71 pages • 2 hours read
David TreuerThe Heartbeat of Wounded Knee
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Displacement and Migration
When Europeans first entered what they called the New World in the late 15th century, they encountered a myriad of Indigenous tribes, some of which were inherently nomadic, moving either to the coastal lands or to the interior, depending on respective food supplies. This behavior contradicted European understandings of homeland and settlement and may have contributed to the belief among many Europeans and, later, Americans that Indigenous peoples could be moved with relative ease to make room for White settlers.
While migration was normal among many tribes, displacement was another matter. Starting in 1830, during President Andrew Jackson’s tenure, thousands of members of the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw) were moved from Florida, Georgia, and Alabama to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. The policy of removal was the first major action by the US federal government to assert white American dominance over tribes’ homelands.
Later in the 19th century, the federal government’s policies of removal were carried out in the West, particularly on the Plains, where Indigenous tribes stood in the way of ambitions to build railroads and to open up the land for cattle grazing. While many Indigenous people submitted to the government’s insistence that they live on reservations, they did so at the expense of their cultural lives and traditions. Worse, the American avarice for land did not end with the reservation system. Federal officials pressed Indigenous tribes to give up more through the allotment system, which offered Indigenous individuals and families portions of private land in exchange for larger, tribally owned territories. The allotment system was both a ruse to assimilate Indigenous people into the notion of private ownership and a way to wrestle more power and territory away from tribes.
The Process of Assimilation
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was fervent in his belief that the only way to “civilize” Indigenous people was to coerce them into abandoning their hunter-gatherer traditions in favor of yeoman farming. It never occurred to Jefferson, or to many other settlers of European descent, that Indigenous tribes had their own traditions, values, and ways of life that, though different from those of the newcomers, were still exemplary of civilization. This fact, however, bore no relevance to White Americans, who insisted that Indigenous people had to become “white”—that is, convert to Protestant Christianity, learn English, and adopt European understandings of ownership to fit into American society.
Though efforts at assimilation had begun in the 16th century, when Franciscan monks set up missions in the Southwest, they did not become federal policy until the first Indian boarding schools were erected in the 1870s. Whatever the good intentions of reformers may have been, the boarding schools existed only to erase Indigenous cultures, languages, and family bonds. Tribal members who were too poor to care for their children looked toward the schools in good faith, hoping that their children could get both board and good educations. What occurred instead is that many Indigenous children were subjected to substandard living conditions, malnutrition, abuse, and illegal labor. This mistreatment underscored a lack of respect for the lives of Indigenous people and a disinterest in caring for future generations.
Part of the activism of the 20th and 21st centuries was about reclaiming Indigenous languages and traditions in an effort to undo the cultural erasure of boarding schools, which existed well into the 20th century. The process of assimilation was one in which white America attempted to kill off the existence of tribes (termination, or the act of dismantling tribes, was another method) and their respective histories, in an effort to create the New World.
Thriving Contemporary Indigenous Communities
Treuer’s purpose in writing The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee was to prove that Indigenous people are not lost within modernity, pushed to the edge of civilization in reservations in which they are drowning in poverty, crime, and alcoholism. Though these problems certainly exist in Indigenous communities, and at higher rates than in other communities, they are only one facet of a complex narrative.
The 1970s were marked by a period of political activism, which culminated in reassessments of history, particularly Christopher Columbus’s legacy, and efforts toward self-actualization, such as reclamation of religious traditions and languages. As part of their self-determination, tribes segued into business ventures, notably the opening of casinos. Gambling has proven to be the most lucrative form of business for some tribes and the one for which Indigenous communities are best known. However, tribal communities have also ventured into the sale of fireworks and the cannabis business. Some tribal members have started small ventures in which they rely on traditional hunter-gatherer methods, such as leeching and ricing businesses.
Treuer intersperses his broader historical narrative with anecdotes about individuals to personalize Indigenous history. He illustrates the ways in which everyday people within these communities continue to thrive, despite a legacy of genocide and systemic oppression.
