title. His direct response to Brown is to say, ‘No, there’s still a heartbeat. We did not die.’ So, he re-narrates the story that Dee Brown told in that book, and then emphasizes the ongoing life of Native communities after 1890. He particularly does this through his own family stories and the stories of the reservation where he grew up, to look at the various ways that people just keep on living” Read more...
The best books on Native American history
Jennifer Graber, Historian
Interviews where books by David Treur were recommended
The best books on Native American history, recommended by Jennifer Graber
That US expansion was predicated on the violent dispossession of Native people is a key aspect of American history that is finally getting the attention it deserves among historians. Here Jennifer Graber, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, highlights books by Native scholars and writers that focus on their experience.
