The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

by David Treuer

If you care about fairness and justice this is a disturbing book. It is also a book about hope. The Native Americans were totally defeated by 1900 their number were down to about 300,000 people. Now 120 years later there are over 3 million Native Americans and they have lots of success stories. The book includes a very good short history of the Native American experience. It is eye opening. That story about deliberately spreading smallpox did happen.

If you have the time read this book and talk to me about it. I need to understand more about how to get defeated people back into the game. Using this template on the Arab/Israeli conflict could be useful. Or Turks vs Kurds. Think about this: most of what we (European Americans) tried to do to mitigate the results of the conquest failed. Great book. A nine on my arbitrary one to ten scale. The highest score I’ve given yet.